Human-Centered Built Environment Heritage Preservation
Theory and Evidence-Based Practice
Barry L Stiefel editor Jeremy C Wells editor
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Taylor & Francis Ltd
Published:20th Sep '18
Should be back in stock very soon
This paperback is available in another edition too:
- Hardback£135.00(9781138583948)
Human-Centered Built Environment Heritage Preservation addresses the question of how a human-centred conservation approach can and should change practice. For the most part, there are few answers to this question because professionals in the heritage conservation field do not use social science research methodologies to manage cultural landscapes, assess historical significance and inform the treatment of building and landscape fabric. With few exceptions, only academic theorists have explored these topics while failing to offer specific, usable guidance on how the social sciences can actually be used by heritage professionals.
In exploring the nature of a human-centred heritage conservation practice, we explicitly seek a middle ground between the academy and practice, theory and application, fabric and meanings, conventional and civil experts, and orthodox and heterodox ideas behind practice and research. We do this by positioning this book in a transdisciplinary space between these dichotomies as a way to give voice (and respect) to multiple perspectives without losing sight of our goal that heritage conservation practice should, fundamentally, benefit all people. We believe that this approach is essential for creating an emancipated built heritage conservation practice that must successfully engage very different ontological and epistemological perspectives.
This edited collection argues for much-needed paradigm shift in heritage conservation theory and practice from its conventional, expert-driven approach to a people-centered methodology. This derives evidence on how ordinary communities perceive, participate in and relate to their historic environments, which could then lead to a more nuanced and holistic way for safeguarding cultural heritage. A must-read!
Dr. Kapila D. Silva, University of Kansas, USA.
In this timely and provocative collection of essays, leading heritage conservation scholars and practitioners work to bridge the divide between theory and practice and invite an important conversation on how to fashion a more empirical, evidence-based, pluralistic, and people-centered approach to preservation.
Wells and Stiefel have brought together an essential meeting of the minds and pointed the way forward to a more dynamic 21st century preservation movement informed by academic research and infused with grassroots energy.
Stephanie Meeks, President, National Trust for Historic Preservation
This book makes an important contribution to the broadening of conventional heritage studies beyond an academic and professional focus on top-down doctrine, policies and legal instruments to embrace the contemporary meanings and values that citizens attribute to their physical places and social spaces. Emphasising the importance of trans-disciplinary, evidence-based research, and conceptualising innovative, holistic approaches, the book anticipates the development of grass-roots-driven observances that would transform heritage preservation from an elitist enthusiasm backed by instruments of enforcement, into democratisation and common-ownership of preservation objectives and everyday practices.
Dennis Rodwell, Architect-Planner, Consultant in Cultural Heritage and Sustainable Urban Development
ISBN: 9781138583955
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 730g
354 pages