The Urban Book Series

Smaranda Spanu

Heterotopia
and Heritage
Preservation
The Heterotopic Tool as a Means of
Heritage Assessment
The Urban Book Series

Editorial Board
Fatemeh Farnaz Arefian, Bartlett Development Planning Unit, University College
London, London, UK
Michael Batty, Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, University College London,
London, UK
Simin Davoudi, Planning & Landscape Department GURU, Newcastle University,
Newcastle, UK
Geoffrey DeVerteuil, School of Planning and Geography, Cardiff University,
Cardiff, UK
Andrew Kirby, New College, Arizona State University, Phoenix, AZ, USA
Karl Kropf, Department of Planning, Headington Campus, Oxford Brookes
University, Oxford, UK
Karen Lucas, Institute for Transport Studies, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK
Marco Maretto, DICATeA, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering,
University of Parma, Parma, Italy
Fabian Neuhaus, Faculty of Environmental Design, University of Calgary, Calgary,
AB, Canada
Vitor Manuel Aráujo de Oliveira, Porto University, Porto, Portugal
Christopher Silver, College of Design, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA
Giuseppe Strappa, Facoltà di Architettura, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome,
Roma, Italy
Igor Vojnovic, Department of Geography, Michigan State University, East Lansing,
MI, USA
Jeremy W. R. Whitehand, Earth & Environmental Sciences, University of
Birmingham, Birmingham, UK

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Smaranda Spanu

Heterotopia and Heritage

Preservation
The Heterotopic Tool as a Means of Heritage
Assessment

123
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Smaranda Spanu
Cluj-Napoca, Cluj, Romania

ISSN 2365-757X ISSN 2365-7588 (electronic)

The Urban Book Series
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For Timi.

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Contents

1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
2 Heterotopia and the Utopian Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ... 5
2.1 The History of Utopian Thinking: Theories, Ramifications,
Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.2 Utopia and the Heterotopic Reading of the Ideal . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.2.1 Architecture as “Effectively Realized Utopias” . . . . . . . . 12
2.2.2 The Archetype City: Between Divine and Laic . . . . . . . 15
2.3 The Ideal City of the Renaissance According to Alberti,
Filarete et al. The Revanchist Character . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ... 18
2.3.1 The Baroque Utopia: Transition to the Functional
City . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ... 30
2.3.2 The Ideal City’s Expression in the Romanian Space . ... 33
2.4 The Metamorphoses of the Ideal City. The Utopian Project
and the Transition to Modernity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ... 48
2.5 The Perspective of Boullée and Ledoux: Sublime
V. Pragmatic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
2.5.1 Utopia as a Social Experiment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
2.5.2 Utopian Projections After Fourier: The Phalanstery . . . . 68
2.5.3 The Industrial Ordering and the Company Town . . . . . . 72
2.5.4 The Ruskinian Utopia: Art and Moral . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
2.5.5 The Culturalist Model in a Heterotopian
Interpretation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ... 92
2.5.6 Progressive Model as an Official Ordering.
Plan Voisin and Plan Obus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ... 97
2.5.7 The Hybridization of the Progressive Model:
The Usonian Model and the Futurist Model . . . . . . . . . . 104
2.5.8 The Interwar Period: The Architecture Project
as a Social and National Shaping Device . . . . . . . . . . . . 108

vii

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viii Contents

2.5.9 The Total Institution and the Dystopian

Metamorphosis. The Fascist Utopia and the Labour
Camp as a Heterotopian Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
2.5.10 Ecologist Utopia and Consumerist Utopia . . . . . . . . . . . 123
2.6 Refocusing the Utopian Projection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
2.7 Utopia and Heterotopia. Heterotopia as an Applied Utopia.
Heritage as Alterity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
2.7.1 Materialized Utopias: Heterotopian Spaces . . . . . . . . . . . 136
2.7.2 Materialized Utopia and the Alterity of Heritage . . . . . . 139
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
3 The Heterotopic Character and the Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
3.1 Instances of the Heterotopic Space in the Urban Space.
Dehaene and De Cauter, Boyer and Cenzatti . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
3.2 Heterotopic Space—Tertiary Space—Space of Mediation . . . . . . 162
3.3 Performativity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
3.3.1 Performativity and Urban Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
3.3.2 Performativity and Museum Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
3.3.3 Performativity and Patrimonial Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
3.3.4 The Museum, Patrimonial Space—Between
Two Temporary Instances. Performativity
of the Heritage Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
3.3.5 The Ritual as Practice of the Patrimonial Space . . . . . . . 178
3.4 Heterotopia of Crisis. The Cemetery—The City in a City . . . . . . 180
3.4.1 Petersson—The Cemetery Between Mnemonic
Device, Leisure and Social Hierarchization . . . . . . . . . . 182
3.4.2 Brossat—The Graveyard and the Activation
of the Heterotopic Character Through Practice . . . . . . . . 187
3.5 Heritage Space, Crisis, and Transgressive Act . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
3.6 Sacred Space as the Space of Mediation: The Temple . . . . . . . . . 194
3.6.1 Sacred Space and the Ideal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
3.6.2 A Heterotopic Reading of Sacred Space . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
3.6.3 The Sacred Space as a Mnemonic Device . . . . . . . . . . . 199
3.6.4 Heterotopic Coordinates of the Sacred Space . . . . . . . . . 201
3.6.5 The Fortified Church . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
3.6.6 Variations on the Use of the Sacred Space:
Dealu Frumos, Arcalia, Viscri . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
3.6.7 Sacred Space as Heterochronia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
3.6.8 The Compensatory Role of Sacred Space . . . . . . . . . . . 212
3.6.9 The Sacred as an Enclave—The Monastery Cloister . . . . 214

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Contents ix

3.7 Mediated Space: Between Public and the Private . . . . . . . . . . . . 215

3.8 The Cultural Economy and Its Effects on Heritage. Between
Public and Private . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
3.8.1 Conservation Versus Economic Neo-liberalism . . . . . . . 222
3.9 The Political Function of Heritage—The Mediator Character
of Heterotopia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
3.10 The UNESCO Selection Mechanisms—Between Preservation,
the Economic, and the Political . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
4 Architecture and the Heterotopic Concept . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
4.1 The Heterotopic Character as an Architectural Blueprint . . . . . . . 240
4.2 The Impact of Gentrification on the Other Spaces . . . . . . . . . . . 243
4.3 Intentional Alterity: The Architectural Object as Other
and the Recurrence of the Postmodern Architecture
as a Heterotopic Profile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
4.4 The Historicist Language of the Postmodern Object—The
Hybridization of Architecture as Alterity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
4.4.1 The American Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250
4.4.2 The European Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
4.4.3 The Postmodern Historicist Language and the
Movement for the Reconstruction of the European
City . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
4.4.4 New Urbanism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
4.5 The Present-Past Relationship in the Postmodern Perspective.
Three Levels of Interpretation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266
4.6 The Postmodern Perspective and the Problem
of Conservation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270
4.6.1 The Postmodern Perspective and the Deciphering
of the Historical City . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278
4.7 The Interest for the Historical Object and the Commodification
Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280
4.8 The Construction of Alterity. The Case of Industrial Heritage . . . 284
4.8.1 The Industrial Object in Romania . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
4.9 The Threshold of Heritage Perception and the Gradual
Objectivation Tendency of the Perception on the Past . . . . . . . . . 291
4.10 The Issue of Authenticity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305
4.11 The Objectivation Tendency Toward the Heritage Object
and the Outlines of a Philosophy of Conservation . . . . . . . . . . . 310
4.11.1 The Objectivation of the Heritage Object
and the Romanian Situation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313
4.12 The Heterotopian Character of the Heritage Space as Mediated
by the Restoration Intervention . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319

