Architectural Palimpsest and Its Effect on Cultural Identity: A Tool of Manipulation and Its Social Power

Palimpsest is a re-editing process in which the existing layers of objects or traces were covered or removed, partially or completely. As the architectural heritage can be understood as accumulation of layers, thus palimpsest could effectively modify the interpretation of it. To achieve particular goals such as manipulating cultural identity, by erasing and covering the “unpleasant” layers, palimpsest could blur and twist the information and connotation that people receive from the heritage. In a way, the architectural palimpsest could cause double damages to the heritage, one is the irreversible destruction of authentic historical information, another one is blurring the way that people interpret the history and cultural identity. By comparing the past scenario with present, architectural palimpsest could be identified, but to explore the way that palimpsest get realized, as well as its influence on cultural identity, one has to look through the evidence to see the motivation and method of an architectural palimpsest, especially in the situation that the palimpsest producer deliberately tried to blur the authenticity. This paper takes Mosque Cathedral of Cordoba and Nuremburg historical cityscape as examples, by briefly overlooking the past and present existences, it tries to review the possible purpose, method, process and consequences of these intentional architectural palimpsest. Meantime, the paper also tries to open up a perspective for researches on social dimensions of architectural heritage, and it is hoped that this paper could raise the awareness and concern of architectural palimpsest in the past, and especially the ones being created at present.

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ISBN
978-1-944214-31-9