Tashkent mahallas are included in the Tentative List of UNESCO World Cultural Heritage

Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.com) -- Tashkent mahallas are included in the Tentative List of UNESCO World Cultural Heritage. This was reported by the press service of the Art and Culture Development Foundation. 

The first steps were taken back in 2019, during the development of the Mahalla: Urban and Provincial Life project, which was presented at the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale in 2021.

The debut participation of Uzbekistan at the biennale played a crucial role, since the project dedicated to the mahalla became the subject of international discourse at the site of one of the most famous forums of world art and aroused great interest among the audience, as well as from experts and foreign media. The exhibition project was curated by Emanuel Krist and Christoph Gantenbein, professors at ETH Zurich, while Dutch photographer Bas Prinsen documented the mahalla phenomenon.

Further, the Art and Culture Development Foundation, with the assistance of the National Commission for UNESCO and IICAI, assembled a unique team of leading scientists, experts, architects and researchers who carried out a large-scale study of the mahallas of the city of Tashkent.

Traditional in our understanding, the mahalla aroused interest from the international community and was perceived by experts as a way to revive eco-architecture, as a method of preserving community, social values, and at the same time as a solution to the problem of mass urbanization of modern cities.

The inclusion of Tashkent mahallas in the Tentative List will provide an opportunity to nominate them to the UNESCO World Heritage List in the future.