Self Introduction

ANTENEH ZERIHUN
MSc in Urban Design/Architecture/ PhD Candidate at AAU.

Tel no- 0911898510

antu8985@gmail.com
6710 - A
 What is Architecture?
• The ART and SCIENCE of designing and erecting buildings and
other physical structures.
• A GENERAL TERM TO DESCRIBE BUILDINGS and other structures.

 Architectural works are often PERCEIVED AS CULTURAL and

POLITICAL SYMBOLS and as WORKS OF ART.
 HISTORICAL CIVILIZATIONS ARE OFTEN IDENTIFIED
WITH THEIR SURVIVING ARCHITECTURAL
ACHIEVEMENTS.

Heritage
Heritage definitions and types
 What is heritage?
The Oxford English Dictionary defines
‘heritage’ as ‘property that is or may be
inherited;
an inheritance’, ‘valued
things such as historic
buildings that have been
passed down from
previous generations’, and
‘relating to things of
historic or cultural value
that are worthy of
preservation’. The
emphasis on inheritance
and conservation is
important here, as is the
focus on ‘property’,
‘things’ or ‘buildings’.
What is
heritage?
1. It is something that can be passed
from one generation to the next,
something that can be conserved or
inherited, and something that has
historic or cultural value.
2. Heritage might be understood to be
a physical ‘object’: a piece of
property, a building or a place that is
able to be ‘owned’ and ‘passed on’
to someone else
3. In addition to these physical objects and
places of heritage there are also
various practices of heritage that are
conserved or handed down from one
generation to the next, such as
language, culture, popular song,
literature or dress,
 What is heritage?
• In 2002 during the United Nations year for cultural heritage,
UNESCO produced a list of ‘types’ of cultural heritage .
• It should not be considered an exhaustive list, but it gives a sense of
the diversity of ‘things’ that might be considered to be official
heritage:
• cultural heritage sites (including archaeological sites, ruins,
historic buildings)
• historic cities (urban landscapes and their constituent parts as
well as ruined cities)
• cultural landscapes (including parks, gardens and other
‘modified’ landscapes such as pastoral lands and farms)
• natural sacred sites (places that people revere or hold
important but that have no evidence of human modification,
for example sacred mountains)
 What is heritage?
• movable cultural heritage (objects as diverse as paintings, tractors,
stone tools and cameras – this category covers any form of object
that is movable and that is outside of an archaeological context)
• oral traditions (stories, histories and traditions that are not written
but passed from generation to generation)
• languages
• festive events (festivals and carnivals and the traditions they
embody)
• rites and beliefs (rituals, traditions and religious beliefs)
• music and song
• the performing arts (theatre, drama, dance and music)
• traditional medicine
• literature
• traditional sports and games.
Definitions…….

•“Heritage building” means and includes any building of

one or more premises or any part thereof and/or structure and/or
artefact which requires conservation and / or preservation for
historical and / or architectural and / or artisanary and /or aesthetic
and/or cultural and/or environmental and/or ecological purpose and
includes such portion of land adjoining such building or part
thereof as may be required for fencing or covering or in any manner
preserving the historical and/or architectural and/or aesthetic and/or
cultural value of such building.
 Criteria for Listing Heritage
The three key concepts need to be understood to
determine whether a property is worthy of listing.
• HISTORIC SIGNIFICANCE
• HISTORIC INTEGRITY
• HISTORIC CONTEXT
Historic significance is the importance of a
property to the history, architecture,
archaeology, engineering or culture of a
community, region or nation.
 In selecting a heritage, particular attention
should be paid to the following :

• Association with events, activities or patterns

• Association with important persons
• Distinctive physical characteristics of design, construction or
form, representing work of a master
• Potential to yield important information such as illustrating
social, economic history, such as railway stations, town halls,
clubs, markets, water works, etc.
• Technological innovations such as dams, bridges, etc.
• Distinct town planning features like squares, streets, avenues,
 What is heritage ?
Examples-
• The Great Barrier Reef is the world’s most extensive stretch of coral reef.
• It includes a range of marine environments and formations, including approximately
300 coral cays and 618 continental islands which were once part of the mainland.

The Great Barrier Reef, Whitsunday Coast, Queensland, Australia

• The reef is home to a number of rare and endangered animal and plant species and
contains over 1500 species of fish, 400 species of coral, 4000 species of mollusk and 242
species of birds plus a large number of different sponges, anemones, marine worms and
crustaceans and other marine invertebrates.
• The reef includes feeding grounds for dugongs, several species of whales and dolphins, and
nesting grounds of green and loggerhead turtles (United Nations Environment Programme World
Conservation Monitoring Centre, 2008).
What is heritage ?
Examples-
• The Mir Castle complex is
situated on the bank of a small
lake at the confluence of the
river Miryanka and a small
tributary in the Grodno Region
of what is now known as the
Republic of Belarus.
• The castle was built in the late
fifteenth or early sixteenth
century in a style that
architects familiar with the
form it took in central Europe
would recognize as ‘Gothic’.
The Mir Castle complex, Republic of Belarus, 2003

• Mir Castle is considered to be an exceptional example of a central European castle,

reflecting in its design and layout successive cultural influences (Gothic, Renaissance
and Baroque) as well as the political and cultural conflicts that characterize the history
of the region (UNESCO, 2008).
 History?

