Monumument Presrvation in Central Europe

Monument Preservation in Central Europe
Kzmr Kovcs
Copyright 1999 Kzmr Kovcs
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Contents
Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................1
The Historical Settlement Opposed to the Contemporary Town ............................................................................4
Evolution of the Idea of Historical Monument .......................................................................................................8
I.Alois Riegl........................................................................................................................................................8
II.Renaissance in Italy.........................................................................................................................................9
III.France and England .......................................................................................................................................9
IV.Industrial Revolution ...................................................................................................................................10
V.CIAM and the World Wars...........................................................................................................................11
VI.Romania within the European Context........................................................................................................11
VII.Contemporary Situation .............................................................................................................................12
VIII.Conclusions...............................................................................................................................................13
Criteria for the Evaluation of Historical Monuments ...........................................................................................14
I.The Value attributed to Historical Monuments ..............................................................................................14
1.Values Representations and Functions ......................................................................................................14
2.The Documentary function ........................................................................................................................15
3.The Aesthetic function...............................................................................................................................15
4.The Function of Ancientness .....................................................................................................................16
5.The Identity Function.................................................................................................................................16
II.Minefields .....................................................................................................................................................16
1.The Authenticity ........................................................................................................................................16
2.Restoration.................................................................................................................................................17
3.Significance ...............................................................................................................................................17
4.Technology ................................................................................................................................................18
III.Attempts to Quantify ...................................................................................................................................18
1.Criteria for the evaluation ..........................................................................................................................18
2. Education ..................................................................................................................................................19
3.Administration ...........................................................................................................................................19
IV.Conclusions: The Science of Demolishing ..................................................................................................19
Plenik's Art..........................................................................................................................................................21
Plenik in Vienna..............................................................................................................................................22
Masaryk at the Castle........................................................................................................................................22
Home ................................................................................................................................................................23
Forms ................................................................................................................................................................24
Continuous Architecture ...................................................................................................................................24
Introduction
Introduction
Taking a closer look to the experience of monument preservation in countries of Central Europe
(Romania, Hungary, Slovenia, The Czech-lands, Slovakia), reveals a fair number of similarities and
perhaps even more differences in the details. What occurs with the strength of a revelation, though, is
the much wider importance of the phenomenon as a whole, particularly visible in this part of Europe.
Unlike in the West, here still coexist European theory and practice of monument preservation
combined with progressist demolitionism, and traditional, natural attitudes towards the built
environment. As one travels Eastward contrasts become sharper. The matter obviously points to what
Franoise Choay calls a heritage syndrome (as sign of the jeopardy threatening our edifying
competence), and farther. What we are dealing with is no less than a mutation in our (human) way of
inhabiting the planet. If architecture is considered according to its most comprehensive meaning, as
anthropological behaviour meant to produce adequacy between ourselves as cultural beings and our
environment, the matter at stake is the survival of architecture. The unprecedented globalization of the
theory and practice of monument protection on the one hand, the overall success of industrial design
objects placed everywhere as buildings on the other, are signs of a schizoid edifying behaviour of
humankind. In such a reference system, national legislation and traditions in the field of monument
protection are reduced to the scale of mere elements of a larger scheme. Their interest remains intact,
however, because, due to five decades of totalitarianism and incumbent poverty, in countries like
Romania, Slovakia or Hungary there are still urban or rural structures surviving with their ancient
kinds of social life, traditions and building techniques, features that in the Western part of Europe
have by now almost disappeared.
Moreover, monument preservation seems to be a determinant feature of contemporary culture.
The scale of preservationist approach has since long reached the level of urban design not merely as
one of the important criteria in decision making, but also as an essential standpoint to be adopted
when dealing with matters of future urban development. Hence the need to extend conclusions of any
theoretical research to broader levels of generality within the architectural domain.
Down at the eye level, actual treatment of the built heritage, subsumed to internationally
adopted and observed rules and showing essential similarities related to physical destruction and
repair, proves to be of endless diversity.
One specificity, for instance, of the Romanian scenery is given by the fact that traditional
building techniques still strongly survive in the everyday use. In comparison, going westwards from
the Transylvanian border, artisans who can still apply traditional technology become scarce - end very
expensive. At another end of the world (and of the paradigm), Japan offers an interesting example for
being the only country where professional skills of the craftsmen capable of ritually rebuilding Shinto
shrines are listed and protected as national cultural heritage1. What seems in Romania to be the
opposite of other countries difficulties, creates in fact a difficulty of opposite direction:
Transylvanian masons or carpenters would not admit that their achievements are in any sense inferior
to the similar work of their colleagues who lived a couple of centuries ago! Hence severe damages
done to monuments from the point of view of their value of ancient-ness (not of their authenticity,
though), in spite of the genuine competence of the workers.
If one has to come to any conclusions, one needs to look at the mainstream of the process. The
pressure goes towards fundamental research and abstract speculation.
My whole idea on the matter has changed in the sense of the broadening of the field. My
interest for specific details lessened, while I became fascinated by what seems to be the key of the
problem: the fact that today any built (or just man made) object can become a historical monument
merely because the mode of its fabrication becomes obsolete. This is (by now) only partly
1
Choay, Franoise, Sept propositions sur le concept dauthenticit, the Nara Conference on Authenticity, 1994,
Romanian translation by Kzmr Kovcs, apte propoziii asupra conceptului de autenticitate, in Alegoria
Patrimoniului, Bucureti, 1998
Introduction
determined by the values identified and analysed by Riegl and reformulated (updated) by Choay.
The explanation of such phenomenon lies in the failure of post-industrial architecture to fulfil its
initial founding function. Hence the feeling of irretrievable loss relative to anything that we once
knew how to make and do not know any longer. Our very cultural identity is at stake. My four papers
are dealing with the subject in these terms. I trust that, although they do not offer detailed comparison
between national legal frameworks in the field, nevertheless the ideas they encompass find
applicability wherever legislators elaborate on the theoretical basis of the rules to be observed in
todays patrimonial practice.
The fourth and last of my series of articles written with the purpose of illuminating some - in
my opinion - important features of monument preservation deals with the work of the Slovene
architect Joe Plenik whose biography, career and achievements, though exceptional, can be seen as
a synecdoche of all the major matters of twentieth century patrimonial syndrome. In-between lies
the more general outline of the problem presented from three different points of view:
- the dimensions of contemporary architectural landscape seen through the difficulties
faced by our historical settlements;
- the consecration of the concept of historical monument as it is world wide accepted
today, with references to theory and practice of monument protection in Central Europe;
- the crucial matter of determining a historical monument according to specific criteria.
Paper number one, The Historical Settlement Opposed to the Contemporary Town brings
together the oeuvre of two contemporary theorists: Franoise Choay and Joseph Rykwert. It does so in
order to sketch the main features of the contemporary crisis in architecture as mirrored in the undoing
of our settlements. Historical old towns tend to become isolated tourist gadgets amidst network
towns dominated by motor ways and amorphous, residual non-spaces. The two authors offer in turn
different yet complementary interpretations and, sometimes, solutions to the problem. My paper
attempts to demonstrate not only that we cannot any longer deal with built monuments as single
objects urban patrimony has been institutionalised for some time by now , but also that the
protection of our historical towns needs, following the marks set by Giovannoni and developed by
Choay, to be organically integrated in the general treatment of built environment.
Once the field marked, paper number two deals with the Evolution of the Idea of Historical
Monument. It was needless and beyond the economy of my intentions to try an exhaustive
survey of the field. What I intended was to identify the mainstream of the evolution. Prediction is also
not my purpose, yet it was unavoidable to guess that, the way things are going, at some point there
would be no architectural domain left outside the patrimonial area. Such idea reveals a parallel
process: while architecture tends to be perceived as monument, non-architectural spaces tend to be
regarded as architecture. Broadbent has of course proved that every building carries meanings.
Semantic load of the built environment only increases in time. This is yet another argument for trying
to re-approach patrimonial matters from the architectural point of view.
Still, the two fields are and should remain distinct. Paper number three makes a survey of
the matters concerning Criteria for the Evaluation of Historical Monuments. Evaluation and
identification, also. After discussing the contributions of Riegl, Giovannoni and Choay to researching
the values with which historical monuments have been invested in time, I am dealing with the
uncertainties of the subject. Then I am discussing a pragmatic attempt to quantify the evaluation
process and finally the matters of specific education and decision making. My conclusions regard a
few aspects of ancient buildings that seem to be forgotten by today. Their absence in our architectural
practice contributes to the widening and deepening of the gap existing today between architecture and
architectural monuments on the one hand, historical towns and contemporary network settlements on
the other.
In this way paper number four is introduced. Plenik's Art is interpreted in such way as to
demonstrate that architectural practice does not contradict monument preservation and, vice-versa,
Introduction
monument preservation can be dealt with architecturally. In other words, built monuments can escape
the fate of becoming museum objects without being inauthentic while new buildings can avoid
anonymity without being either revivalist or technotopic. Plenik's art lies, in my opinion, in his
always finding the right measure between these sensitive requirements. His (Central European) figure
is the most appropriate to prove that architecture is not dead, moreover it has resources to survive no
matter how much technology or spirituality changes. Plenik's lesson, precisely, is that mankind is
still capable to inhabit poetically. In an architectural world, instead of playing the role of
curiosities, historical monuments can respond contemporary functions and thus re-integrate built
environment. This is of course, beyond its regional importance, a universal matter.
Looking at Plenik's work, moreover, takes us back, rather unexpectedly, to my initial idea to
understand monumentification through the study of twentieth century, modernist building
heritage. As it turned out, Plenik is relevant to this question not so much as a modern although he
was one in his very personal way but as a dissident from the doctrines of the CIAM. Plenik's
oeuvre encompasses the whole transition from Viennese secession he has been a Wagner pupil , to
the early post war developments of the fifties. His uniqueness lies largely in his capability to avoid the
dead ends of both functionalism. This is also the reason why today Plenik is enjoying world wide
fame while functionalist architects of his epoch sink into oblivion, with the exception of a few very
high profiles. Ironically enough, the oeuvres of the latter share with Plenik's the condition of listed
historical monuments. This fact in itself is a proof of the system error in the radicalism of the CIAM
project. It also enables us to notice a difference of status: while functionalist monuments belong to a
closed chapter of architectural history, Plenik's architecture lives a new life open to endless
interpretations.
All papers but the first are shortened versions of the initial ones; it seemed more appropriate to
do so in order to match the extent of the first one (limited initially by its being presented at a seminar)
and the economy of a four-in-one text. I also hope that in this way the main line of the argument is
more evident.
The Historical Settlement Opposed to the Contemporary Town

