Rhythmanalysis as a research tool for living heritage assessment: the case of Galle Fort, Sri Lanka

This paper presents the preliminary findings of a research and urban design exercise conducted in the World Heritage Site of Galle Fort, Sri Lanka. The study was part of a design studio in the first year Master in Urban Design Program, Department of Architecture at the University of Moratuwa. Regular students conducted the study in collaboration with exchange students from the KU Leuven Faculty of Architecture. The general objective of the exercise was to develop sustainable development strategies for heritage conservation and revitalization of the site. More specific objectives envisaged to explore ways of data-collection such as archival research, participant observation and rhythmanalysis. The underlying idea was that urban planning and design practices have been overwhelmingly concerned with permanence, while often underestimating the transience of urban realities and the complexity of urban resource management. When applied to heritage sites, this approach risks to ‘freeze’ urban reality at a – usually memorable – moment in the past and stifle urban dynamics of change. Heritage sites that are treated in this way, tend to evolve into museum-like tourists venues where daily life is enacted as a spectacle rather than being a truly living heritage. To avoid these mind-frames, students in the Galle research and design project explicitly took time into account as a fourth dimension of urban life. Drawing on Lefebvre’s (1995[1962], 2004 [1992]) rhythmanalysis, they mapped not only the buildings, their intrinsic historic qualities and current function, but also the spaces in between the buildings: how and when they were being used by whom. The project thus adopted a methodological orientation that was not ‘analytic’ in a strictly positivistic or scientific sense of term, but rather sided with the ‘lived experience’ comparable to participant observation in anthropology (Highmore 2005: 150). This orientation greatly benefited from the incessant intercultural dialogue that went on between Sri Lankan and European members of the research team. The resulting analysis was a refreshing piece of work. The approach, research methods and representation of findings clearly reflected that cultural constraints had been altered and disciplinary boundaries transgressed. The paper describes the tortuous process that lead to this result. It first draws the institutional framework that brought this team together and then details the studio assignment given to them. Then, it outlines Lefebvre’s theory on rhythmanalysis and some of the ways in which it has been operationalised. The main body of the text deals with the way students have applied this concept in their analysis of Galle Fort and how this affected the urban design proposals they came up with. Final reflections reiterate the confluence of circumstances that lead to this result; they also recommend that rhythmanalysis be further explored as one of the research tools to examine and safeguard living heritage.status: accepte