Design Research of a Digital Database for Historic Buildings in Baku

Abstract

The Walled City (Icheri Sheher) of Baku, Azerbaijan, with the Ensemble of the Shirvanshah's Palace and the Maiden Tower (Giz Galasy), which has been included on the List of World Heritage in Danger since 2003. The post-Soviet Baku suffers from the consequence of the previous Soviet Urban Plan and the urban expansion from the latest oil boom. Recently, UNESCO World Heritage Centre launched a pilot study model before the full-scale inventory project to design and test a digital database for the inventory of historic buildings in Icheri Sheher and to conduct survey fieldwork for developing a monitoring tool. The paper concludes that a viable digital model of database needs to reflect the collective memory of the sites, coincide with social function of local neighborhood, and prioritize layers of information for common use.