In our days it is self understood to protect our historical monuments. Moreover, we create
protected urban zones that can at times comprise whole settlements. These are historical patrimony
and benefit as such of special attention and treatment. We are in fact dealing with a comprehensive
cultural behaviour the complexity of which on both theoretical and practical fields competes with that
of the built patrimony itself.
Why are we doing all this? Where did this process, felt as self understood, begin and how did
it spread world wide? What are those values judged to be irreplaceable whose loss would be so
unbearable that, in order to preserve them, we must invest our historical settlements with a new status,
alien to their origins? These are only a few of those questions the raising of, and the attempt to answer
to which belong organically to the field of monument preservation. It is with the intention of one
possible approach that I shall sketchily outline the work of two contemporary researchers in relation
to this matter.
Franoise Choay has come to architectural theory from historical and philosophical studies and
by today she is one of the specialists credited with international authority in the field. As, true to her
philosophical background, she attempts to encompass the whole of the domain, her surveys follow
two major lines. Although apparently distinct, in fact the theory of urban forms and the theory of
historical monuments are related to each other in many respects. For Choay it is obvious that these
two groups of phenomena and their respective questioning bring the closest to understanding the crisis
that is so determining for the architecture of our century.
Joseph Rykwert is a practising architect and professor of architecture at an American
university. In addition he is one of the most original and most interesting architectural theorists of our
time. An immense humanistic culture is corroborated in his surveys with the experience of
architectural practice. In the know of the fundamental, almost terminal lacks undermining
contemporary architecture, he in his turn attempts to raise questions that can create an opening
towards founding the settlements of the next millennium in an anthropologically adequate way.
Their resemblance and the differences separating them can equally advocate for the association
of these two authors. Both of them structure their analysis on historical grounds and both show
sparkling erudition while raising their hypotheses. Their respective conclusions are introduced by
similarly daring and surprising speculations and their respective systems are supported by equally
profound humanism. Finally, but from the point of view of our topic here most of all, one and the
other search for solutions to respond cultural and implicitly architectural challenges produced by
this century in the study of the evolution of our historical and contemporary settlements.
On the other hand, Choay is worthy heir of French rationalism, while his eclectic culture makes
Rykwert appeal more to intuitive methods. While one of them inserts her demonstration within a
framework leading straightforward to the no matter how nonconformist conclusion, the other
presents a picture made of diverse colourful fragments. As long as the French scientist reaches her
final, usually strongly subversive result through ice cold and crystal clear logic, the Polish-BritishAmerican professor builds up his discourse of classical solidity by composing playful figures in
unexpected ways.
Starting from all these I shall outline their distinct yet complementary works, belonging in fact
to the same universe of knowledge, in relation to the matter of the preservation of historical
settlements.
Rykwert deals with the problems of contemporary town in numerous articles. In Fr die Stadt
Argumente fr ihre Zukunft2 he approaches the question through Manhattan and those European
cities that undergo changes following this pattern. We learn that initially there was a European like
layout imagined to occupy the yet hardly built half-island (Joseph Manguin, 1800). It was planned to
2
in Schabert, Tilo (editor), Die Welt der Stadt, Piper, Mnchen Zrich 1991
shelter about half million inhabitants and was to have squares, gardens and sea shore promenades.
This project was dropped seven years later by a board who had foreseen the enormous increasing of
the population in favour of the chessboard layout known today. Much later there have been people to
jest by comparing the New York skyline with the silhouette of certain mediaeval towns of Tuscany. It
is through the comparative (historical) survey of the American technological prodigy that Rykwert
searches for the factors influencing the functionalist transformation of ancient European cities
(manhattanization).
The crisis of contemporary town is the overall background and basis for Rykwerts criticism.
The identified losses determine the essence the traditional town, like in the article entitled Bilan de la
Cit3. It is the interrelation of public and private functions and of all the intermediate forms that
reveals the existence of a metropolis. In the absence of such variety the modern city cannot be. What
we build today does not make possible the direct contact that is a pre-condition to multi-layered
experience. The town itself lacks the coherence in the layout that would enable us to apprehend it as
urban space. As for what we think to be rational in the professional discourse, it changes a great
deal about every ten years. The whole prattle around the rehabilitation of city centres makes sense if
it is preceded by a thorough survey of what is a town ... 4
The Idea of a Town5 is the title of the encompassing work in which Rykwert attempts such
thorough survey. Although the intention declared in the sub-title is to achieve an anthropology of the
ancient town, the book, through its inter-disciplinary method and wide horizon of research addresses
to anyone concerned with the origins, evolution and destiny of surviving ancient towns. And of course
with their preservation.
Beginning with founding rites that determine also the physical shape of a town, dealing with the
problem of the site, the symbolism of the boundary, the gate and its guards, Rykwert stays mostly by
the case of Rome. The eternal City is in many respects exemplary. However, the fifth chapter is
dedicated to parallels. The researching of the mandala, the practices of the Sioux, of corporeal
symbolism and of yet other fields is the way by which we come to the everyday microcosm and
the great project. Finally we reach the closing chapter entitled The town as curable disease: ritual
and hysteria. Freud is invoked (pathological functioning of the memory in case of hysteria and the
ways of curing it) to help us imagine the town as a system of symbols that we need to shape as such.
One of Choays most recent articles is called Patrimoine urbain et Cyberspace6 as for
summarising the sharpness of the antinomy. The author identifies the mutation induced by this newest
communication system in the scale of the built inhabited environment. This scale that is larger
than any previous one offers a good opportunity to pay more attention to a smaller, human scale
whose neglect is in great measure responsible for the undoing of our settlements. While the
traditional (close, organic) scale is multi-layered and comprehensible, the more recent ones do not
operate any longer with concepts such as centrality, limits or geometry, but with interconnections,
topology and, of course, terminals.
The author points out something rather left out of our current attention: urbanisation is not by
all means the same as a city. She raises the question whether it is unavoidable from now on to give up
every direct contact with the real world, limiting ourselves to communicate with it through our
technological prostheses? Are our historical settlements condemned to mummification as precious
remains of times forever gone7?
in Diog ne, Paris, June 1983
op. cit. p. 50
second edition, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, 1988
in La Pierre dAngle, Paris, October 1997
op. cit. p. 99
Her answer is, naturally, No. It is so because planning at a close scale is one of our
fundamental anthropological values. Two consequences follow from this: firstly, close, human
surrounding cannot be replaced by the functions of the larger territory with which it is in a
complementary relationship; secondly, the space at human scale is not only our most precious heritage
but also the most jeopardised one. Not only is it the most basic but also the least perceived as such
part of our culture. Its values cannot be seen nor can they be directly exchanged to cash.
What is to be done? Preserve the surviving heritage, of course. However, an objectifying,
indistinct conservation done with the excuse of a memory nowadays surviving mostly in books and
computers would not make sense. Instead Choay defines the close scale planning as the skill of
organically fitting the building into its context, with its immediate physical or human
neighbourhood. This should be possible by considering the measure of our bodily data, through the
articulation of the bays and volumes in such a way that they make human intercourse and social ties
possible8.
Franoise Choays criticism opposed to the contemporary city starts from similar grounds as
Rykwerts. These consist of the abundant though also redundant literature of the CIAM and of the
large scale achievements following it and the second world war. Nevertheless while Rykwert explores
mostly anthropological analogies in his work, Choay uses semiotic and psychological tools to build up
her theories. In Riegl, Freud et les monuments historiques: pour une approche socitale de la
prservation9 she draws a parallel between the modern cult for monuments of the art historian and
the disease in the civilisation of the psychiatrist. In both analysis talking is about normal and
pathologically altered functions of the memory that have to be acknowledged and treated properly. In
the end Choay concludes that monument preservation cannot be considered a discipline in itself as
defined in the Venice Charter. We are already faced with a complex social attitude conceivable as a
reaction to those cultural difficulties which are related to the loss of some of our inborn capabilities
or, at least, some of our ancient behaviours.
Even the denomination of town has become misleading in our days. For, while the plans of
the baron Haussmann, of Cerd or Otto Wagner for Paris, Barcelona and Vienna remained attempts to
reformulate existing settlements, the new settlements produced after the second world war and the
simplistic doctrines of the CIAM do not succeed in realising the unity between urbs and civitas.
Without it no town in the traditional sense can exist.
The historical town is nor the newest nor the last item in the circle of the built heritage. This
domain that had started to emerge from the Renaissance on, has been ceaselessly developing since,
following the work of Ruskin, Sitte and others, Gustavo Giovannoni identified and determined the
historical town as architectural heritage not in opposition with new urbanisation, but in completion to
it10. In LAllgorie du patrimoine11 Franoise Choay not only outlines the career of the built heritage
from its emergence till our days. She also tries to throw light on some of those universal matters of
cultural history that, according to her, are inseparable from this phenomenon: the crisis of our edifying
competence, the dialectics of building and demolishing, the development of artificial memories in
opposition to affective memory, the future of homo sapiens as homo protheticus.
op. cit. p. 100
in Lavin, Irving (editor), Acts of the XXVIth International Congress of the History of Art, III, Pennsylvania
State University Press, University Park and London, 1989
10
Vecchie citt ed edilizia nuova, 1931, French translation Lurbanisme face aux villes anciennes, Paris, Le
Seuil, 1998
11
Paris, Le Seuil, 1992, second edition 1996, Romanian edition translated by Kzmr Kovcs, Alegoria
patrimoniului, Bucharest, Simetria, 1998
Summarising the positions of Choay and Rykwert:

