Conserving Cultural Built Heritage in South and Southeast Asia

The societies of South and Southeast Asia and their
cultural built heritage have their roots in the
cultural traditions of the sub-continent having
developed relatively independently, arguably since
the enlightenment, to those in Europe. The cultural
"paradigm" of conservation of the cultural built
heritage, which has become the universal approach, is
based on Euro-centric philosophical and cultural
traditions and is evident by its rationalist,
materialistic empiricist approach. However, the
historic approach in the Asian region has relied more
on a concern for the spiritual aspects of a monument,
intangible values, and its relationship to landscape
and site. In this situation rebuilding is often more
readily acceptable. There have been some concessions
toward these differences in such documents as the
Nara Document on Authenticity (ICOMOS 1994) and the
Hoi An (UNESCO 2005), but still within the
Western/Euro-centric milieu. An alternative paradigm
for interpreting the non-secularbuilt heritage in
South and Southeast Asia supported by Buddhist
philosophy and systems theory is developed in this work.