Course Description:

This seminar addresses the critical issues involved in the practice of preserving architectural forms from the past. Concepts such as "Tradition," "Heritage," "Patrimony" and "Monument" are examined in the context of debates on memory, the historical imagination, the variable meaning of the visible past, imperial and national identities, and the politics of restoration. Case studies from the West as well as the non-West range from interventions into urban areas, to abandoned settlements, to archeaological sites, to museological and exhibitionary spaces. These issues are considered in the pre-modern and modern periods, as well as in relation to the contemporary global tourist industry and its implications for the conceptualization and the commodification of "traditional" environments and architectural "masterpieces".