- The by now redundant criticism of contemporary cities can be useful in the long run only
if associated to an effort aiming to acknowledge ongoing cultural process, its values and
to assume its challenge.
- The settlement of the twentieth century, shaped by industrial revolution and world wars
(that can, at times, hardly be called a town) cannot be turned back in its evolution
towards a traditional form.
- The ancient cities or town fragments surviving in the interstices of the urban space
structured on overwhelming networks cannot be copied. Instead they can serve as
physical and spiritual models for the building up of an environment conceived on a close
scale.
- The conservation of this precious heritage can be of real use only if its spiritual,
economical and social being is subject to research and professional preservation like its
physical support.
- Traditional downtown and urban areas (including urban tissues called by Prec infraordinary12) can escape isolation and disappearance induced by museum-like
conservation only if they are organically integrated within the network-settlement
system.
- The preservation of historical built surrounding is not enough in itself. Both its theory
and practice must constitute the grounds for the survival of an edifying competence
understood in its anthropological sense.
Our future settlements will be able to embody together the built heritage of past centuries and
contemporary urban products only if the emerging architecture will be capable of reuniting the once
coextensive but today antinomic couple: building and demolishing.
In the end I will quote, following Rykwert, Nicias words addressed to his Athenian soldiers on
the beach of Syracuse: You are yourself the town, wherever you chose to settle ... it is men that make
the city, not the walls and the ships without them ... 13
12
Prec, Georges, LInfra-ordinaire, Paris, Le Seuil, l989
13
Thucydides, cf. The Idea of a Town, op. cit., p. 23
Evolution of the Idea of Historical Monument

(Shortened Version)
It is said in the Bible:
They [...] collected a great amount of money.
12.The king and Jehoiada gave it to he men who carried out the work required for the people of
the Lord. They hired masons and carpenters to restore the Lords temple, and also workers in iron and
bronze to repair the temple.
13.The men in charge of the work were diligent, and the repairs progressed under them. They
rebuilt the temple of God according to its original design and reinforced it.
It is, possibly, the earliest account of an operation bearing the marks of a restoration that we
have . However, we cannot be mistaken: there is no question of a restoration in our sense of the word.
The temple was rebuilt, refunded, or just repaired. No trace of any preoccupation to conserve an
architectural witness of past epochs, nor of concern for the authenticity of the historical document,
even less for the recording of the aesthetic elements of the temple the way they were in its original
design. Our obsession for the continuity in time of the material body of architectural objects is
entirely absent and so is the unanimous fascination exerted by the historical heritage.
14
The biblical tale is a rather symbolic time reference. Closer events are at hand to be
theoretically approached. If the built heritage phenomenon is a relatively recent one, being about
synchronic with modern history, its unprecedented extension both in time and in space is strictly
contemporary evolution.
While contemporary building activity produces objects belonging more to the field of industrial
design, on the other side we have a conservationist preoccupation powerfully spreading world-wide.
The two domains compete with each other and tend to divide the built universe in two camps
apparently incompatible.
I.Alois Riegl
Alois Riegl (1858-1905) is the one who first pointed out the relationship between monuments
and historical monuments thus defining the latter. He identifies the memorial function as determining
for both categories, sorted out by him into intentional and non-intentional monuments. While
monuments are made from the very beginning to fulfil their memorial function, historical monuments
acquire in time15 this quality as result of a complicated cultural process.
By determining the value of ancient-ness of historical monuments, Riegl anticipates later
analysis that deal with the matters of identity in European civilisation at the industrial age16. He also
foresees the fabulous extension the domain of built heritage will achieve at the end of this millennium.
Already the title of his major book, Der moderne Denkmalkultus [The Modern Cult of
Monuments] (1903) indicates the somewhat unhealthy feature of the then emerging institutionalised
monument protection. There is a visible tendency of objectifying monuments with fetishist accents.
Cultural tourism is often alike to the commerce with relics still flourishing today around pilgrimage
14
Between 900-600 BC, cf. Benedek Marcell (coord.), Irodalmi Lexikon, Gyz Andor, Budapest, 1926, p. 123
15
The presence of time with concern to the work of art and its restoration is carefully dealt with in C. Brandi,
Teoria restaurrii, p. 53 sq.
16
Franoise Choay, Riegl, Freud et les monuments historiques: pour une approche socitale de la
prservation. There is also a relevant link to psychoanalysis in Joseph Rykwert, The Idea of a Town,
Cambridge Mass., MIT Press, 1988, chapter VI, The City as a Curable disease: Ritual and Hysteria
places. Choay discusses the phenomenon in detail as related to the post war evolution of European
society and calls it, significantly, patrimonial syndrome17.
II.Renaissance in Italy
The cultural attitude which would give birth later on to all the practices aiming to study and
preserve built heritage has appeared in Italy around the year 1420. The reinvestment of Rome18 as
capital city of the Christian world was simultaneous with a new perception of its antique ruins. The
sense of historical progression had just been invented.
Of course there have been conservationist attitudes before that, but these have never been
anything but exceptions19. Earlier societies had rules where the absence of historical perspective made
relationship with built patrimony naturally utilitarian.
The spirit of humanism did it all. The new interest shown for antique remains is first sustained,
in the second half of the 14th century, by the relationship between written documents and the
architectural and artistic marks left over by Greek and Roman Antiquity. Almost one generation later,
it was the turn of artists to recognise and assume the artistic heritage of the same epoch. Then, around
1420, scholars and artists began an unprecedented dialogue to build up the first idea of the historical
monument 20.
Beyond the scholarly and artistic interest however, there was something that made the majority
of Renaissance scientists and artists to share the preoccupation for the preservation of antiquities: their
progressive disappearance. Like in every later period, when theory and practice related to the
protection of historical monuments were to make a crucial step forward, it was the conscience of an
irretrievable loss that made their value so poignantly evident.
From the very beginning is also noticeable the paradox that follows the whole evolution of built
heritage. Not only do emerge the practices related to monument protection as a reaction to their
destruction; these practices also oppose a natural behaviour aiming to replace with new buildings any
older construction that has become obsolete, or whose physical state makes maintenance
inconvenient. Moreover, the same authorities who prove to be the defenders of built heritage are the
first to contribute to the utilitarian destruction of the same21. All these facts illustrate the
contradictory character of conservationist attitudes and forecast some of the contemporary features of
their proliferation.
III.France and England

