Tashkent’s modernist architecture on the UNESCO World Heritage List
The UNESCO World Heritage Committee has inscribed ten modernist buildings in Tashkent, Uzbekistan – built between the 1960s and the early 1990s – on the World Heritage List.
The nomination was submitted by the Arts and Culture Development Foundation of the Republic of Uzbekistan, based on a dossier prepared by Politecnico di Milano – Mantova Campus, under the guidance of Davide Del Curto, Professor of Architectural Restoration and Vice-Rector of the Mantova Campus, and Sofia Celli, in collaboration with the architectural practice GRACE and an international group of experts.
Our research aimed to contribute to a broader recognition of the different ways in which modernism has taken shape around the world. It has prompted a conceptual re-evaluation of the cultural and geographical roots of modernism and of the ways and places in which it emerged and developed globally.
Davide Del Curto, Professor of Architectural Conservation at Politecnico di Milano, and Ekaterina Golovatyuk, co-founder of GRACE
This inscription demonstrates how the UNESCO World Heritage List is becoming increasingly inclusive and better able to represent geographical areas that have long been under-represented, such as Central Asia, whilst at the same time broadening the very concept of heritage to include examples from the recent past, such as the architecture of the second half of the 20th century. It also highlights the expertise of Politecnico di Milano in the field of heritage research and conservation.
Photo credits: © Karel Balas, courtesy of ACDF