Uneasy but Shared Heritage
Modern Architecture on A Divided Island
Savia Palate
Peer-Reviewed Publication in
"Architectural history isn't what it used to be" (special issue edited by Neal Shashore and Alan Chandler)
Charrette, Volume 9, Number 2, Autumn 2023, pp. 51-68 (18)
| April 2024.
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Can architectural history be collaborative and transmedial in its storytelling? This paper introduces USHer; a mobile app that is developed as an experimental methodological tool to identify and unfold stories of ‘Uneasy, yet Shared Heritage’ on the divided island of Cyprus. This paper questions the adequacy of traditional methods in the discipline of architectural history and the potential of digital technologies in the architectural historian’s task, encouraging alternative vantages for the projection of alternative futures and imaginaries.
Savia Palate and Panayiota Pyla
Special Issue for Fabrications Journal (SAHANZ)
| Deadline for Submissions
15 February 2024
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Papers may relate to the contested geopolitical, cultural, and historical constructs of the built environment as heritage in tangible and intangible terms, and across various periods and geographies. We welcome papers that interrogate competing narratives of nationalism and identity; oscillations between remembrance and oblivion; and preservation practices that experiment with potentialities of inclusiveness and alternative collaborations in framing the shared in architectural heritage.
USHer team
Training Participation
UNDP Cyprus Youth Innovation Factory
| October to December 2023
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The USHer team has been selected as one of the 15 to participate in the Youth Innovation Factory, a multi-month venture builder implemented by the SocialTech Lab.
An Archive that Listens in an App
[Ένα αρχείο που ακούει σε μια ψηφιακή εφαρμογή]
Elena Papadopoulou
News article (In Greek) Politis
| 2 July 2023
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An introduction of the USHer App in the local press.
USHer Team
Mobile App
| March 2023
Savia Palate
Seminar Presentation for "Resilience and Future Heritage" International Student Workshop
HERSUS Research Project
| 7 October 2022
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This presentation focused on the inception and decay of the Berengaria Hotel to demonstrate the multi-faceted narratives a building may encompass, reading it through two different, yet simultaneous acts: (1) an act of small resistance and (2) an extractive colonised act.
Savia Palate
Conference Presentation
SAHGB Annual Conference 2022
| 16, 17, 20 June 2022
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What are the challenges and constraints of researching contested borderlands as embodiments of absence, inconsistency, and controversial perspectives?
USHer app team
Participation in the exhibition "Agora: The Making of," organised and curated by the Museum Lab on the Inauguration Ceremony of CYENS.
| 23 April 2024
Savia Palate and Linda Stagni
Workshop
University of Cyprus in collaboration with ETH Zurich
|19 January 2025
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A collective reflection on what remains when architecture disappears, and the challenges researchers encounter when studying and analysing buildings that no longer exist. Three paper sessions discuss media and propaganda, demolished buildings as case studies, and colonial representations behind the act of demolition. The paper sessions are followed by a workshop that focuses on the overarching endeavours that brought the scholars together.
What is "Shared"?
Architectural Heritage in Conflict
Savia Palate and Panayiota Pyla
Paper Session at the 2023 SAH Virtual Conference
| September 2023
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What can be considered “shared” about architectural heritage in conflict territories, in what manner, and why? How can architectural history, and methodological explorations of writing the past, shed light on the complexities that surround the question of “who” defines modes of “sharedness”?
An App Introduces Buildings
[Ένα app σας συστήνει κτήρια]
Chrystalla Hadjidemetriou
News article (In Greek) Phileleftheros
| 18 June 2023
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An introduction of the USHer App in the local press.
USHer Team
Mobile App
| March 2023
Savia Palate
Outreach Presentation for "Gender Fairness and Equal Representation in Science"
Faculty of Engineering, UCY for the HORIZON Europe: Investing in our Future Together of the Cyprus Research and Innovation Centre
| 28 September 2022
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How do you speak of gender fairness in a project that deals with 200+ buildings that were all designed by men? Can we speak of the "other" architect? And who are these "other" architects in the production of architecture?
Architectural History: Past and Future
[Αρχιτεκτονική Ιστορία: Παρελθόν και Μέλλον]
Savia Palate
News Article (In Greek)
Phileleftheros
| 10 July 2022
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A small introduction of the USHer project, hosted at Mesarch Lab UCY as part of a Phileleftheros column on the work of women working in architecture and engineering at the University of Cyprus.
Savia Palate and Linda Stagni
Paper Session at the 2024 EAHN Biannual Conference
| June 2024
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What is the role of architectural history even after the demolition of a building? How does the vanished architectural object relate to the narratives of architectural history? What methods and sources hold the information that may be missing? And, to what extent methods and sources can be inherently ambiguous or misleading in their space-making, stories, and make-believe narratives regarding the “life” and “death” of these buildings?
USHer Team
Awareness 2023
Art + Research Exhibition
after:noon project
| 10, 11 November 2023
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Short stories of six buildings featuring in the USHer app, alongside a historical and contemporary image were introduced to raise awareness of the intangible value of buildings that no longer exist, or their first "life" has ended.
Savia Palate
Conference Presentation
ACHS-ECRN (Association of Critical Heritage Studies - Early Career Researchers Network) Symposium
"Heritage Justice: Contestation, Motion, and Emotion"
| 14-16 August 2023
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An introduction of the USHer App as an experimental methodological tool in contested territories.
Andrea Potts in Coversation with Savia Palate
Museum of British Colonialism
| 8 May 2023
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Talking about histories of sharedness instead of histories of conflict on the divided island of Cyprus.
Savia Palate and Panayiota Pyla
Conference Presentation for the "Modern Heritage in the Anthropocene" Symposium
MoHoA Conference, Bartlett UCL
| 26-28 October 2022
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This presentation focused on reading the Ledra Palace Hotel through three modes of modernity in twentieth-century Cyprus, highlighting the way conflict becomes apparent in built heritage and reflecting on future post-human realities.
Savia Palate
Roundtable Participation
Interest Group: Architecture, not Building: Actors at the Margins
2022 EAHN Biannual Conference
| 15-19 June 2022
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Understanding the "domestic" as a fluid term that encompasses a transcalar negotiation between elements of interiority and exteriority (where the two cannot be perceived in binary opposition), this presentation explored the way domestic elements were translated by the colonised population (British colonial period in Cyprus) as a means towards financial independence.
Concrete, Glass and the Beach: Hotels as Modern Architectural Heritage
[Μπετόν, Γυαλί, και Θάλασσα: Ξενοδοχεία ως Μοντέρνα Αρχιτεκτονική Κληρονομιά]
Savia Palate
Short Essay (In Greek)
Monthly Bulletin of the Technical Chamber of Cyprus
| May 2022
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A small introduction on the relationship among reinforced concrete, tourism development, and the modernist aesthetic in Cyprus during the 1960s.