Nigel Westbrook

Forum: Reflecting on the Politics of Patrimony

Abstract This Forum evolved from a provocation by the Editors of this special issue of Fabrications that “too often heritage conservation assumes an apolitical stance by neglecting to acknowledge its own unsettling agendas.” The Forums five contributors highlight a range of challenges and trends that architectural heritage professionals – including historians – have begun to identify and engage with in a critical fashion. These pieces demonstrate the need to commit to historical practice that embraces the “critical turn,” and to acknowledge our responsibilities as “gatekeepers” and producers of knowledge. While we cannot control the multitude of interpretations that our work will surely generate across time and space, we can consider whether we are contributing to, or challenging, existing silences, inaccuracies, and regimes of knowledge. This Forum does not claim to provide answers, but instead seeks to foster discussion and identify some of the avenues along which work in the general realm of “Architecture / Heritage / Politics” is – or should be – progressing.

Designing a Revolutionary Habitat: Tradition, Heritage and Housing in the Immediate Aftermath of the Iranian Revolution – Continuities and Disruptions

Abstract For the first decade after its victory, the Iranian revolution (1979) was dominated by an uncompromising Islamist ideology, invoking the Islamic and vernacular traditions. A logical arena through which Islamism could act upon people’s daily lives was public housing, the design and construction of which is controlled by the government, and its constituents are the masses who mostly adhere to Muslim traditions and espouse forms of Islamic identity in their daily life. Referring to a selection of projects from a series of government housing competitions held in 1986, we examine the relationship between the submitted designs and architectural precedents cited as constituting “Islamic architectural heritage.” Elaborating on the heritage processes involved in articulating the past in these designs, we trace the interrelationships between these designs and other, non-Islamic, architectural discourses and design procedures deriving from a Western context. We argue for rethinking the relationship between heritage and architectural design, such that the latter is seen as the process of refashioning fragments of past traditions into heritage, in this case, a purportedly Islamic form. Concurrently, we show the gap between ideological rhetoric and the praxis of design and remarkable continuities between the periods leading up to and following the revolution.

Reclaiming Heritage through the Image of Traditional Habitat

From the 1960s, Iran, like many other similar countries experienced a radical urban expansion and industrialization, chiefly as a result of the expanding oil industry. Internal migration fueled by industrialization created both a crisis of habitation and a cultural dissonance, in response to which various schemes were developed for model communities, intended to bridge the gap between Iranian culture, its heritage, and modern urbanism. We will examine one such “model community,” New Shushtar, a housing complex adjacent to the ancient heritage town of Shushtar, in which architectural motifs and images were used to evoke and perhaps invoke authentic traditional life. We will place this complex within the broader context in the Muslim world of attempts to defend regional culture from the effects of globalization.

Architecture as Method: A Report on the Adelaide Congress 2017

In July 2017, the Centre for Asian and Middle Eastern Architecture (CAMEA) at the University of Adelaide marked two decades since it was formally established in an inaugural symposium immediately p...

Reconstructing Sixteenth-Century Istanbul: The Use of Digital Modelling as an Heuristic Tool in Architectural History Research

In this paper, we draw upon digital 2D and 3D modelling techniques to analyse two sixteenth-century visual records of the city of Istanbul at that time: the Prospect of Constantinople by Melchior Lorichs (or Lorck) held at the University of Leiden, and the view of the Hippodrome and Hagia Sophia in the Freshfield Folio held at Trinity College, Cambridge. We propose that, through digitally-based analysis of these sources that matches aspect ratios and viewpoints, it is possible to extract new evidence for the topography and structures of the city during this period.

Architecture of Traces and Ascriptions: Interpreting the Vanished Great Palace of the Byzantine Emperors in Constantinople

The traditional conception of Byzantine culture, and specifically of its architecture, as static and anachronistic is argued to be undermined by the complex mechanism of recollection within its history, and by its enduring influence upon medi val architecture in western Europe.