Conditioning History: Heritage Construction as Design Strategy And Catalyst

In what follows, I argue that under the assumption of‘authenticity’, history – the recollection and recontextualizationof artifacts and events of the past for thepresent – is not only an ethical problem of honestyand truth but also, and perhaps more importantly,an aesthetic problem of representation and power.As such, heritage construction practices – by which Iinclude historic preservation, restoration, and conservation- operate in geopolitical tension between theethics of truth and the aesthetics of counterfactuality,conditioning history within asymmetrical relations ofpower. To construct heritage, then, is not merely torepresent the past but to design history as a site forarchitectural and urban practice; It is itself a designoperation, strategy, and catalyst, particularly in oldcities. In order to ground some broader thoughts onthe aesthetics of authenticity and the geopolitics ofheritage, I turn to Havana, Cuba (a UNESCO WorldHeritage site since 1982) as a case study; a city whereheritage construction, globalization, and ideologyintertwine with architecture and urban planning/design at multiple scales. Specifically, I analyze thecollaborative practices of Havana’s Office of the CityHistorian (OCH) – the only autonomous, non-centralized,capitalist entity in Cuba’s socialist polity with thepower to regulate, design, and develop heritage siteswithin Havana’s old core.

Volume Editors
Luis Francisco Rico-Gutierrez & Martha Thorne

ISBN
978-1-944214-08-1