The birth of the historical monument is thus related to the end of the Middle Ages and to the
emergence of a new mental perspective, a historical one. Although a restoration itself, or maybe
because of that, the re-funding of the Western Christianity in Rome creates a break in European
history. The recovery of Antique traditions in their form and spirit generated a movement that has
today become the conservation and restoration of historical monuments. Similarities with some of the
contemporary phenomena can provide useful analogies for the understanding of the patrimonial
syndrome
It is therefore quite natural that the institution of conservationist practices the way they are
exerted today has happened in the same cultural area where the industrial revolution has taken place.
This has brought another major break in cultural continuity. The effects of industrial revolution are
17
Franoise Choay, Alegoria patrimoniului, Bucureti, Simetria, 1998, p. 186
18
ibid., p. 18
19
ibid., pp. 19 sq.
20
ibid. p. 34
21
ibid., pp. 39 sq.
10
still in full development. France and England are exemplary in this sense for having been at the
vanguard of the movement. They also developed rather different systems for preserving their
respective built heritage.
Destruction of ancient buildings is, after the Reformation in England, during the Revolution in
France and unlike in Rome during the Renaissance, not natural replacement or reuse any longer but
ideological cleansing. Yet the development that followed these similar beginnings is quite different
in the two countries.
In England, public debate around the matter of built heritage and the initiatives that issued from
them were the offspring of private enterprise. Private societies for monument protection are
competing each other and covered all the field from mutilating restorations (Gilbert Scott, Wyatt) to
absolute piety (Ruskin) and the re-invention of handicraft (Morris). The National Trust22, transformed
in 1965 from Commons, Open Spaces and Footpaths Preservation Society, now centennial, takes care
of an immense heritage and utilises important funds collected with various means23. Beginning with
the Ancient monuments' protection Act from 1882, the State has taken over some of the
responsibilities by promoting a conservationist legislation24, and through the structures of the English
Heritage. What is most important, common thinking grants the success of conservationist practices in
the United Kingdom. It is said that once queen Anne's prime minister, at her question about what
would cost to include the Green Park to her own gardens, answered: A monarchy, Madam25.
In France, preoccupation for the real26 conservation of monuments appeared as the outcome of
political decision within revolutionary organisms. These had to face the unprecedented situation
where an immense built heritage27 nationalised overnight had to be dealt with. Often improvised, the
then adopted first legislation still stands at the base of todays still highly centralised French system
for the preservation of historical monuments. They were also a model, in their later form, to the first
Romanian legal framework dealing with the preservation of national heritage.
From Guizot's Rapport28 till the first French law for monument preservation passed (1830 and
1889) there is half a century, an interval that witnesses the spreading in France of industrial
fabrication. This new system will grow into an overall revolution. Its long lasting effects are foreseen
by artists like Hugo or Balzac and would mark in European history a break called by Choay the
borderline of the irretrievable29.
IV.Industrial Revolution
It can be said that industrial revolution has reshaped all the major features of European culture.
According to Gellner's seducing theory30, industrial revolution is to be held responsible also for the
structure of modern nation-states. The functioning of the latter needs an instituted and maintained
mass culture ensuring the high mobility of its members. Small local cultures and, with them, a certain
22
National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty
23
Cf. Rodney Legg, National Trust Centenary, Wincanton, Wincanton Press, 1994
24
Cf. National Heritage Act, 1983
25
Legg, op. cit., p. 22
26
As opposed to iconographic conservation largely practised in earlier times by antiquarians, cf. Choay, op. cit.,
pp. 42 sq.
27
It is in the official texts of this epoch that the term first appears as a metaphor for the goods taken over in state
custody, cf. Choay, op. cit., pp. 74-75
28
Rapport prsent au Roi, le 21 octobre 1830, par M. Guizot, ministre de l'Intrieur, pour faire instituer un
inspecteur gnral des monuments historiques en France, ibid., Attachment I
29
ibid., p. 99
30
Ernest Gellner, Naiuni i naionalism, Bucureti, Antet - CEU, 1997, especially pp. 201 sq.
11
sense of rooted-ness in time and space tend to be swallowed by this entropic process. Hence a
possible explanation for the patrimonial syndrome31.
On the other hand there is talking about the vanishing of the immediate relationship between
artefact and artisan. The goods become products, the edifice becomes construction and the craftsman
industrial worker. Industrial revolution appears at the cross road of the desacralizing of edifying
understood as anthropological activity that founds not only edifices, but also identities and of the
progressive reification of the built object. In this new era of fabrication built space needs new
resources in order to fulfil its initial purpose today in ontological errancy.
Individual constructions and whole settlements have a different scale as a result of new
technological means and networks. On the other hand hierarchy disappears from our traditional urban
spaces. In this ubiquitous landscape architectural monuments are perceived and treated like survivors
of past epochs. The reference they offer is that of a past schematised behind the mass of anonymous
industrial products of a society called consumerist.
V.CIAM and the World Wars

Reckless belief in scientific knowledge, endless economical growth and technological progress
are some of the illusions that nourished the major catastrophes of the 20th century. One of these was
the series of CIAM (Congress International d'Architecture Moderne). The two world wars pointed out
the dangers inherent to technological progress handled irresponsibly. The triumphalism of modern
architecture indoctrinated by the CIAM, although lacking most of its initial totalitarian energy, is still
effective today.
Significantly, the two conferences held in Athens32 have had such a different career. The
dominant trend was progressivism. Anything divergent would be labelled as nostalgic and
marginalized.
The plan Voisin (1925) for Paris is an extreme projection of the CIAM doctrine. Its author, Le
Corbusier is a controversial figure who has had an influence far more powerful than his rather shallow
theoretical contributions would justify. The explanation lies in the fact that, if the noisiest one, he was
merely one of the numerous representatives of the artistic trend integrated to scientism and
industrialism. The trend itself is by now exhausted. Yet its effects will last until financial resources
will be sufficient to allow the replacement of the huge mass of post-corbusian building (except those
listed as historical monuments). Or, on the contrary, financial resources will become as scarce as to
make any waste unthinkable. A human scale architecture would follow to rediscover the science of
integrating to the pre-existing context.
VI.Romania within the European Context

