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 objectivity or neutrality 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.

O B L / Q U E  / 1

WHAT IS CRITICAL CONSERVATION?

Edited by Natalia Escobar Castrillon

Assistant Editor: Javier Ors

HISTORY

Xu Chi

Allegorical fragments of China: On Ningbo History Museum

Phi Nguyen

SESC Pompeia, Collective Memory Construction: The Building of An Ohter Utopia

MEMORY

LeeAnn Suen

Implacement: Edward Casey's Place-World, The Fallacy of Modern Time, and Unlivable Experience  

Jonathan Knapp

Violence Spiraling from the Center of the World: Lava Beds, National Monument, and Robert Smithson's Concept of History

Sama El Saket

Herzog & Meuron, Caixa Forum, Madrid

Marielsa de Castro

Alfredo Jaar, "The Geometry of Conscience," The Museum of Memory and Human Rights in Santiago, Chile

IDENTITY

Ana Mayoral

Juan O'Gormman's UNAM: Architecture as Fantasy for National Identity

Daniel Foster

Toni Morrison Representing the Repellent Landscape: Unbuilt Memorials and Unhomely Allegories in Beloved

Javier Ors Ausín

Mumbai (In)Formal: Learning from Dharavi

Francesca Romana Forlini

Druot, Lacaton & Vassal, "Plus" Principle and the Preservation of the Domestic Condition

AUTONOMY

Zachary Matthews & Zahra Safaverdi

Graham Harman, The Thingness of a Figure

Erica Rothman

Scaffoldings orArchitecture in Distraction: The Restoration of theSupreme Court and the Disruption Instant

Haibei Peng

Beyond Replica: A Case Study of the Ise Grand Shrine in Japan

Mihalis Papavarnavas

Rem Koolhass, The Impossible Stasis: Fondazione Prada