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x Contents

4.13 Objectivation—The Multiplication of Values

and of the Involved Actors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324
4.14 The Community as Actor—A Decision Factor
in the Conservation Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325
4.15 Heritage Practices. The Meaning-Assigning Process.
Constructing the Alterity of the Object . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 328
4.16 The Heterotopic Character—Beyond Formal Alterity . . . . . . . . . 334
4.17 Alterity and the Historical Object. The Cumulation
of Meanings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 338
4.18 The Heterotopic Potential of the Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341
4.19 The Heterotopic Character and the Marginal. Heritage
Potential . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 342
4.19.1 The Temporal Development of Status. From
Marginality to Protection. The Case of the Gothic . . . . . 344
4.20 The Heterotopic Character and the Protected Status—The
Official Ordering and the Establishment Process of Alterity . . . . . 348
4.21 The Lascaux Cave—Vézère, France . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351
4.22 Wieliczka and Bochnia Mines—Poland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 354
4.23 The Seto Community . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355
4.24 The Swayambhunath (Swayambhu) Religious
Complex—Kathmandu, Nepal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362
4.25 The Issue of Reconstruction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 368
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379
5 Heritage as a Heterotopic Space. The Tertiary Character
and the Hybrid Characteristic as Arguments of Its Heterotopic
Character . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387
5.1 Tertiary Character Coordinates for Heritage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 388
5.2 Heritage as a Heterotopic Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 402
5.3 Heterotopic Coordinates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 406
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 417
6 Case Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421
6.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423
6.2 Identifying the Heterotopic Features—The Basic Heterotopic
Profile. The Foucaultian Example and Its Coordinates . . . . . . . . . 424
6.2.1 The Temporal Coordinate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 424
6.3 The Spatial Coordinate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 430
6.4 The Romanian Case. The Black-Sea Coastal Development
as a Heterotopic Enclave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 445
6.5 The Heritage Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 461
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 468
7 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 471
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479

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Chapter 1
Introduction

Abstract The chapter offers a brief description of the subject of the volume. It
introduces the hypothesis of heritage through the heterotopic lens, of heritage as
heterotopia, and identifies the main arguments of this approach, along with the
main perspectives involved—heritage theory, conservation and restoration theory,
and urban and architectural theory—in order to identify the coordinates and func-
tioning algorithms that can create, shape or condition the heterotopic character of
the heritage object.

Keywords Heterotopia · Heritage as heterotopia · Built heritage object ·

Heterotopic lens · Heritage

The present volume approaches the field of built heritage and its practices by means of
an unusual, albeit familiar tool: the concept of heterotopia, as defined by the French
philosopher Michel Foucault.1 Although both themes have rich research histories
in the academic field, having produced abundant literature, so far they have not
been considered jointly. Both themes have notorious interdisciplinary characters,
constructing their identity via other disciplines and in turn, contributing to their
configuration. The concept of heterotopia has, and still is eliciting a plethora of
responses and interpretations mainly due to its so called malleability—a paradoxical
feature considering its apparent structured and straightforward definition sketched
by Foucault in his Of Other Spaces essay. In its turn, heritage is continuously re-
examined, defined and interpreted—as a simultaneous, tripartite projection: towards
the past, in order to better understand it, in the present, in order to manage it and
towards the future, in order to steer it and adapt to it—2 or, in short, to assemble
a continuous understanding of the self, as a society. This ‘identitary’ encoding of
heritage is somewhat shared by the concept of heterotopia—as a tool to identify and
understand identities.

1 Among the multiple existing translations of Michel Foucault’s 1967 essay, this research has
employed the variant offered by Michiel Dehaene and Lieven De Cauter in their volume Heterotopia
and the City: public space in a postcivil society, Routledge, 2008.
2 Holtorf, Cornelius (2018) Conservation and heritage as future-making. ICOMOS University

Forum. pp. 1–13. ISSN 2616-6968, http://openarchive.icomos.org/1857/1/6_Holtorf.pdf, accessed

November 2018.
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 1
S. Spanu, Heterotopia and Heritage Preservation,
The Urban Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18259-5_1

