Speaker Profile
On June 22, 2021, WHITR-AP Beijing invited Professor Puay-Peng Ho to deliver a lecture titled “Contextualized Heritage Conservation.”
Over the past decade, communities around the world have experienced tremendous upheaval and change. From geopolitical developments to shifts in social orientations, and from capitalist commercialization to the global pandemic currently ravaging the world, these events underscore the urgent need to re-examine current social values and priorities, including those in the field of heritage conservation. In Southeast Asia, heritage conservation is typically overseen and managed by experts and governments, with limited public participation and often perfunctory consultation. The current state of heritage conservation lags behind social development and fails to keep pace with contemporary values. So, what challenges do we face today? This lecture will explore the future of heritage conservation within the region’s cultural and social context through four key themes: How should we interpret the definition of heritage in today’s social context, and whose heritage is it? How can we define values and meanings within an Asian context? Amid rapid urban renewal, how should we protect and repurpose historic districts? Finally, can we consider establishing a pan-Asian voice in heritage conservation?
The speaker, Puay-Peng Ho, is currently the Chair and Professor of the Department of Architecture at the School of Design and Environment, National University of Singapore. Ho graduated from the Department of Architecture at the University of Edinburgh, UK, in 1984 (First Class Honours), and received his PhD in Art History from the University of London, UK, in 1992. From 1992 to 2016, he taught at the School of Architecture at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, where he also served as Dean of the School of Architecture. His primary research areas include Buddhist monastic architecture, Dunhuang art, Chinese vernacular architecture, and heritage conservation.
