"Shared Built Heritage" reconsidered

Conceptualized by

Michael Falser (Heidelberg University/ISC Theory & SBH)

In collaboration with

Siegfried RCT Enders (President, ISC SBH)

Joint Workshop of

ICOMOS ISC Shared Built Heritage

ICOMOS ISC Theory & Philosophy of Conservation and Preservation

Chair of Global Art History, Heidelberg University

Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz - Max-Planck-Institut, Florence

This two-day workshop aims to discuss the challenges, approaches and methods, and the multi-layered value structures involved which are grouped around term that has given a specific ICOMOS Scientific Committee (ISC) its name: "Shared Built Heritage" (SBH). As a result of the workshop, specific recommendations will be formulated, which are to be added to the Committee's actual Statutes.

Context and Goals

Originally named "Committee on Shared Colonial Architecture and Town Planning" up to the late 1990s, to cover the heritage of former European colonial structures in overseas Non-Europe from the viewpoint of today's post-colonial and globalized world, the Committee was renamed with its current name through a process of internal debate. As the Committee now defines this in its current statutes, "Shared Built Heritage includes historical urban and rural structures or elements, resulting from multi-cultural and/or colonial influence". From this larger perspective, inner-European heritage configurations resulting from the violent process of national frontiers changing and forced migration from North- and South America to Asia and Australia were additionally included in the Committee's agenda.

After the Committee's impressive series of international meetings around the planet to visit ex-colonial heritage sites from South America to Asia, it is time now to sit down and summarize the insights and to define with new expertise the challenges of, and approaches to, this multi-layered heritage configuration from a more theoretical and methodological point of view.

Placed at the end of ICOMOS International's General Assembly in Florence (9 - 14 November 2014), this workshop is conceived of as a collaboration between the ICOMOS ISC "Shared Built Heritage" and the ICOMOS ISC "Theory and Philosophy of Conservation and Restoration", together with the Chair of Global Art History of Heidelberg University, and the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz - Max-Planck-Institut at Florence, as the host of the event.

Seating for this workshop is strictly limited to 25 participants and individual registration necessary: falser@asia-europe.uni-heidelberg.de