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2 1 Introduction

Beyond these common features of the two themes, if observed more closely,
the fundamental understanding of heritage, its evolution and practices all reveal
heterotopic features; its mirror function, its utopic drive or its enclave-like nature call
for a more in-depth analysis and are at the core of this research. Considering a very
condensed definition of heritage—as the sum of traditions and material objects (both
movable and immovable) bearing an inherited cultural value—its two preeminent
heterotopic characteristics can be outlined: its temporal otherness—its heterochronic
character—and its spatial otherness—either read as a space reserved for the other or
other in itself, as a different kind of space.
Yet, heritage, and especially listed, protected and acknowledged heritage, is com-
monly understood as an appendage of the official ordering, and almost never as
subordinate, marginal or other. This approach offers an alternative, more analytical
and ‘soft’ reading of its exceptionality. By shifting this conventionally accepted rap-
port, I argue that heritage can and should be read as heterotopic—as an enclave of
otherness within the everyday defined by and informing its context—as a means of
revealing its internal functionings, explaining its paradoxes as well as our relationship
with it, as a society.
The volume explores previous interpretations of heterotopia from tangent domains
(urban planning, architecture, anthropology, etc.) considered to be relevant for the
presented hypostasis; by correlation, the reading of heritage as heterotopia is outlined.
Given the existing considerable explorations and interpretations of heterotopia,
this volume proposes a different approach: the concept is mapped and critically anal-
ysed through its materializations. Based on the expressions and functioning of its
principles, as identified by Foucault, the text aims to assemble an apparatus or, in
other words, to translate the theoretical excursus into a potential tool for analysis.
Themes such as heterotopia as materialized utopia, the ideal city, the authenticity-
ideal-heritage articulation, are discussed in order to identify the main heterotopic
coordinates (context, practice, form and event), their functioning and their set of
relationships among themselves and with their context. Interpretations of the het-
erotopia concept have been in turn analysed from the perspective of heritage theory,
conservation and restoration theory and urban and architectural theory, in order to
identify the coordinates and functionings’, or functioning algorithms, that can pro-
duce, influence of designate the heterotopic features of heritage and the heritage
object.
As this explorations advance, a more in-depth reading of heritage as heterotopia
is modelled. By observing how different heritage mechanisms (such as heritage
selection and conservation, listing and protection practices, heritage as mnemonic
device, etc.,) operate, the heterotopic nature of heritage is revealed.
The heritage objects value is strongly connected with the message it conveys;
interpreted as an isolated fragment, the heritage object conveys specific cultural and
spiritual meanings belonging to the society, the phase and the social ordering that
had generated it, as a specific creation of a certain spatial and temporal context.
Thereby, these fragments can be understood as repositories fulfilling the role of
mnemonic agents; they are conserved explicitly for their potential within the process
of (re)discovery, decoding and in the case of the built object, the specific capacity to

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1 Introduction 3

accumulate, alternate and juxtapose multiple layers of meaning. The time-fragment

character, along with the other coordinates that define the notion of heritage—such as
its multitude of instances, the enclave-like crystallization and operation, its multiple
roles assumed (compensatory, idealized, illusory, etc.) are explored.
Finally, based on the mechanisms and manifestations of heterotopia in relation
to heritage, a reworking of the six heterotopic principles as an analysis grid is pro-
posed, followed by its concrete demonstration via a case study. This analysis system
aims to facilitate the understanding of the problems regarding the built heritage, to
outline potential interventions methods, and given the contextual nature of the pro-
posed concept, to suggest the optimal solution for such interventions. As the case
study presented here illustrates, along with the other previous explorations of this
hypothesis, the concept of heterotopia can be employed in yet a new manner, other
than the identification of isolated ‘heterotopian’ spaces. It can be systemized and
fashioned into an ‘analysis tool’. The concept allows a more comprehensive insight
into the mechanisms of heritage construction and functioning, on the process of value
endowment, as well as on its potential vulnerabilities. The proposed grid identifies
the otherness of a built object within its context: it can either dissect and define par-
ticular internal functionings of a heritage object or it can signal a heritage potential
of a yet unlisted built object, manifesting as a heterotopic functioning.
Guided through this theoretical itinerary, the reader (re)discovers the heterotopic
lens as a minor yet promising device in Foucault’s ‘tool box’, allowing a better
understanding of the workings of heritage and the way we perceive, occupy and
practice it in everyday life.

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