Architectural Conservation as a Promoter of Cultural Identity

Culture has been generally understood as the characteristics and knowledge of a particular group of people in the areas encompassing language, religion, cuisine, social habits, music and arts. Margaret Mead, an American cultural anthropologist defined Culture as “the whole complex of traditional behaviour which has been developed by the human race and is successively learned by each generation”. Such shared patterns on behaviour are largely influenced by the nature of spaces. Since architecture is the physical manifestation of culture, any change in the same has the power to gradually bring about a change in culture. Societies which have been closely knit have grown to be non-concerned of each other with changing design patterns. External influences on architecture and planning from different sources has been modulating the culture of places. And so, a conscious action towards conservation of culture can be strengthened by conservation of local architectural heritage. This important fact has been established in this paper through the study of urban planning and designs case studies through history of the city of Patna, Bihar, India. With the assumption that architecture is a complete symbol of human culture it tries to study the role of architectural conservation in promoting cultural identity.