Eastern Europe has followed Western evolution with some delay. Synchronisation came in due
time, as long as there were merely natural barriers to pass, such as economical backwardness,
exhausting imperial domination and so forth.
Romania sees her first law for the protection of historical monuments as early as 1892. The
French model Commission instituted simultaneously has patronised every conservationist initiative
until its dissolution ion 194833.
Patrimonial practices could not escape, during the last half century, to the effects of
communism. In the neighbouring countries (Czecho-Slovakia, Yugoslavia, Hungary), where first
Stalinism was relatively soon replaced by milder forms of totalitarianism, the evolution of patrimonial
31
cf. supra, note 5
32
One, held in 1931 was the first international gathering to deal with the preservation of historical monuments;
the other (1933) was the fourth CIAM which gave the famous Charter of Athens
33
cf. Ioan Opri, Comisiunea monumentelor istorice, Bucureti, Editura Enciclopedic, 1994
12
theory and practice could follow its natural way. Unfortunately in Romania ideological demolition
achieved a level that only seemed suitable for an autarchic and illiterate regime.
In 1977 the Department for historical monuments was dismantled.
In June 1998, the structures of the new Department fort monument preservation are still in a
rudimentary stage. A strong recovery, in early 1990, was followed by a self devouring process at the
end of which everything still needs to be done. The law for built heritage is still in the form of a
project34. No longer a draft, this project still suffers from the over-centralism inherited from the French
ancestor. Co-operation with private societies for monument preservation is only marginally mentioned
while the ways of co-operation are left outside the concerns of the project. As no terms are specified
which the various levels of decision must observe, it is to be feared that bureaucratic delays could
create difficulties and make the best intentions ineffective.
Meanwhile private societies have emerged (Cluj, Ploieti, Sfntu-Gheorghe, Sibiu). Without the
legal framework that could co-ordinate their efforts, these organisations function on the margins of
legality.
It is to be hoped that a new law, once passed, would offer more than just an institutional
framework for the intervention of the state in patrimonial practices. The not yet created state
structures should attempt to realise a mixed solution between the British and French patterns. In fact
even these two systems have lately achieved successful moves towards central co-ordination (the
British) and de-centralisation (the French).
VII.Contemporary Situation
The unprecedented phenomenon of the world-wide extension of the practices related to the
conservation and restoration of built heritage has good reason being called patrimonial inflation35.
There is an increasing number of international documents dealing with the matter that are
signed by an increasing number of countries. Questioned in detail but accepted as a whole, the Venice
Charter36 is followed by a series of documents that continue its articulating enterprise to become an
institutional one.
Nevertheless there are large areas of shadow remaining. Within the globalization of the
phenomenon we are witnessing the emergence of detailed national legislation. On the other hand,
instead of a comprehensive general theory of heritage conservation we have to cope with disparate
texts. At times, apparently incompatible positions emerge regarding crucial matters among which
authenticity is perhaps the most intricate one. The causes are to be found in the ambivalence of
architecture - a domain artistic as much as utilitarian, but also in what I earlier called the unhealthy
feature of conservationist attitudes.
It is not easy to foresee an evolution of theoretical and practical issues related to the
conservation of built heritage. If we accept the arguments of F. Choay37, soon we shall need a reevaluation of these attitudes. Otherwise there is a risk that they degenerate due to the contradictions
they have been carrying with them from the very beginning.
34
Cezara Mucenic (coordinator), Legea Monumentelor Istorice - proiect
35
Choay, op. cit., p. 4
36
The Venice Charter of the ICOMOS from 1964 was followed in 1972 by the Paris Convention of the
UNESCO, The Declaration from Amsterdam of the European Council in 1975, The Nairobi Recommendations
of the UNESCO in 1976, The Toledo Charter of the ICOMOS in 1986, The Granada Convention in 1985 and
the La Valetta Convention - revised in 1992 of the European Council. The list is not exhaustive but it
nevertheless gives a good idea on the magnitude of international concern for safeguarding of cultural heritage.
37
Choay, op. cit., especially the closing chapter: La comptence d'difier
13
VIII.Conclusions
Any building (or built environment) can achieve the status of architecture if it bears
meanings38. Moreover, if it belongs to a technological past, it has all the chances to become part of the
built heritage. Such generalisation of the process of monumentification tends to annul the
consecrated sense of the idea of historical monument. If every finished building is potentially
protected, then conservationist attitude re-becomes what it has once been: economic use of extant
buildings. The difference lies in the fact that today we acknowledge and assume as such the value for
our identity of built environment.
Conservationist doctrines will have to be integrated to an overall architectural theory. Such a
corpus will have to have a pragmatic side regulating the maintenance, repair and reuse of buildings,
while establishing a precise hierarchy of their respective value.
The matter of protected natural areas has to be mentioned here. Although not artefacts
themselves, these vast natural enclosures are inhabited in the sense that they are subject to
aesthetic and economical evaluation. With a few exceptions there will hardly be any un-inhabited
area on Earth in a few decades' time. The process called anti-urbanisation or de-urbanisation39 would
be closed. The post-urban age would have begun40.
Once we accept the idea of the patrimonial syndrome, that the globalization of the
patrimonial mentality is a sign of the crisis of our edifying competence41, the re-evaluation of the built
environment as a whole can constitute the basis of a renewed edifying competence. Such knowledge
should comprise the whole range of building activities. It will make the distinction between heritage
of universal value, vernacular architecture or infra-ordinary42 urban textures and will provide specific
treatment for each category. New architecture will know how to integrate within the context and how
to demolish properly what is unnecessary.
It is inevitable that our edifices recover a sense of dignity. Archaic funding rituals are now
forgotten. Instead, assuming artificial space as adequate continuation of the natural one in the sense of
an ecological contextualism can be an actual approach. It is obvious that disposable architectural
products having nothing to do in the built environment. Unless they are also recyclable, but this is
another story. A post-architectural one.
38
cf. Geoffrey Broadbent, A Plain Man's Guide to the Theory of Signs in Architecture, Architectural Design,
7-8, 1977
39
Gustavo Giovannoni, Vecchie Citt ed Edilizia nuova, Torino, Unione tipografico-editrice, 1931, French
version: L'urbanisme face aux villes anciennes, Paris, Le Seuil, 1998, cf. Choay, op. cit., p. 152
40
Melvin Webber, The Post-City Age, Daedalus, New York, 1968, cf. ibid.
41
cf. supra, note 5
42
cf. Georges Prec, LInfra-ordinaire, Paris, Le Seuil, 1989
Criteria for the Evaluation of Historical Monuments
14

(Shortened Version)
I.The Value attributed to Historical Monuments

Initial, memorial monuments are present in every known culture thus being a universal
phenomenon43. Unlike them, historical monuments have a finite domain in time and space. They are
being historical also in the sense that they appeared at a precise moment44 and that, in spite of their
present spreading world wide, they are a fundamentally European invention.
Since their emergence in the 15th century historical monuments have been progressively
invested with significance. These ended up by consecrating them and bring them the universally
recognised status they enjoy today. However, the nature of this significance, its elements and their
proportion have not been constant through time. One of its features, though, has remained unchanged
all along. The appearance and development of the idea of historical monument are due to the
discovery, during the Renaissance in Europe, of historical progression.
The universal recognition enjoyed today by cultural heritage denotes the fact that European
values connected to it have been integrated by cultures (such as Japanese, for instance) which by
tradition ignored European historical perspective. The explanation lies on the one hand in the
globalization of European culture (Eurocracy). On the other, in the spreading of post-industrial
identity crisis regardless to local traditions. For all these reasons debate around the concept of
historical monument is relentless and will remain so as long as the historical monument will fulfil its
memorial function.
The domain of cultural heritage has undergone a spectacular process of extension in every
sense . Unheard of categories of artefacts have been integrated to the field, such as minor, vernacular
or industrial architecture. The age of some of them is merely of a few decades. The idea itself of
urban heritage46 is older than some of the monumentified ensembles (Chandigarh, Sheffield).
45
Hence the need to continuously re-consider the values embodied by historical monuments and,
for practical reasons, of the quantifiable criteria as grounds for strategies aiming to conserve and
restore built heritage. Specialised international boards work on this issue today, producing Charters,
Conventions and Recommendations meant to establish a framework for international co-operation in
the field.
National institutions are created to integrate these documents and complement them with
specific legislation. All these developments demonstrate an unprecedented concern for cultural
heritage and its values.
1.Values Representations and Functions

