Mapping Memories: The Intangible Heritage of Members of the Hungarian Diasporic Community in Brantford, Ontario

Abstract

As our world becomes increasingly globalized and transitory, it is important for design professionals to understand and embrace the intangible cultural heritage of their project sites through deeper engagement with local stakeholders. This comes alongside the need to understand the diasporic hybridization that occurs within communities relative to their built environment. Probing at such topics, this thesis examines the role of digital technologies in the transmission and preservation of intangible cultural heritage at the community level. It uses the Hungarian Hall in Brantford, Ontario as a case study, drawing from document analysis, site visits, and interviews to actively engage community members in a discussion about their identity and its connections to architecture. By collating sketches, stories, photographs, drawings, recipes, videos, and other artifacts curated into a visual, publicly accessible digital repository, the work expands definitions of Hungarian diasporic heritage and shares its evolution with the broader community.Overall, this thesis argues that design professionals can significantly support diasporic communities by devising innovative means of digitally capturing their hybrid intangible heritage and that such a repository can, in turn, be useful to architects to better understand the local context of their project sites. This allows us all to work toward more inclusive and just cities, and to support the continual growth and sharing of embedded community knowledge. vi vii