This publication brings together the results of the project 3DPAST: Living and virtual visiting European World Heritage, co-funded by the Creative Europe EU programme. The research highlighted the exceptional character and quality of living in vernacular dwellings found in World Heritage sites. This was possible by seizing the cultural space of European vernacular heritage, located in Pico island (Portugal), Cuenca town (Spain), Pienza (Italy), Old Rauma (Finland), Transylvania (Romania), Berat & Gjirokastra (Albania), Pátmos (Greece), and Upper Svaneti (Georgia). New digital realities grant the possibility to visit and to appreciate those places, to non-travelling audiences, who lack the opportunity to experience this unique heritage in situ. Creative potential is highlighted in 3D models and digital visualisations, which associate outstanding local knowledge with the vernacular expression of World Heritage.

In a continuously changing world, there has been a growing interest in the protection of vernacular heritage and earthen architecture. The need to protect and enhance this fragile heritage via intelligent responses to threats from nature and the environment has become evident.Historically, vernacular heritage research focussed on philosophical aspe

Vernacular architecture represents a great resource that has considerable potential to define principles for sustainable design and contemporary architecture. This publication is the result of an overall aim to produce a valuable tool for analysis regarding vernacular heritage through different assessments, in order to define principles to consider for sustainable development. This was possible through a comprehensive reflection on the principles established and the strategies to recognise in different world contexts. The present publication was the result of an in-depth approach by 46 authors from 12 countries, concerned with the analysis and critical assessment of vernacular heritage and its sustainable perspective. The book presents 8 chapters addressing operational definitions and synopses advances, regarding the main areas of vernacular heritage contribution to sustainable architecture. It also presents 15 chapters and 53 case studies of vernacular and contemporary approaches in all the 5 continents, regarding urban, architectural, technical and constructive strategies and solutions. VERSUS, HERITAGE FOR TOMORROW: Vernacular Knowledge for Sustainable Architecture is the result of a common effort undertaken by the partners ESG | Escola Superior Gallaecia, Portugal, as Project leader; CRAterre | École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Grenoble, France; DIDA | Università degli Studi di Firenze, Italy; DICAAR | Università degli Studi di Cagliari, Italy; and UPV | Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain. This is the final outcome of VerSus, an European project developed from 2012 to 2014, in the framework of the Culture 2007-2013 programme.

Through a thick ethnography of the Fez medina in Morocco, a World Heritage site since 1981, Manon Istasse interrogates how human beings come to define houses as heritage. Istasse interrogates how heritage appears (or not) when inhabitants undertake construction and restoration projects in their homes, furnish and decorate their spaces, talk about their affective and sensual relations with houses, face conflicts in and about their houses, and more. Shedding light on the continuum between houses-as-dwellings and houses-as-heritage, the author establishes heritage as a trajectory: heritage as a quality results from a ‘surplus of attention’ and relates to nostalgia or to a feeling of threat, loss, and disappearance; to values related to purity, materiality, and time; and to actions of preservation and transmission. Living in a World Heritage site provides a grammar of heritage that will allow scholars to question key notions of temporality and nostalgia, the idea of culture, the importance of experts, and moral principles in relation to heritage sites around the globe.

​This volume explores China’s cultural heritage ideology and policies from three interrelated perspectives: the State and World Heritage tourism; cultural heritage tourism at undesignated sites, and the cultural politics of museums and collections. Something of a cultural heritage designation craze is happening in China. This is new within even the last five to ten years. Officials at many levels now see heritage preservation as a means for commoditizing their regions. They are devoting new resources and attention to national and international heritage designations. Thus, addressing cultural heritage politics in a nation dedicated to designation is an important project, particularly in the context of a rapidly growing economy. This volume is also important because it addresses a very wide range of cultural heritage, providing an excellent sample of case studies: historic vernacular urban environments, ethnic tourism, scenic tourism, pilgrimage as tourism, tourism and economic development, museums, border heritage, underwater remains, and the actual governance and management of the sites. This volume is an outstanding introduction to cultural heritage issues in China while contributing to Chinese studies for those with greater knowledge of the area.

In this textbook we see heritage in action in indigenous and vernacular communities, in urban development and regeneration schemes, in expressions of community, in acts of nostalgia and memorialization and counteracts of forgetting, in museums and other spaces of representation, in tourism, in the offices of those making public policy, and in the politics of identity and claims toward cultural property. Whether renowned or local, tangible or intangible, the entire heritage enterprise, at whatever scale, is by now inextricably embedded in “value”. The global context requires a sanguine approach to heritage in which the so-called critical stance is not just theorized in a rarefied sphere of scholarly lexical gymnastics, but practically engaged and seen to be doing things in the world.

There is a World Heritage Craze in China. China claims to have the longest continuous civilization in the world and is seeking recognition from UNESCO. This book explores three dimensions of the UNESCO World Heritage initiative with particular relevance for China: the universal agenda, the national practices, and the local responses. With a sociological lens, this book offers comprehensive insights into World Heritage, as well as China’s deep social, cultural, and political structures.