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Adriana Camarena

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What if the patrimony of the cities disappear?

At some cities in the world, the historical tangible & intangible patrimony is disappearing to leave its place to the 'modernity'. But what happens with the people that sees that happening and with those who are not going to see all that now is getting destructed. Does the identity of a culture gets affected? what else is lost among the buildings and stuff?

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Topics: Patrimony culture identity
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    Jaime Lubin 10+

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    May 21 2011: Adriana, if the patrimony and heritage disappear....the real city disappear....maybe remains the new and phony buildings but the original being is lost forever. The new architecture is usless...and built to be seen but not lived. All the cities experiment a real dammage inflicted by the power of money in real state business. Its the same all over the world. The changes and alterations of the urban spirit affects not just the edificated landscape, but the animical, emotional and original being of the citizens......in ICOMOS we studied this phenomena an is almost a lost battle that have to be fighted anyway.

    You can see, for example in Disneyland or Las Vegas, the "perfect" city...all the things work very wel: the energy never goes off, the water is purified, virtually without pollution, the police is very kind, the authorities are just a photograph¡¡¡¡¡¡¡.........the new Venetian monster built in Las Vegas is the ultimate model to be follow by the industry of experiences. Built virtual to scale of original, offers an "authentic italian" memory to be recorded by twelve dollars. Its like the "history to visit" without all the travel expenses and in the safe hamburger uterus. The travel and touristic industry destroy the real cities, turning them into souvenirs that are disegned to create a sense of authentic envy in the ones that remain at home.
    In this world there are just two kinds of persons.....the first ones send postcards, the second ones received it.
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      Adriana Camarena

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      May 21 2011: We have to recognize the difference between the real patrimony & heritage and the fiction. Heritage contents a lot of different things, including the physical patrimony, the food, language, traditions, dressing. Losing the constructed patrimony avoid us to recognize where is that all this more or less intangible parts of the patrimony were born and performed.

      And being a person who sends postcards give the possibility to feel and recognize the real thing from a direct experience. And when we know, we care, and when we care, we love, and when we love, we take care.
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    Christian Fabian Gonzalez Quiroga

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    May 10 2011: not only architectural patrimony heritage but natural environments as well. we would need to think if public good privails over private interest. Warm regards.
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      Adriana Camarena

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      May 10 2011: Christian, thanks for your contribution. You're very right when you say "We would need to think i public goods privails over private interest" in so many places there's only private interest. Natural enviroments are our home, is where we live and if we destroy them we no longer will have a place to live at. I can't understand how is that the people don't care about the place where they live, how they use it as a corridor thinking that there's has to be someone else to do the hard work cleaning and taking care of the city, or the forest, or the lakes etc...
      We have to know the place we live in order to love it. What is that covering our eyes and hearts?
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    Jaime Lubin 10+

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    May 8 2011: Dear Adriana....The identity of any person is related more or less to their land....when modernity take the command all suffers a trial to share guilt and punishment. In the cities, the modernity is like a fashion or trend but never a root. If we take the overweight of that guilties and receive the punishment who deserves the ones who has remains conservative, the first thing to disapear is the identity in each stone, in every building that falls down to make space for automoviles, in every traditional feast or costume. Now after all the storm of modernities we have to rebuilt and rediscover our deeper roots, our ral culture, but not outside with the mania of globalization and uniformities. Unity is not uniformity and cities and citizens are in a very fast way to look alike others in a foolish magazine pseudoarchitecture. The hand that forget to built, destroy.
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      Adriana Camarena

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      May 9 2011: Dear Jaime, the lost of the identity is a terrible thing, as you say we're becoming more and more the same, with a false intention of being 'equal' we're forgetting to find de similar in the differency and the different in the similarity. What is happening in the cities seems to be the first step to the annulation of our memory.

      But there's still hope, there is the promise to keep some of the knowledge just like happen after the destruction of the Library of Alexandria. How can we rescue, conserve and keep safe all the knowledge?
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      Debra Smith 200+

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      May 9 2011: I think the hope for humanity lies not in sameness but in being distinct and unique. As a mother, I rejoiced primarily in the distinct differences among my children. It is their differences that made us strong as a family. So with societies, different languages bring specialized ways of considering some things and losing one language is a loss for all. Losing one culture is a loss to cultures around the world because each has a special way of viewing the world and mankind's place in it.
      Our unique cultures help to make us fascinating to each other.
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        Adriana Camarena

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        May 9 2011: Debra, thanks a lot for your comment. I strongly agree with you. The loss of anything related to the culture is always a sort of mutilation for all human kind. And learning from other cultures helps us to understand our own culture. The language as you say, is very important, because it reflects the way the world is seen by a group of persons who are influenced by the weather, the geography, of course the food and all the things they can perceive around them. The language also tells us about the structures, the way they use words, the order, the way they make concepts.
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