The importance of cultural heritage has received a gradual recognition marked by lapses and
shifts of the emphasis. The process is in course and the debate around it is actual, vivid and diverse.
Some points are to be made for our subject.
Not only was Riegl the first to utter the key word cult47. He also divides the complex set of
values legitimating this cult in two categories. The monumental ones are the values for the memory
and those for the present. The first category comprises the value for ancient-ness, historical value and
43
Franoise Choay, Alegoria patrimoniului, Bucureti, Simetria, 1998, p. 7
44
ibid. p. 18
45
ibid. p. 2
46
ibid .p. 131
47
Alois Riegl, Le culte moderne des monuments, Paris, Le Seuil, 1993
15
intentional memorial value, while the latter is made of the utilitarian and artistic - relative and novelty
- values. It is noteworthy that Riegl includes the intentional - memorial - monuments as a subcategory of non-intentional - historical - monuments. He can do this while clearly telling the ones
from the others, due to other features they have in common: memorial monuments also acquire artistic
or other significance with the time. They too become subject of historical perspective.
Urban heritage was invented as a result of the un-doing of human settlements following
industrial revolution. Franoise Choay distinguishes not values but representations that articulate the
importance of urban heritage. These are the memorial, historical and historical - a synthesis of the first
two - representation. The latter first appears formulated by Gustavo Giovannoni in a book unjustly
ignored in recent times48.
We shall mark a few relevant stages of Choay's demonstration. In order to avoid confusion, the
term function will be used to point out various dimensions of the patrimonial phenomenon. We also
intend to recover the distance of modern architecture to built heritage artificially established by
dogmatic functionalism. The term function has been abused by trivial and restrictive reduction. We
are certain that semantic symbolic or aesthetic adequacies are also architectural function.
2.The Documentary function

Humanists during the Renaissance find out that historical progression is irreversible. Thus an
essential difference is marked from traditional cultures operating with a cyclic vision of the history of
an ever lasting present. This awakening makes humanists to see the historical monuments in the
substance of antique vestiges.
These remains first reveal themselves as a special kind of historical documents. Their research
can be corroborated with and their testimony opposed to that of the ancient texts. Only later begins the
artistic quality of antiquities enjoy the attention of Renaissance artists and scholars. The two
approaches (called by Choay the Petrarca, respectively the Brunelleschi effect49), remain parallel for
some time and will not fully intertwine until the 17th century to give birth to the modern idea of a
historical monument. Choay speaks about cognitive and artistic values to designate these two levels
for evaluation.
3.The Aesthetic function

The artistic value, already identified during the Renaissance, is not to be consecrated until the
Romanticism, when it enjoys pre-eminence in the evaluation of historical monuments. The traces time
leaves on monuments beget aesthetic value. The taste for ruins, for instance, will have an exceptional
career50. Riegl points out that the artistic value continuously changes depending of the artistic will
(Kunstwollen)51 of each epoch. Sometimes it interferes with the art historical value, doubles its sense
and often brings to contradictions when a strategy for conservation is to be established52. In fact the
dispute between interventionists and non-interventionists, begun in England two hundred years ago,
has still not been concluded in spite of the post-war experience. The destruction and subsequent
rebuilding have produced a crucial shift in conservationist mentality without succeeding, however to
establish a clear borderline between legitimate and forbidden reconstruction. It is nevertheless obvious
48
Gustavo Giovannoni, Vecchie citt ed edilizia nuova, Milano, 1931, French version: L'urbanisme face aux
villes anciennes, Paris, Le Seuil, 1998 and cf. F. Choay, op. cit. p. 151 sq.
49
Choay, op. cit. pp. 32-33
50
The taste for picturesque ruins achieves a remarkable longevity, even in texts proving little interest for art and
architecture. Cf. for instance Dame Rose Macaulay, The Pleasure of Ruins, London, 1953: And there is room
for all approaches in that ruin-wilderness, where the antiques lie sunk like galleons in a heaving sea. pp. 212213
51
Riegl, op. cit., pp. 41 i 111
52
ibid. p. 84
16
that in any case of rebuilding the aesthetic function prevailed as opposed to the function of
ancientness. Thus the latter was open towards what we shall call the identity function.
4.The Function of Ancientness

The ancientness value was from the very beginning part of the configuration of the historical
monument, implicit to the historical perspective. For a long time, only the vestiges of Greek and
Roman Antiquity were regarded as monuments. Later came the remains of Eastern Antiquity. It was
not before the assuming of national values that Gothic monuments were integrated. Early Mediaeval
ones had to wait till the end of the 19th century to be accepted.
Therefore the value of ancientness was until recently self understood and underestimated.
Modern times have their revelation and it is again Riegl who gives them an articulate expression in
190353. If the other functions of historical heritage belong to scientifically, aesthetically mediated
fields, the function of ancientness is immediately approachable to anyone. This is why it has
originated the extraordinary extension of the patrimonial domain at the end of this century. Scientific
and artistic values have not vanished from the semantic configuration of the historical monument, but
they could not explain themselves its huge world-wide success.
5.The Identity Function

The feeling of an irretrievable loss grew among the effects of industrial revolution. This
recognition has nourished debates around the theory and practice of the conservation of historical
monuments. John Ruskin is - not only for England - one of the most dedicated apostles of this idea.
We owe to him the democratisation of the historical monument but also a tendency to fetishize its
physical substance. The piety expressed in many of his writings54 has by now faded away nevertheless
it extended the domain of the function of ancientness. Vernacular architecture was discovered in
England to be recognised world wide afterwards due to its identity function mostly. It is relevant here
to mention the transformation suffered by peasant architecture when taken over by high culture
during the movements of national revival in the 19th century Europe55.
Choay formulates explicitly the identity function of built heritage in the last chapter of her
book. Our diverse monuments do not have value in themselves any longer but because we have built
them. They are fragments of a generic representation of ourselves56. Elsewhere she quotes the work of
a fiction writer. Prec57 writes about the subjective mechanisms that turn parts of the built
environment into fundamental spaces to define individual or group identity.
II.Minefields
1.The Authenticity
The final document adopted at the Nara conference on authenticity in December 1994 made
little light on the matter. Reference is made to the Venice Charter58, but there authenticity appears only
twice and marginally59. No answer is given to the major question: what relevance does authenticity
have as a criterion in the evaluation of historical monuments?
53
ibid. p. 62
54
John Ruskin, Stones of Venice, New York, Merrill & Baker, 1895
55
Ernest Gellner, Naiuni i Naionalism, Antet - CEU, 1997, pp. 90-91
56
Choay, op. cit. p. 185
57
Georges Prec, Linfra-ordinaire, Paris, Le Seuil, 1989
58
Nara document on authenticity, 10
59
Venice Charter, in S. Nistor, Protecia monumentelor i ansamblurilor istorice n documente internaionale,

