Globalizing heritage: world heritage as a manifestation of modernism and the challenge from the periphery

Government efforts to protect monuments and sites of cultural heritage value have gone on for many centuries. The distinctive new chapter that
the 20th Century brought to cultural heritage protection was the establishment of a globalized effort over and above the work of nation states, This led to a new cultural heritage bureaucracy at the international level, the development of new sets of 'universal' standards, and a new set of places deemed to be of world heritage significance, All of this was done in the spirit of goodwill and optimism that infused the modem movement and that made possible the establishment of the so-called Bretton Woods organizations such as the United Nations as well as the parallel organizations specifically dealing with Cultural Heritage - UNESCO, ICOMOS, ICOM and ICCROM, In recent decades cultural relativists have challenged the drive towards uniformity implicit in the global activities of the modernist organizations, and various parts of the periphery have reacted against aspects of the global cultural heritage approach, The Venice Charter is no longer regarded as the single, universal way to conserve heritage places. It has been replaced or supplemented in large parts of the world by alternatives and modifications such as the Nara Document and Burra Charter. If it is no longer acceptable to provide a universal answer to the question of how do we identify and save heritage, the challenge of the 21st Century is to make the most of the complexity of standards that now exists.

Concepts, models and analyses of electronic demolition of buildings

The demolition of building structures produces enormous amounts of waste materials. In most current demolition projects, a great number of demolished materials are directly sent to landfill after their primary usage due to the difficulties in finding their next usage immediately. At the same time, because of limited supply of second-hand materials, new and high quality materials are used in construction projects whose design standards can be fitted using the secondary or used materials. However, this is an inefficient method to reduce waste because off the flow nature of the current waste-exchange systems and the demolition procedure. The recent concept using deconstruction rather than destruction for demolishing a constructed facility fails to achieve widespread understanding or acceptance due to various practical limitations. In this paper, for the purpose of envisaging the deconstruction implementations in practice and promoting cascading usages of construction materials, the concept of electronic demolition (e-Demotion, eDemolition) is put forward for the first time. E-demolition is a virtual demolition approach by which the demolition information, progress and outputs are operated before the physical demolition. Furthermore, the authors set up the essential models to implement electronic demolition of buildings from the viewpoints of demolition progress, business, and information. Each model is demonstrated in accord with the conventional demolition practice and subject to the ideal deconstruction implementation. Following the electronic demolition of a real project, the physical demolition can be anticipated with a minimum of construction waste emission.

High performance low-energy buildings

The era of legislation and creditable methods towards producing sustainable buildings is upon us. Yet, a major barrier to achieving environmental responsive design is in the lack of available information at the programming or pre-design phases of a project. The review and evaluation of climate as well as energy-efficient strategies could be difficult to consider at these preliminary stages. Until recently, introducing energy simulation tools at the design stage has been difficult and perhaps next to impossible at a pre-design or programming stage. However, analysis of this sort is essential to ‘green building rating’ or performance assessment schemes such as LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) and BREEAM (Building Research Establishment Environment Assessment Method). This paper discusses the implementation of a particular tool, ENERGY-10, where ‘basecase’ building defaults are compared to a low-energy case which has applied multiple energy-efficient strategies automatically. An annual hour-by-hour simulation provides a daylighting calculation with a subsequent thermal evaluation. Calculation results provide energy consumption, peak load equipment sizing, a RANK feature of the energy-efficient strategies, reporting of CO2, SO2 and NOx reduction, optimum glazing type as well as excellent graphic output. Consideration is given as to the approach of how such information can be introduced into the building project brief enforcing a low-energy
performance target.

