【Hot spot observation】
An urbanist once said that cities are containers of culture.
In the history of urban development, the archways, courtyards, streets, old houses and other cultural heritage accumulated in different eras constitute the basic form of urban civilization.
These valuable cultural heritages are not only living traditions, but also historical contexts that represent the uniqueness of the city.
Taking the capital Beijing as an example, the city has 7 world cultural heritages, 3840 immovable cultural relics, 43 historical and cultural blocks, more than 500 historical buildings (groups), and more than 200 national and municipal intangible cultural heritages.
These are the unique cultural resources of Beijing.
It is because of their existence that Beijing has its own unique ancient capital temperament.
Protecting, inheriting and making good use of cultural heritage is conducive to activating the vitality of the city, shaping the city's brand and increasing the city's charm.
From Part to Whole: Activating Urban Life
A city is a living organism that needs constant renewal.
However, urban renewal faces many paradoxes. For example, large demolition and construction and improper renovation and renewal will lead to the disappearance of the old city's style; if the cultural heritage and historical and cultural blocks are sealed and solidified, they will lose their vitality and use value.
For an ancient capital like Beijing, the protection of cultural heritage can neither carry out large-scale transformation of the city, nor seal and solidify the cultural heritage, but should adopt a gradual, point-to-face urban renewal method.
Specifically, the principle of minimum intervention and maximum concealment should be followed. On the premise of protecting the overall historical features of the city, necessary small-scale upgrading and transformation of the old city should be carried out, and the infrastructure should be revitalized. heritage buildings), lines (historical and cultural blocks), and planes (living urban spaces)” to renew the old city.
In recent years, Beijing's old city with relatively concentrated cultural heritage has stopped large-scale urban renovation and construction activities, and urban renewal has begun to shift from extensive incremental development to refined stock development.
From the perspective of protecting cultural heritage, the renovation and renovation of the old city needs to further shift from “partial” to “whole”, that is, from the narrow sense of cultural relics protection to macro-level landscape protection, to achieve “see this (single cultural relics) and see another (overall landscape)” ".
The author suggests that the relevant departments can formulate detailed implementation rules for organic renewal according to the specific conditions of different cultural heritage and historical districts in Beijing, incorporate protection requirements and updated norms into the detailed planning system, and issue a comprehensive set of feasible and suitable for daily management and control. Old Town Renewal Scheme.
Specifically, the buildings in the area where the cultural heritage is located shall be classified in detail, and the legal key cultural relics protection units, the historical buildings with obvious characteristics and worth preserving, the buildings that are allowed to be demolished and reconstructed, and the dilapidated buildings and illegal buildings that should be demolished are clearly divided; Secondly, on the basis of fine planning, establish a city-wide spatial information platform to coordinate different elements such as housing management, streets, city appearance, municipal administration, greening, cultural tourism, commercial investment, etc., to promote the iteration of the full-element spatial model; finally, use digital technology to construct information The technical system of capturing and decision support, combined with cloud data analysis, carries out daily management and local transformation, and comprehensively promotes the development of the key work of "one axis, one city, two parks and three belts, and one district and one center".
From static to living: Realizing the integration of cultural heritage and people's life
In the process of urbanization in the past few decades, there are three trends in the change of the city: First, the old buildings in the historical district are torn down and a considerable number of high-rise buildings are rebuilt. The consequence is that the original style of the city is changed and the cultural atmosphere of the ancient capital is lost; The second is the private construction of the residents of the historical district, resulting in extremely dense houses, too strong commercial atmosphere, too large population density, and squeezed green space and rest space; third, the remodeling of the historical and cultural city did not fully consider the utensils and architectural places. The cultural value carried is simply sealed up by the method of "static protection", resulting in the separation of cultural heritage and citizens' life.
The author believes that the protection and utilization of cultural heritage and historical and cultural blocks should focus on four basic dimensions: the economic dimension of improving regional functions, the social dimension of paying attention to people's lives, the cultural dimension of preserving historical context, and the morphological dimension of focusing on urban characteristics. .
Culture is a factor to be paid special attention to in the protection and utilization of cultural heritage and historical and cultural blocks.
During urban renewal, the "preserved" culture should not only exist as a static rhetorical "architecture".
Taking the commercialization of Nanluogu Alley in Beijing as an example, the old houses in Nanluogu Alley were not demolished, and the culture based on architectural symbols was preserved, but the users of the houses changed from residents to businesses, and the original community culture was cut off. The problem of social integration between residents and tourists, residents and businesses has become prominent, and culture has been alienated into hollow symbols and become decorations in the process of conspicuous consumption.