Bucureti, IAIM, 1997, p.55
17
Choay's paper presented at the conference60 deals with precisely this matter. IN the positive
sense, says she, authenticity has but little relevance. The term has been taken from archaeology and
art history without precautions. In the sense of material and morphological conformity with a
fictitious original, the notion can be applied in conservation and restoration only in a relative way61.
Authenticity is important mainly in the negative sense of the forgery.
As for the material support of the built object, Choay insists on the difference between the
works of painting or sculpture and those of architecture. The example of Japanese Shinto temples is
quoted, ritually rebuilt every 20 or 30 years. It is the craftsmanship of their builders that is conserved
in Japan as part of the national heritage, not the material body of the temples.
If the artistic function of a building is the most important one, it is obvious that the maintenance
of the original support needs maximum of concern. It is the case of the church of Saint Francis in
Assisi recently mutilated by the earthquake. No matter how careful, restoration will not be capable of
retrieving the destroyed frescoes their entire authenticity as prior to the disaster. On the other hand
one cannot speak about the in-authenticity of the repainting of the Eiffel tower without talking
absurdity.
We believe that determining the domain in which authenticity can be relevant to a particular
piece of built heritage constitutes a crucial research matter. The way authenticity is expressed in each
case can also indicate with relative precision the appropriate strategies for its conservation and
restoration.
2.Restoration
Restoration was the seed of quarrels around the (effective, not merely documentary)
conservation of historical monuments from the very beginning. By the middle of this century
relatively restoration principles coagulated into a functional system excluding both extremes:
libertine interventions (like those of Viollet-le Duc or Wyatt) and non-interventionism (advocated
by Ruskin). Then came second world war destruction to impose unprecedented reconstruction that
broke the limits of earlier precepts.
Intertwined with the matter of authenticity and equally intricate, the problem of architectural
restoration must not be theorised similarly to restoration of artworks in spite of obvious similarities
(material support, significance, techniques). Differences reside in the spatial character of architecture
and in its functionality. Both aspects impose abandoning the severe criteria otherwise fully legitimate
of restoration theory62. We subscribe to the importance of keeping as much as possible the original
material of the architectural work, even when it is of small historical and aesthetic value. Yet we
support the pre-eminence of the corporeality of architectural experience and the documentary validity
of identical building techniques.
3.Significance
Progressive semantization of the built object is dealt with by Geoffrey Broadbent. According to
him all buildings carry meanings and that is why the functionalists' dream of a machine-like and
meaning-free architecture never was anything more than a dream63. In time all buildings acquire layers
of significance. When these buildings belong to built heritage, significance addresses to a collective
memory and result in behaviors associated to the cult of historical monuments.
60
Franoise Choay, apte propoziii... in Alegoria patrimoniului, op. cit.
61
ibid. p. 199
62
Cesare Brandi, Teoria restaurrii, Bucureti, Meridiane, 1996, especially pp. 109 sq.
63
Geoffrey Broadbent, A Plain Man's Guide to a Theory of Signs in Architecture, Architectural Design, 7-8,
1977, p. 475
18
The domain of artefacts susceptible to be integrated to cultural heritage expanded parallel to the
increasing importance of the function of ancientness relative to other functions determining
monumental quality. Today there is no man made object that is not potentially monumentifiable.
Such tendency points towards a stage where everything will be protected which is absurd.
4.Technology
Every artefact tends to gather memorial value once its mode of execution becomes outdated.
The hegemony of the value of ancientness, foreseen by Riegl, emerged progressively together with
the democratisation of the access to cultural heritage and also with the individualisation of culture.
Contemporary pluralism favoured the integration to the field of monuments of pieces that carry
meanings for relatively restrained groups. Sub-culture reaches the domain of cultural heritage.
The irrepressible extension of the patrimonial domain is accompanied by the dissolution and
fragmentation of its semantic field. Thus evaluation systems must achieve higher level of diversity too
in order to be used efficiently for a particular strategy of intervention. This is a contradictory process.
On the one hand, coherence must survive between general rules of the centre and particularities of
the periphery with its specific heritage to preserve. National legislation often responds well to such
challenge, like in Australia. On the other hand, adequacy must be found with each particular case,
more and more marginal.
No matter how accurate the regulations, restorers need often to invent ad hoc solutions. If today
one criterion to identify a historical monument is the outdated-ness of the technique used to make it,
the maintenance - let alone restoration - of the monument requires the keeping those techniques
alive. Specialised craftsmen must be conserved. The farther in time a particular technology was
used, the more expensive this sort of conservation will be.
III.Attempts to Quantify
1.Criteria for the evaluation
No matter how limpid the cultural functions of built heritage and how elaborate concerning
regulations, establishing a system for the evaluation of historical monuments seems a task almost
impossible.
Firstly, the values associated to historical monuments are continuously changing, often
competing each other. For instance, as Riegl pointed out, the utilitarian and the artistic value of one
and the same monument can deny the value of ancientness64.
Then, even if we put in place a methodology to operate distinctly with pre- and post-industrial
heritage, with Antique, Baroque, Mediaeval, or Modern monuments or with the minor categories.
Still in each particular case we shall have to deal with distinct conditions according to building
material, degree of conservation, size of the community involved, financial resources, professional
quality of craftsmen to carry out the works available and so on.
.A set of criteria for the evaluation is still needed, facing the two major needs: sufficient
generality to comprise all individual cases and conveniently detailed to fit the practical needs of
specialists having to cope with the work on hand.
The system built by Sanda Voiculescu65 is an attempt to respond these requirements. It is also a
successful one by annulling a part of the contradictions through the digitalisation of the problem.
Using mathematical figures is the more welcome as the terminology of relevant international
64
65
Riegl, op. cit., p. 89
Sanda Voiculescu, Stabilirea listei monumentelor istorice, propunere de metodologie, in Monumente

istorice i de art, 1, Bucureti, 1983, remade in Selectarea monumentelor de arhitectur, o posibil metod,
manuscript, Bucureti, 1998
19
documents is often vague (e.g. outstanding universal value66, or, remarkable through historical,,
archaeological, artistic, scientific, social and technical character67). Distinction is made between the
cultural value conferred to a certain architectural object and the quality of architectural monument
which, technically speaking, is a legal status68. In her conclusions, Voiculescu assumes the limits of
her approach due to the difficulties of establishing standards and proposes, instead of firm borderlines,
border zones to avoid bad decision.
In spite of a percentage of only 5 points - that we consider insufficient as compared to its real
importance - to the affective criterion (including memorial function) in the overall evaluation of
monumental quality, the quantifying method proposed by Voiculescu offers a useful tool that can help
reducing the margins of error in primal evaluation. It can be especially effective in the cases of
uncertain monumentification.
2. Education
A complete doctrine for conservation and restoration of built heritage is not possible. The
patrimonial domain is continuously changing both in its physical being and theoretical reflection.
Therefore the education of those engaged in the theory and practice of heritage preservation must be
the object of a concern of no less urgency than it was in the time of Viollet-le-Duc69.
To be adequate to todays extension of the patrimonial field a new system to create specialists
should be invented. Such programs would produce rehabilitationists rather than restorers. They
could cope with the large - though vanishing rapidly - amount of infra-ordinary70 urban textures
almost entirely lacking artistic or historical function, but bearing specific and irreplaceable identity
function.
3.Administration
Decision making with concern to built heritage must be the share of specialists. Theoretical
models have, unfortunately, too often proved limited if a natural piety in front of the endless richness
of reality was absent. It is enough to conjure controversial restoration by Viollet-le-Duc, Wyatt, or
Gilbert Scott, more recently, the emptying of historical facades.
In the case of listing the monuments it is necessary to involve all the concerned bodies in order
to respond optimally to the needs of communities - may they be village or global. The decision group
should have access to evaluations of various levels of comprehension and of diverse origin.
The examples of France and England are again relevant as to how much care can be given to
the requirement of well-founded decision making71.
IV.Conclusions: The Science of Demolishing

