Heritage & Values

The Chair of Heritage and Values focuses on further understanding the values that define heritage, such as cultural, social, ecological, and economic; and how they impact the sustainability of cities. One of the main goals is to define, develop, and test new integrated assessment frameworks to better monitor and strengthen heritage conservation worldwide. 

Heritage is a key resource to make 'cities and human settlements more inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable'. This motto is at the heart of the 2011 UNESCO Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape, the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and the UN-Habitat New Urban Agenda. Heritage is to constantly questioned, as heritage is a societal construction, culturally diverse and ever changing. The understanding of the values that define heritage evolves over time and place.

By connecting to other Chairs throughout BK Bouwkunde, to professionals from practice worldwide, and intergovernmental institutions as UNESCO, the Chair of Heritage and Values is to bring cutting-edge knowledge, both specific and comparative, into the field. Not only to identify the resources that are valued as heritage, by whom, how, and why; but also, for revealing and questioning the impact and added value achieved through design for a more sustainable urban development. The Chair is keen to explore novel research methods in search for better results. This includes integrating quantitative methods and big data with qualitative methods like interviews, peer groups, and workshops, often crossing disciplinary boundaries and scales. The Chair is also committed to help raise scientific integrity and ethics, among students and researchers, peers and professionals worldwide.