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How can ancient cities benefit from the UNESCO world heritage badge and simultaneously avoid becoming a ‘Walt Disney’ for tourists?

There are fears that the UNESCO world heritage badge is being used to start a marketing campaign, based merely on capitalist standards. The common requirement for a rapid return on investment (ROI), however, leads to rapid development and rules out slow-growing and steady sustainability – and deprives local people of having a say during the city’s ‘rehabilitation’. In fact, here we don’t deal with rehabilitation but with reconstruction similar to a set stage fit to serve photo sessions by tourists.
Figure 1: ‘Damascus Barcode’
As to the Walt Disney reference, this was the general concern in an urban design studio at PAR. To simplify the theoretical task we chose the following UNESCO sites: Damascus, Syria, for the winter term 2008 / 2009 and Sana’a, Yemen, for the winter term 2009 / 2010 (still in progress). Understanding is the main base for a sustainable design in foreign cultures: learners – teachers, designers – researchers, locals – professionals, and so on are all communicating directly using all possible web 2.0 achievements. The students learnt how to access research communities and the local Damascene community to work out relevant propositions, which place(d) themselves in between ‘urban acupuncture’ and ‘slow urbanism’.
Our final presentation in Damascus proved this working method ideal and effective.

These pictures were taken in Australia, Brazil and Europe. What they all have in common though is a certain sense of loneliness which doesn’t necessarily have something to do with a single person. It is the atmosphere of the whole setting. In some pictures Sabine von Sarnowski was looking for this one soul exception within a structure. Like in the picture with the pale that arises out of the surface of a lake. The lake itself and the sky are almost the same colour therefore there is no clear horizon. It is the pale that gives structure and character to the whole picture. To me it passes an ambience of meditation and sheer silence. But if I remember the moment I took this picture, I have to admit, the weather was really lousy and there wasn’t even a place to sit down. But nevertheless, whenever I look at it, I wish I would sit by this lake again.

You can see more of her pictures on www.sabinevonsarnowski.wordpress.com
Here you may even buy a calender for 2011. Don’t be afraid, it is not about loneliness but about Brazil!

Joan Backes is an American artist who participated at the Waldkunst in Darmstadt 2010. Her Work is called ‘Forest House’ which connects architecture, nature and painting. You can still visit the house and all the other art pieces in the forest of Darmstadt.

Deniz Köse, a Turkish architecture student in Darmstadt, was attracted by the work of Joan and so asked her a few questions. Enjoy the podcast produced by Deniz Köse.