Mobilizing heritage
unlocking lost knowledge banks
Mending hydroponics and photovoltaics, controlled environment agriculture has emerged to address food deserts within the context of urbanization. However, as desertification overtakes urban cities and high tech attempts to undo it’s own deeds, the ancient wisdoms of the desert wait to be rediscovered.
Harnessing the Desert
From a western eye, the desert is often seen as a barren landscape. Besides the immense utility of the Sahara for the Amazon, the attitude is a close metaphor of the perception many have of Arab cultures. As seen in Stealing from the Saracens, Darke illustrates how despite centuries of trade and collaboration with Arab empires, Europeans remain unaware of the foreign influences to their architectural heritage. However, Darke stresses the goal is not to rank one culture’s superiority over the other, but rather how humanity is a collaborative project. In this light, global frameworks, not as museums but as movements, can help remove blind spots in our development.
Traditionalizing Progress
Despite it’s global intent, the rise of UNESCO’s world heritage site designations can sometimes limit our perception of historical knowledge through a euro-centric lens. Especially in post-colonial societies where modernization efforts are trusted blindly, some of the marvels of the old world have transitioned from centers of progress to touristic leisure. The preservation of heritage sites is essential, but in order to unlock their true value, rekindling the relationship between technical parameters and social dynamics may provide a “new” way forward aligned with tradition.
Middle East to Midwest
The cross culture interaction between First and Arab nations is already in motion. As a preliminary framework for strengthening bonds between indigenous people’s across the world, studying similarities and differences between cultures can offer points of collaboration. As insatiable colonial systems continue to bleed, flora, fauna, topography among other parameters can iterate new but familiar spatial imaginations.