Environmental design : incorporating a rating tool into the design of commercial buildings

Environmental performance assessment or green building rating tools for commercial buildings are one of the more recent responses to encourage green solutions for commercial buildings. This paper discusses the initial stages of a research project that looks at the impact of a rating tool, such as Green Star, on design. There are numerous ways in which an architect can design commercial buildings, but environmental design solutions have consistently failed to become accepted practice. Therefore, how will this tool be incorporated into the building design process? Developed to assist the designer can the inclusion of a rating tool such as Green Star provide an effective framework to encourage the inclusion of environmental design strategies in commercial buildings? A field study, recording the design process of a commercial building, anticipates that a whole building assessment approach towards design, as proposed through the Green Star Rating Tool, will provide an effective framework to set and monitor design targets in order to optimise the environmental design goals in commercial buildings.

Solving problems collaboratively online : experiences of Australian and Chinese heritage university students

The research reported in this paper is part of a larger project designed to compare the online collaborative learning behaviours of Chinese Heritage Culture (CHC) university students, for whom a Chinese dialect is a first language, with Australian university students of European descent, and for whom English is a first language. The collaborative learning discussion focussed on in the research involved fellow students, rather than tutorial staff, facilitating those discussions.

The first component of the research was quantitative, comprising a questionnaire on readiness for online learning, and a quantitative analysis of student postings to a student-led collaborative problem solving task conducted online. The first component of the research (reported in Smith et at, 2005) showed no differences between the two groups in their willingness to self-manage their own learning, but did show that the CHC students were significantly less comfortable than the Australian students with online learning. Student postings to the online discussions were classified into organisational postings, social postings, and intellectual. There were substantial differences between the two groups in their patterns of online postings among those classifications, as well as differences in the length of postings made.

This paper will explore these findings in more detail through qualitative data generated through interviews with a subset of students from each group. Interview data provided further insight into the lesser comfort with e-learning among CHC students. Students from both groups felt there were inefficiencies in the online discussion, but CHC students also felt rather marginalised by the process. Australian students were more likely to evaluate the experience in terms of its capacity to achieve required learning outcomes in a time efficient way, while CHC students expressed more concern about how the process had impacted upon them personally. The interview data also indicated that a tutor sensitive to cultural difference is important for comfort among the CHC students in particular, since there is need for encouragement to those students to make reflective inputs to the discussion.

Carbon dioxide levels and ventilation strategies in 'green' office buildings

Energy efficient office buildings are intended to provide a comfortable and healthy environment for their occupants as well as reducing the energy consumption of the building. They are often designed as "showcase" buildings illustrating the potential for savings through some innovative design technology. But do such buildings actually deliver the desired energy savings and satisfactory comfort conditions for occupants? Measurements of a "green" University campus building in Victoria, Australia, designed with an innovative fabric energy storage system, demonstrate that the ventilation system is not providing acceptable indoor air quality conditions. The design strategies used to reduce energy consumption have had negative consequences on the air quality of the building. Insufficient fresh air is being drawn into the building leading to an excessive build up of carbon dioxide. It is recommended that monitoring systems need to use a wider range of measurements than temperature alone to guarantee good quality indoor air and working conditions and that commissioning of buildings should include adequate monitoring of the operational performance of the building. Designers need to be made aware of the potential consequences of their decisions when attempting innovative energy-efficient designs.

Limiting the list : human rights and intangible cultural heritage

UNESCO's Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Heritage came into force in April 2006, signalling a major expansion of the global system of heritage protection from the tangible to the intangible. It is an expansion that some heritage professionals see as opening up a Pandora's box of confusions and complexities. The conservation of inanimate objects tangible sites and monuments and artefacts - is difficult enough; but the protection of heritage embodied in people raises new sets of ethical and practical issues. The paper canvasses these concerns and focuses on how the notion of human rights must be used as a way of limiting and shaping the Intangible List. In particular it outlines the ways in which the protection and preservation of cultural heritage is linked to 'cultural rights' as a form of human rights. This linkage is not clearly recognised by cultural heritage practitioners in many countries, who view their work merely as technical, or even by human rights workers, despite the abundance of opportunities around the world to witness people struggling to assert their cultural rights in order to protect their heritage and identity.