This paper revisits the concept of compatibility between old and new architecture to clarify its meaning.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper revisits the concept of compatibility between old and new architecture to clarify its meaning.
Design/methodology/approach
Document analysis is employed to critically review relevant literature, including Charters and UNESCO Recommendations.
Findings
Visual and/or tangible indicators such as forms and materials are often suggested in the literature to determine compatibility and to inform decision makers whether new architectural projects should reproduce, or reinterpret, or rather contrast with, historic buildings in situ. As a consequence, compatible design becomes confined to a visual, object-based, worldview. Yet, architecture transcends the sense of vision.
Research limitations/implications
Examples of architectural projects are given to explain each design option, but are not thoroughly described. Still, this paper provides a useful reference for future dialogue and research that aim at reducing the conservation vs development struggle in historic places, whether urban areas or entire cities, such as World Heritage Cities.
Practical implications
The lessons learned may stimulate reflection on the effectiveness of design criteria and other tools in guiding decision makers in their search for, and assessment of, compatibility.
Originality/value
This paper reveals that compatibility is an evolving concept, associated with human, man-made and natural indicators. Design options are not simply aesthetic categories. The author proposes that the selection of a design option for new architecture should follow the process that guides the selection of a conservation treatment for old architecture.
Details
Keywords
The purpose of this paper is to describe the component attributes of an Arabian city, caught between tradition and modernization, with focus on their reactions to climate and…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to describe the component attributes of an Arabian city, caught between tradition and modernization, with focus on their reactions to climate and religion.
Design/methodology/approach
A platform of comparison between Old Kuwait Town and Kuwait City is provided while showing the effects of oil money on the city's urban morphology. The paper's first section describes the emergence of the Islamic city in the Arabian (Persian) Gulf and identifies key concepts in city morphology. An Islamic School of Law, furthermore, is selected to explain who interprets religious text and how concepts in Islam, such as domestic privacy, are translated into design guidelines, which have influenced the Kuwaiti vernacular typology and street pattern. The transition is made to the second section, which compares Old Kuwait Town and Kuwait City based on knowledge gained in the preceding section. Finally, the third section of the paper recommends some architectural and planning specifications.
Findings
It is found that climate and religion have lost their authority at the expense of a paradigm shift in the 1950s.
Research limitations/implications
The paper focuses on, and is limited to, one case study.
Practical implications
A few architectural and planning specifications are recommended for application in practice to improve contemporary design and to promote a unified morphological outcome in Kuwait City.
Social implications
The message is to show readers that progress is about working with, and responding to, local determinants rather than applying Western thinking.
Originality/value
The author advocates a look at precedents, because learning from the past helps to design buildings and plan cities that are compatible with local environments and traditions.
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Keywords
Ron van Oers and Ana Pereira Roders
This paper is an editorial to JCHMSD's Volume 2 Issue 1. Its purpose is to introduce the selection of papers in the issue.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper is an editorial to JCHMSD's Volume 2 Issue 1. Its purpose is to introduce the selection of papers in the issue.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper discusses the increased focus of national and local authorities, as well as multilateral agencies, on historic cities in a search for a more sustainable process of urban development that integrates environmental, social and cultural concerns into the planning, design and implementation of urban management programmes and projects. The recent adoption of a new policy instrument by UNESCO, the 2011 Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape, is providing a set of general principles in support of sustainable urban heritage management and the paper further explains the first results of a field testing of the embedded Historic Urban Landscape approach in two different geo‐cultural regions of the world (i.e. Central Asia and East Africa). It points to fields of further research, which are linked to the papers selected for this issue.
Findings
The Historic Urban Landscape approach, as promoted in the new UNESCO Recommendation on the subject, facilitates a structuring and priority setting of the manifold needs and wishes in the broader urban development and heritage management process, thereby creating clarity and understanding in an often very complex process with competing demands.
Originality/value
The new UNESCO Recommendation was adopted on 10 November 2011 and this research paper is the first to expound on an implementation of the approach embedded therein, explaining its merits and potential.