Right to begin, the paper proposes to change the order of the topics for the “Liber Amicorum” offered to Richard Foqué to honour his human and intellectual achievement. In fact, the crucial and essential question in this matter is: “why?”, and not only in the academic and professional field. It does not only mean: “why do we research, teach or practice within the field of conservation/restoration?” (conflating, for the moment, two conflicting terms). Their use in this context, in fact, tries to avoid any preventive selection connected to the meanings that the two words can assume in different contexts, while everywhere a great interest as regards tutorship, safeguarding and management of architectonical, urban and environmental Heritage seems to spring up. More broadly, the question “why” touches the deep reasons behind our present attitude and efforts toward the conservation/restoration of artefacts conceived and made or(built in the case of Architecture by other men, our ancestors, during the past ages. For more then two centuries, as the essay will show, European culture created the problem and then continuously tried and still tries to explain and to solve it. A copious literature, followed by a wide catalogue of real interventions, attests this scientific, technical, aesthetical, historical and ideological itinerary that will never be declared concluded: it will continue as our life will go on, always enquiring which kind of relation we would like to institute with the remains and the traces of our past (better: of our numerous and almost unknown pasts!). Of course, this question will be meaningful only if “a past” will continue to exist producing precious remains because, as Marc Augé suggests: “future History will never produce again “ruins” but only rubble. It will not have enough time to do so” . The problem is really crucial for our present times, according to Paolo Torsello’s vision of this field as the one where contemporary culture expresses a very alive debate, a really productive and open development of ideas, tools and instruments, even if they do not always match results of corresponding value . The essay offers an overview of the development and the present state of the theoretical and disciplinary debate about cosnservation/restoration in European culture.

Conservation/restoration of built Heritage. “Dimensions of contemporary culture”.

MUSSO, STEFANO FRANCESCO
2009-01-01

Abstract

Right to begin, the paper proposes to change the order of the topics for the “Liber Amicorum” offered to Richard Foqué to honour his human and intellectual achievement. In fact, the crucial and essential question in this matter is: “why?”, and not only in the academic and professional field. It does not only mean: “why do we research, teach or practice within the field of conservation/restoration?” (conflating, for the moment, two conflicting terms). Their use in this context, in fact, tries to avoid any preventive selection connected to the meanings that the two words can assume in different contexts, while everywhere a great interest as regards tutorship, safeguarding and management of architectonical, urban and environmental Heritage seems to spring up. More broadly, the question “why” touches the deep reasons behind our present attitude and efforts toward the conservation/restoration of artefacts conceived and made or(built in the case of Architecture by other men, our ancestors, during the past ages. For more then two centuries, as the essay will show, European culture created the problem and then continuously tried and still tries to explain and to solve it. A copious literature, followed by a wide catalogue of real interventions, attests this scientific, technical, aesthetical, historical and ideological itinerary that will never be declared concluded: it will continue as our life will go on, always enquiring which kind of relation we would like to institute with the remains and the traces of our past (better: of our numerous and almost unknown pasts!). Of course, this question will be meaningful only if “a past” will continue to exist producing precious remains because, as Marc Augé suggests: “future History will never produce again “ruins” but only rubble. It will not have enough time to do so” . The problem is really crucial for our present times, according to Paolo Torsello’s vision of this field as the one where contemporary culture expresses a very alive debate, a really productive and open development of ideas, tools and instruments, even if they do not always match results of corresponding value . The essay offers an overview of the development and the present state of the theoretical and disciplinary debate about cosnservation/restoration in European culture.
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11567/234965
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