In order to make cultural heritage a living culture, we cannot protect cultural heritage in a museum-like manner, but must rely on people to carry out living inheritance, that is, carry out natural inheritance in people's daily life.
For example, an experimental stage-based interaction and activity space can be built in the protected area (cultural core area) to stimulate the cultural awareness of community residents by means of "government guidance and enterprise operation"; Renovation, such as adding community art galleries, art galleries, creative bookstores, ecological green spaces, etc., to realize the dynamic integration of cultural heritage, historical and cultural blocks and people's lives.
From Objects to People: Focusing on the Lives of People in Historic Districts
The purpose of urban renewal, in the final analysis, is to maintain the vitality of the city and continue the vitality of the city, and the vitality and vitality of the city lie not only in hardware, but also in culture and history.
Protecting the cultural heritage of the city is to preserve the memory of the city and preserve the history and culture of the city.
Writer Feng Jicai once said when describing his impression of the historic city of Paris that the Louvre Museum, Arc de Triomphe and Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris are just "a few dazzling top symbols of history", while the real sense of history in Paris is reflected in the city. In the old streets and old houses of the film, because there is a living history in these former spaces, there is flesh and blood, vivid and real.
Historic buildings and historic districts are static cultures, and the people who live in them move all the time. Their living habits are passed down from generation to generation, forming a lively and warm folk culture. These folk cultures are very worth exploring, remembering and preserving.
Therefore, the best urban memory exists not only in the landmark buildings of the city, but also in the life details and livelihood stories of urban residents.
The vivid stories of people's livelihood that have happened or are happening in urban historical and cultural blocks are like invisible capillaries in the block, connecting the lives and emotions of urban residents, and at the same time, they are also the best portrayal of a certain section of urban history and a certain aspect of urban culture. .
Therefore, in the process of exploring the protection of cultural heritage and historical and cultural blocks, we must not only operate from the perspective of protecting cultural relics, pursuing history, and artistic aesthetics, but also from the perspective of caring for people and being considerate of people. In the living state of ordinary people in the historical block, continue the original social structure and cultural ecology of the historical block as much as possible, and establish a community with residence as the main form such as the "Old Beijing Cultural Living Museum", so that cultural heritage and historical The Cultural District is no longer a lifeless display of hardware.
From stock to flow: advancing the digitization of cultural heritage
To activate and utilize cultural heritage, we must increase social interaction through cultural heritage, break through the time and space limitations of communication, and construct a new mode of communication.
The digitization, dataization and Internet of things of cultural heritage are effective means to achieve the above goals.
The value of cultural heritage cannot be separated from its original social system. In the digital dissemination of cultural heritage, we should not only pay attention to the information presentation and symbolic expression of the cultural heritage artifacts by the media, but also take advantage of the communication advantages of new media to explain the cultural heritage symbols. means and meaning.
The dissemination of cultural heritage is the process of increasing the value of cultural heritage.
Therefore, cultural heritage cannot be regarded as a stock, such as cultural relics, relics, non-animals, outdated objects, etc., but should be regarded as dynamic traffic - with multimedia, Internet, AR (augmented reality) The application of technologies such as VR (Virtual Reality) in the cultural field will enhance the appeal, dissemination and influence of cultural heritage.
In addition, the digitization and Internet of Things of cultural heritage should also be promoted, that is, the establishment of a data system for the interaction between virtual and real cultural heritage and a database of cultural heritage visitors, based on data comparison and analysis to recommend cultural heritage visits, and to accurately promote or promote cultural heritage. Unified brand promotion.
The digitization, dataization and Internet of things of cultural heritage can, on the one hand, build a platform for the joint display of intangible cultural heritage and material cultural heritage, and on the other hand, facilitate the brand building of cultural heritage in cyberspace.
In general, the use of modern technical means to activate and utilize cultural heritage can not only bring economic benefits, but also generate social benefits, and also have cultural benefits that highlight the city's cultural characteristics, and can enhance the city's charm and international influence.
(Author: Yu Xiaozhi, professor at the School of Literature, Beijing Language and Culture University, this article is the result of the research on countermeasures for the activation and utilization of Beijing's material cultural heritage [21JCB016] of the Beijing Social Science Fund Decision Consulting Project)