The Twentieth Century Heritage Thematic Framework

The Twentieth-Century Historic Thematic Framework is a tool for identifying and assessing the heritage of the twentieth-century. It is a way to organize and define history in order to help identify heritage sites and place them in context. It is not a history of the twentieth century, nor is it a database of significant sites, but instead is an analysis of the century's development, emphasizing global forces, trends, and phenomena that shaped the built environment. Commissioned by the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI) working in collaboration with the ICOMOS Twentieth Century Heritage International Scientific Committee, it identifies the principal social, technological, political, and economic drivers that shaped the buildings, cities, industries and landscapes of the twentieth century globally. These have been distilled into ten succinct themes:1.Rapid Urbanization and the Growth of Large Cities2.Accelerated Scientific and Technological Development3.Mechanized and Industrialized Agriculture4.World Trade and Global Corporations5.Transportation Systems and Mass Communication6.Internationalization, New Nation-States, and Human Rights7.Conserving the Natural Environment, Buildings, and Landscapes8.Popular Culture and Tourism9.Religious, Educational, and Cultural Institutions10.War and its AftermathThe Twentieth-Century Historic Thematic Framework is offered freely for use, trial, debate, and discussion to support the conservation of significant heritage places of the twentieth century. It is a tool that can be utilized and adapted by anyone involved in heritage conservation around the world. Our hope is that it will aid many forms of research, analysis, and survey work, and ultimately help sustain and conserve the heritage of the twentieth century.

In May 2011, the Getty Conservation Institute organized and sponsored a two-day meeting bringing together ICOMOS ISC20 thematic framework subcommittee members and an international group of invitees who understand and have experience with thematic frameworks for heritage assessment, as well as expertise with a range of twentieth-century heritage types across a wide geographic span.The meeting goals were to gain consensus between TICCIH, DOCOMOMO, ICOMOS, and the UIA on the framework outline, to identify key historic themes for the twentieth century, to develop an outline for the historic thematic framework that will guide future work.

UNESCO aims to tackle Africa’s under-representation on its World Heritage List by inscribing instances of nineteenth- and twentieth-century modern architecture and urban planning there. But, what is one to make of the utopias of progress and development for which these buildings and sites stand? After all, concern for ‘modern heritage’ invariably—and paradoxically it seems—has to reckon with those utopias as problematic futures of the past, a circumstance complicating intentions to preserve a recent ‘culture’ of modernization on the African continent. This book, a new title in Routledge’s Studies in Culture and Development series, introduces the concept of ‘global heritage assemblages’ to analyse that problem. Based on extensive anthropological fieldwork, it describes how various governmental, intergovernmental, and non-governmental actors engage with colonial and post-colonial built heritage found in Eritrea, Tanzania, Niger, and the Republic of the Congo. Rausch argues that the global heritage assemblages emerging from those examples produce problematizations of the modern’, which ultimately indicate a contemporary need to rescue modernity from its dominant conception as an all-encompassing, epochal, and spatial culture.

Over the concluding decades of the twentieth century, the historic preservation community increasingly turned its attention to modern buildings, including bungalows from the 1930s, gas stations and diners from the 1940s, and office buildings and architectural homes from the 1950s. Conservation efforts, however, were often hampered by a lack of technical information about the products used in these structures, and to fill this gap Twentieth-Century Building Materials was developed by the U.S. Department of the Interior’s National Park Service and first published in 1995. Now, this invaluable guide is being reissued—with a new preface by the book’s original editor. With more than 250 illustrations, including a full-color photographic essay, the volume remains an indispensable reference on the history and conservation of modern building materials. Thirty-seven essays written by leading experts offer insights into the history, manufacturing processes, and uses of a wide range of materials, including glass block, aluminum, plywood, linoleum, and gypsum board. Readers will also learn about how these materials perform over time and discover valuable conservation and repair techniques. Bibliographies and sources for further research complete the volume. The book is intended for a wide range of conservation professionals including architects, engineers, conservators, and material scientists engaged in the conservation of modern buildings, as well as scholars in related disciplines.