• For many people, the word ‘heritage’ is probably synonymous with

‘history’. However, historians have criticized the many instances of
recreation of the past in the image of the present which occur in
museums, historic houses and heritage sites throughout the world,
and have sought to distance themselves from what they might
characterize as ‘bad’ history.
• As Lowenthal points out in The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of
History, heritage is not history at all: ‘it is not an inquiry into the
past, but a celebration of it ... a profession of faith in a past
tailored to present-day purposes’ (Lowenthal, 1997, p. x).
• Heritage must be seen as separate from the pursuit of history, as it
is concerned with the re-packaging of the past for some purpose in
the present.
 What is heritage?
• ‘Heritage’ also has a series of specific and clearly defined technical
and legal meanings. For example, the two places discussed earlier
are delineated as ‘heritage’ by their inclusion on the World
Heritage List.
• As John Carman (2002, p. 22) notes, heritage is created in a process
of categorizing.
• These places have an official position that has a series of
obligations, both legal and ‘moral’, arising from their inclusion on
this register.
• As places on the World Heritage List they must be actively
conserved, they should have formal documents and policies in
place to determine their management, and there is an assumption
that they will be able to be visited so that their values to
conservation and the world’s heritage can be appreciated.
 What is heritage?
• Heritage is in fact a very difficult concept to define. Most people will
have an idea of what heritage ‘is’, and what kinds of things could be
described using the term heritage.
• Most people, too, would recognize the existence of an official
heritage that could be opposed to their own personal or collective
one. For example, many would have visited a national museum in the
country in which they live but would recognize that the artefacts
contained within it do not describe entirely what they would
understand as their own history and heritage.
• Clearly, any attempt to create an official heritage is necessarily both
partial and selective. This gap between, on one hand, what an
individual understands to be their heritage and, on the other hand,
the official heritage promoted and managed by the state introduces
the possibility of multiple ‘heritages’.
• heritage could be understood to encompass objects, places and
practices that have some significance in the present which relates to
the past.
 What is heritage?
• Some of the types of heritage are objects and places (‘physical’ or
‘material’ heritage) while others are practices (‘intangible’ heritage).
However, many of these categories cross both types of heritage. For
example, ritual practices might involve incantations (intangible) as well as
ritual objects (physical). So we should be careful of thinking of these
categories as clear cut or distinct. In addition, this list only includes
‘cultural’ heritage.
• Natural heritage is most often thought about in terms of landscapes and
ecological systems, but it is comprised of features such as plants, animals,
natural landscapes and landforms, oceans and water bodies. Natural
heritage is valued for its aesthetic qualities, its contribution to ecological,
biological and geological processes and its provision of natural habitats
for the conservation of biodiversity.
• In the same way that we perceive both tangible and intangible aspects of
cultural heritage, we could also speak of the tangible aspects of natural
heritage (the plants, animals and landforms) alongside the intangible (its
aesthetic qualities and its contribution to biodiversity).
 What is heritage?
• Another aspect of heritage is the idea that things tend
to be classified as ‘heritage’ only in the light of some
risk of losing them. The element of potential or real
threat to heritage – of destruction, loss or decay – links
heritage historically and politically with the
conservation movement.
• Even where a building or object is under no immediate
threat of destruction, its listing on a heritage register is
an action which assumes a potential threat at some
time in the future, from which it is being protected by
legislation or listing.
 Illustrations of World Heritage concepts
• CULTURAL HERITAGE
• The World Heritage Convention defines cultural heritage as:
• monuments: architectural works, works of monumental sculpture and
painting, elements or structures of an archaeological nature, inscriptions,
cave dwellings and combinations of features, which are of Outstanding
Universal Value from the point of view of history, art or science;

prepared by Meseret T.
Hiroshima Peace Memorial (Genbaku Dome)
(Japan) Minaret and Archaeological Remains of Jam (Afghanistan
• groups of buildings: groups of separate or connected buildings
which, because of their architecture, their homogeneity or
their place in the landscape, are of Outstanding Universal
Value from the point of view of history, art or science;

prepared by Meseret T.
Old Town of Lijiang (China) Zollverein Coal Mine Industrial Complex in
Essen
(Germany)
 • sites: works of man or the combined works of nature and
man, and areas including archaeological sites which are of
Outstanding Universal Value from the historical, aesthetic,
ethnological or anthropological point of view

prepared by Meseret T.
Sukur Cultural Landscape (Nigeria Botanical Garden (Orto Botanico),
Padua (Italy)
 NATURAL HERITAGE
• The World Heritage Convention defines natural heritage as:
• natural features consisting of physical and biological formations or
groups of such formations, which are of Outstanding Universal Value from
the aesthetic or scientific point of view;
• geological and physiographical formations and precisely delineated areas
which constitute the habitat of threatened species of animals and plants
of Outstanding Universal Value from the point of view of science or
conservation;
• natural sites or precisely delineated natural areas of Outstanding Universal
Value from the point of view of science, conservation or natural beauty

prepared by Meseret T.
Virunga National Park(Democratic Republic of Malpelo Fauna and Flora Sanctuary
the Congo) (Colombia)
 • MIXED PROPERTIES
• The Operational Guidelines define mixed properties as those which
satisfy part or the whole of the definitions of both cultural and
natural heritage
• Examples of listed mixed properties

prepared by Meseret T.
Tassili N’Ajjer(Algeria) Tikal National Park(Guatemala)
CULTURAL LANDSCAPES
• The Operational Guidelines define cultural
landscapes as cultural properties which represent
the ’combined works of nature and of man’
• There are three main types of cultural landscape:
1.landscapes designed and created intentionally

prepared by Meseret T.
by people;
2.organically evolved landscapes; and
3. associative landscapes
• A designed landscape: Vat Phou and Associated Ancient Settlements within the
Champasak Cultural Landscape (Lao People’s Democratic Republic

prepared by Meseret T.
• An organically evolved landscape: Rice Terraces of the Philippine
Cordilleras(Philippines