A Strategy Using Heritage Documentation for Managing Change of the Historic Centre of Bukhara

Abstract

Abstract. Bukhara, historic city of the Silk Roads, has been going through changes for more than 2000 years. The historic centre is UNESCO World Heritage since 1993 including hundreds of monuments such as madrassas, mosques and caravanserais, and an urban fabric containing the traditional Bukharian houses. As a dynamic city in Uzbekistan, its transformation is ongoing. A number of previous studies, including a large scale UNESCO field campaign, have been carried out to identify the overall condition of this historic city. Being most of the traditional houses privately owned and built of earthen materials, these studies have highlighted that this type of heritage is under threat of high impact of changes. Therefore, there has been a need of guidelines to protect and manage change of this outstanding heritage. Appropriate decisions in heritage conservation are based on timely, relevant and accurate information about the conditions, materials and evolution of heritage buildings and landscapes. To support these tasks, two main international projects, the University College London (UCL) Central Asian Archaeological Landscapes (CAAL) funded by Arcadia Fund, and the Traditional Bukharian Houses Documentation and Conservation approaches funded by the World Monuments Fund (WMF) are supporting the heritage management of city of Bukhara in partnership with the International Institute of Central Asian Studies (IICAS), the local administration, universities and the Bukharian community. This paper presents the current two large projects to create a digital database of the mahallas -neighbourhoods and its traditional houses by documenting heritage attributes, and ultimately produce the Guidelines on Conservation, Maintenance and Adaptive Reuse recognising heritage regeneration, as a core principle, and the contribution of heritage towards the achievement of the UN 2030 Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).