O B L / Q U E
O B L / Q U E is a journal on architectural conservation that acknowledges that there is no neutral historic site, place, or narrative. Historians cannot attain an objective point of view external to their historic moment, and neither can conservation architects. Rather, history is a contested, dynamic, and incommensurable process, and its representations are always partial, exclusionist, and ideologically tainted. Under this paradigm, claims of total objectivity or neutrality in one’s actions signify complicity with existing power hierarchies embedded in systems and places. Conservation architects have the opportunity and responsibility to renegotiate history and power relationships through design. From this perspective, to conserve means to question, revise, and subvert dominant versions of the past rather than its passive and complicit perpetuation. This practice is what we refer to as Critical Conservation.
Description:
OBL/QUE, A Journal on Critical Conservation is an annual peer-reviewed publication based at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and Carleton University.
Founder and Editor-in-Chief:
Natalia Escobar Castrillón.
Awards:
The journal received the AIA NY CENTER FOR ARCHITECTURE in 2017: