Towards Self-Interpreting World Heritage Sites : a Proposal for Interpretive Site's Landscape Design Guiding Principles

Ref.: 39
Key theme: 01 Physical integrity of historic urban landscapes
Date of reception: 30/10/2008

AUTHORS (*Main author)

KAMEL, Ehab * (United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland) - University of Nottingham

ABSTRACT

This paper is a part of a PhD research project on World Heritage Sites commenced in February 2007 at the School of the Built Environment, University of Nottingham. The work focuses on the interpretation and communication of the `spirit of place' and looks at the potential conflicts that can develop between the preservation and conservation of the physical fabric of World Heritage Sites and the desire to interpret and communicate their inherited cultural meanings to an ever-expanding audience.

In this particular paper, the research tries to, shortly, propose and test guiding principles that represents a perception of how architects, landscape architects or urban designers can deal with heritage/historic sites in order to improve the space quality and public interaction, depending on a strong belief of the importance of the spaces' landscape design in interpreting the place's history and in telling its story. The principles introduced in this paper are based on, and directly transformed from, Beck et al.'s (2002) 15 guiding principles for interpretation in the 21st Century, addressed mainly for personal interpretations; where the research assumes that the space design/organization can play a similar role of that played by the live interpreter (if not more).

In order to test the proposed guiding principles' suitability to the heritage sites' landscape interpretation, the paper uses results of an on-site personal observations as well as on-site interviews and questionnaire done by the researcher on a particular World Heritage Site (Historic Cairo in Egypt) on August 2008, as part of his PhD work, in addition to some other examples from a range of World Heritage Sites.

The paper is mainly trying to bring the attention to the importance of the innovative treatment of heritage sites, especially `World Heritage Sites', to bridge the gap between the local societies' needs and the visitors' expectations from one hand side, and the formal Authentic Heritage Discourse (AHD) regulations of treatment of World Heritage Sites which is enforced by some organizations like UNESCO and ICOMOS from the other hand side. Where the on-site study brought the attention that what should actually be the subject of management and conservation/ preservation practices, depending upon what visitors actually engage with at heritage sites, are the values and meanings that are symbolized or represented at and by these heritage sites or cultural practices.

REFERENCES

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