Caring for the Future: Architectural Heritage, Vulnerability and Collectivities

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Care for cultural heritage has been of growing public concern in recent years. This is particularly evident when architectural heritage is destroyed and where considerations of protection, preservation or reconstruction connect with questions of belonging and of who is affected by the loss or damage of these “immovable” cultural objects. If care for cultural heritage invokes a past, it is nonetheless also oriented towards the future: it is from a perspective of the present that decisions are made on what should be maintained, cared for and modified, and for whom. The project investigates how architecture shapes the formation of collectivities on the basis of three case studies, each of them introducing a particular focus. Taking up the example of a recent trial at the International Criminal Court related to the destruction of cultural heritage in Mali, the first study investigates how that relationship is spelled out in law and legal reasoning; the second study explores how architecture itself comes into play in the event of the Notre-Dame fire in Paris; and the third considers how the perspective of a collectivity articulates itself in projects of reconstructing synagogues in Germany. While local traditions and cultural diversity are increasingly considered important in the determination of architecture as heritage, a resituating of the idea of “humanity” is also noticeable. With its focus on affective attachments and vulnerability, the project conceptually probes the materiality of social relationships while seeing itself as a contribution to the question of the fragility of civilized life.