This book examines the material and immaterial values that are used and perceived in heritage educational environments that have been adapted to 21st century education needs. Offering an approach to architectural conservation practice focused on the design and implementation processes, it provides a post-occupation evaluation of the effects of such physical actions on historic learning environments and their values. A comprehensive study of architectural conservation and Theory of Change (ToC) is supported by an extensive literature review and personal insights from the author’s everyday practice. Using a selection of recently rehabilitated historic secondary schools in Portugal (liceus), the text presents insights into their existing cultural significance, identifying the design strategies applied and assessing the short-term effects of design decisions on the cultural values. It demonstrates that, whilst design strategies were less concerned with social values, material cultural values were generally considered and preserved, contributing to the enhancement of intangible values. The implications of this research highlight the importance of evaluating actual effects in cultural heritage theory, architectural conservation practice and heritage management policy. Following worldwide investment in the rehabilitation of schools, the interest in this topic has grown among architectural heritage academics and practitioners, who seek to better understand and approach these learning environments in order to achieve better outcomes. The book will also be of interest to public policy makers, given its emphasis on the importance of stakeholder engagement in the conservation process and in the sustainability of re-using existing buildings. Furthermore, it will capture the attention of schools’ stakeholders, including students, parents, teachers, non-teaching staff, alumni and the local community, for whom the school environment is a collective, shared memory.

Examining international case studies including USA, Asia, Australia and New Zealand, this book identifies and explores the use of heritage throughout the world. Challenging the idea that heritage value is self-evident, and that things must be preserved, it demonstrates how it gives tangibility to the values that underpin different communities.

This open-access publication provides essential guidance on digital inventories and surveys for the identification, conservation, and management of heritage places. A critical first step in the conservation of cultural heritage is to identify and understand the places we want to protect. Inventories and surveys are essential tools in this effort, and their use in managing national, regional, and local heritage is mandated in heritage-related legislation across the globe. Despite the widespread understanding of the importance of inventories and surveys, however, practical, up-to-date guidance on how they should be created, implemented, and maintained has been substantially lacking—until now. This publication draws from the Getty Conservation Institute’s ongoing work with heritage inventories and on the Los Angeles Office of Historic Resources’ experience with SurveyLA. It provides technical advice, guidance, and lessons learned for employing inventories and surveys as tools for heritage conservation and management. The free online edition of this open-access publication will be available at www.getty.edu/publications/inventories-and-surveys. Also available are free PDF and EPUB downloads of the book.

Examining urban heritage in twentieth-century Australia, James Lesh reveals how evolving ideas of value and significance shaped cities and places. Over decades, a growing number of sites and areas were found to be valuable by communities and professionals. Places perceived to have value were often conserved. Places perceived to lack value became subject to modernisation, redevelopment, and renewal. From the 1970s, alongside strengthened activism and legislation, with the innovative Burra Charter (1979), the values-based model emerged for managing the aesthetic, historic, scientific, and social significance of historic environments. Values thus transitioned from an implicit to an overt component of urban, architectural, and planning conservation. The field of conservation became a noted profession and discipline. Conservation also had a broader role in celebrating the Australian nation and in reconciling settler colonialism for the twentieth century. Integrating urban history and heritage studies, this book provides the first longitudinal study of the twentieth-century Australian heritage movement. It advocates for innovative and reflexive modes of heritage practice responsive to urban, social, and environmental imperatives. As the values-based model continues to shape conservation worldwide, this book is an essential reference for researchers, students, and practitioners concerned with the past and future of cities and heritage. The Foreword and Chapter 1/Introduction of this book are available for free in PDF format as Open Access from the individual product page at www.routledge.com. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

This book offers an international overview of how to apply the Conservation Management Plan (CMP) to the 20th-century architectural heritage. Although the CMP is universally considered a fundamental tool for sustainable management of the built heritage, the application to 20th-century buildings is still limited. The book illustrates selected case studies from different countries to discuss how best to preserve the authenticity of the original materials, manage changes in use, engage users and stakeholders in this process, and make conservation and sustainability work together. "Conserving 20th-century architecture" will provide insights for scholars and students and assist architects in drafting an effective conservation management plan.