Already-Existing Architecture Ambiguity: Conservation of (perceived) Local Identity & Preservation of (fabricated) Collective Memory

Historic preservation and its various subfields are facing some of the most severe criticism within the larger architecture discourse. Being too narrowly-focused, causing the stagnation and staticism of space, and marginalizing underrepresented groups, are all but a few of the valid critiques being thrown at everything relating to dealing with existing architecture. This project argues that these types of disparagements over practices of preservation indicate a level of ambiguity which is evidently hovering over the field and evidently effecting its core values and how it is perceived. Language, and the accurate definitions of crucial terms that are ever-shifting in their connotations plays an integral part in tapping into those core values and steering their interpretation. As definitions shift and progress through time, the field itself drags along with that development and ends up relentlessly restructuring itself based on those myriad reinterpretations. Architecture also has the unwavering ability to be appropriated, and re-appropriated, to convey powerful underlying messages beyond the merely surface-layer of its built environment. In this sense it is evidently prone to be expended as means of carrying out messages, constructing principles and shaping mindsets. This project delves into such ambiguities in greater detail.