The tendency to integrate any artefact out of fabrication to the patrimonial domain may bring
the end of the historical monument in its original sense. To keeps everything means to demolish
nothing. All hierarchy would have last its point.
The impossibility to conclude the five hundred years old quarrel between conservationists
and progressists is the sign of a dysfunction. Between the two extremes there is, though, a right
66
Convenia pentru protejarea patrimoniului cultural i natural mondial, in S. Nistor, op. cit., p. 15, my italics
67
Convenia pentru protecia patrimoniului arhitectural al Europei in ibid., p. 25, my italics
68
Voiculescu, op. cit., p. 3
69
Entretiens sur lArchitecture, cf. Choay, op. cit.
70
cf. Prec, op. cit.
71
Choay, op. cit., Appendix 2 and Allan Dobby, Conservation and Planning, London, Hutchinson, 1978
20
measure known, it seems, by ancient civilisations. A few elements of this lost knowledge can still be
pointed out.
The Rhythm of the changes undergone by our built spaces was measurable with the unit of
more generations. Thus these changes occurred organically, comprised within the limits of a natural
search for novelty.
The Scale of intervention blew up during the last century due, mostly, to technological
progress. The roots are still to be found at the end of the Middle Ages when modern states in their
early stage begin to concentrate capital. These political structures want to give architectural
expression to their newly emerging identity which, in the 19th century should become national.
The magnificence of the buildings has always been the privilege of political and military
power. Now the semantic contents become progressively laic, but they go on using means earlier
reserved for sacral architecture. Hence the confusion that is still heavily marking European
architecture.
To re-define the essential difference between natural and artificial on the one hand, between
pre-industrial and industrial heritage on the other must be a first step towards the right measure in the
approach of any intervention.
The disappearance of Hierarchy in built environment is equivalent to the loss of a fundamental
reference system. This would explain architectural monsters of all times and, most of all, those built in
this century. The absence of the centre, natural up to a point, needs to be assumed and compensated
by a profane hierarchy of the design.
Although designed settlements are present in human history from its very beginning beside
those developed naturally, these urban spaces left enough room to free invention to avoid one of the
plagues of contemporary developments: Anonymity. The example of Barcelona is enough to prove
that the right urban policy can improve poor planning. Otherwise the chessboard plan of Cerd could
have resulted the dullest of cities which is certainly not the case. The obsession of the
Gesamtkunstwerk - or rather the ambition to control through the design every single detail in a domain
bound to change through usage cannot result anything but dead objects.
Plenik's Art
21
Plenik's Art
(Shortened Version)
... graves at my command
Have wak'd their sleepers, op'd, and let them forth
By my potent art.72
(Prospero)
Until recently, the name of Joe Plenik did not mean too much to the architectural history of
the 20th century except for a small spot: Slovene architecture. If mentioned at all, his architecture was
labelled as nostalgic or classicist. Fashions change. Today Plenik is re-discovered73, celebrated as
post-modernist avant la lettre, attached by Slovene national revival as funding father. Monographs are
published and, in spite of difficulties issuing from the immovability of architecture, travelling
exhibitions of his oeuvre are organised74. He is equally well sold by tourist enterprise. His effigy
ornaments he banknote of 500 Slovene tolars. A truly post-modern career follows the oblivion of a
quarter of century.
Plenik does not need rehabilitation. Much more interesting appears an interpretation of his
architecture from a perspective until now very little touched by research: what are those elements in
Plenik's oeuvre that make of his heritage an architecture different from the mass of post-vanguard
construction. I am thinking firstly of the death of Functionalism as a result of the wearing out of
illusions nurturing a scientific progress without limits and of the disappointment due to its semantic
poverty. Secondly, as a reaction to the side effects of industrial revolution and in counter-balance to
its result, the hegemony of functionalism, our century has witnessed the consecration and
globalization of the cult of built heritage.
Between the extremes of feckless destruction and unlimited conservationism, Plenik somehow
keeps the sensitive balance of demolition and edifying. Today, his architecture ironically shares the
fate of listed monuments with the oeuvre of the chief figures of functionalism.
By corroborating studies done by Plenik scholars with my interpretations I shall try to point
out a few of those features that make him an architect not merely different from the majority of his
contemporaries, but a fundamentally different one. I want to identify those elements that turn
Plenik's architecture into a unique contribution by the fact that it ignores the gap75 between preindustrial and post-industrial built environment. Such an approach can provide a key to understanding
the world wide cult of built heritage76 today. Following the argument of Franoise Choay, this
phenomenon is a symptom of our edifying competence about to be lost77. The way Plenik creates
architecture in the historical continuity challenges the announced death of architecture78 and
outlines the domain where the recent interest shown to the oeuvre of this architect goes beyond being
72
William Shakespeare, The Tempest, act V scene 1, in The Complete Works, Edited by W. J. Craig, Trinity
College, Dublin, Henry Pordes, London, 1993
73
The first studies on the most fertile period of Plenik's life, the Ljubljana sequence, appeared only in 1983 by
the publisher of the Polytechnic school in Headington, Oxford
74
Prague Castle hosted in 1996 a gigantic show at present on a tour across the ocean. Besides the restored (or
even reconstituted) buildings and gardens of Plenik in the Hrad documents, plans, photographs and archive
films were put on show together with small scale models or a spectacular collection of chalices designed by him.
75
Franoise Choay, Alegoria patrimoniului, Bucureti, Simetria, 1998, p. 99, the frontier of the irretrievable
76
cf. the phrase of Alois Riegl, Le culte moderne des monuments, Paris, Le Seuil, 1992
77
Franoise Choay, op.cit., cf. especially the closing chapter, The Edifying Competence
78
cf. Rem Koolhaas, After architecture, in Preston Thomas Lectures, Cornell University, 1997, quoted by
Franoise Choay, L'Architecture daujourdhui au miroir du De Re Aedificatoria in Albertiana, 1998, p. 10
22
Plenik's Art
a mere fashion. On this territory of edifying continuity the preservation of built heritage loses its
sickly composure without for that missing its anthropological sense. I believe that this integrative
feature is precisely the core of Plenik's Art.
Plenik in Vienna
The young carpenter's apprentice from Ljubljana comes to work in the furniture factory of
Leopold Theyer in Vienna. He is encouraged to ask for admission at Otto Wagner's studio. Scared
first by his obvious lack of preparation, he comes back to receive his diploma in 1898 after only four
years of studying. At Wagner's retirement in 1912, of all his pupils it was Plenik who was
recommended both by the board of the Akademie der Bildenden Kunst and Viennese specialist public
opinion to become his successor. Had it not been the chauvinism of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, he
might have remained in Vienna. As it turned out, he went to teach in Prague. His style would not keep
from the early times of the Wagnerschule but a few - important - reminiscences such as freedom in
reinterpreting historical elements79, elegance of the surface and respect paid to technical details.
Masaryk at the Castle

Architectural specialists give all the credit [for the architectural achievements at Prague
Castle] to Plenik, which amounts to a risky underestimation of Masaryk, who appears to have been
one of the most thoughtful politicians in that or any other age.80 Ian Jeffrey sustains this observation
through biographical data and quotations from writings of the first Czechoslovak president81. It
becomes clear that the Masaryk the philosopher would want a public architecture premeditated to the
last detail, [through which] the whole nation might be elevated aesthetically and morally, and general
education might be spread. Like Ruskin, Masaryk believes that humankind can be improved by
aesthetic means. There is no doubt that his influence on the new configuration of the Hrad,
Acropolis82 of the new state in search for identity, was crucial. It is important, from our point of view,
to note that the remarkable architecture invented by Plenik in Prague is also the result of his spiritual
co-operation with his commissioner.
Where did the encounter between the philosopher president and the architect take place? One a
freemason, the other a fervent Catholic, belonging to different generations and classes, they could
well never have met. Precepts like Maul halten und weiterdienen83, or turn towards yourselves
seem to have been leading (meta-architectural) principles all along Plenik's career. The modesty of
his approach is one of the resources of the openness of his architectural conceptions - in this case,
towards the ideas of his commissioner. The ideas of someone who wrote that a man (considered also
by him to be 84):who wants to think must make a bid for isolation, must be
something of a hermit85. Plenik seems to be the embodiment of such a hermit living a life built on
Masaryk's precepts, like love, humanity must be positive or what humanity, our family, our party,
79
cf. Damjan Prelovek, Ideological Substratum in Plenik's Work, in Josip Plenik, an architect of Prague
Castle, exhibition catalogue, Prague, 1996, p. 94
80
Ian Jeffrey, Architectural and Earthly Delights, in London Magazine, April-May 1998, p. 78
81
Tom Garrigue Masaryk, born in 1850 in Moravia, philosopher and sociologist, professor at the universities
from Vienna (1879), Prague (1882) and at King's College in London (1915), president of Czechoslovakia
between 1918-1935
82
Damjan Prelovek, op. cit., p. 96
83
A saying of Plenik [Hold your tongue and keep serving] from his Viennese period, cf. Klein Rudolf, Joe
Plenik, Akadmiai kiad, Budapest, 1992, p. 9. It comes perhaps from his past as a carpenter's apprentice
expressing humbleness and his incapability to theorise.
84
[zoon politikon], Tom G. Masaryk, How to Work, in The Ideals of Humanity, London, Allen & Unwin,
1938, p. 179
85
ibid. p. 158
23
Plenik's Art
our comrade needs from us is work86. The architect and his commissioner met on the common
ground of fundamental moral values.
Of course the importance of formal influences on Pleniks interventions on the Castle is not to
be disregarded. The new democracy needed an adequate style. Imperial monumentality was out of
question while vanguard modernism could associate the autocratic rgime of soviet Russia. Masaryk
understood too well Marxist collectivism87 to adopt such expression.
The publishing of The Palace of Minos at Crete (London, 1921) by Sir Arthur Evans revealed a
formal and spiritual universe that caught Plenik's imagination88. Mediterranean overtones were
already present in the mythical imagery of the Slovene architect as symbolic tools for his moderate
pan-slavism (limited as it was to Western Catholic Slavs) 89. His obelisks, pyramids, cornices and
archaic columns could have remained in the realm of pastiche, had they not been melted together in a
coherent style by the modernity90 of Plenik. A well-balanced functionality structures the semantic
load and the monumentality of his compositions that otherwise would easily slip into extravagance or
anachronism. The openness of Cretan spaces, the absence of fortifications and the free play of stylistic
elements not yet restrained into classical order were also appropriate for an expression willing to
detach itself from Austrian imperial rigour.
The spiritual friendship between Plenik i Alice Masaryk has to be mentioned here. The
devoted and moral president's daughter admires the art of the architect. Alice writes to him in 1922:
You were my teacher and in these tumultuous times I have been very grateful for the quality of your
art91. Then, in 1923 Father entrusted me with the supervision of the Castle, to watch over it, to think
it. She will never stop caring for the Castle and will keep corresponding with Plenik about it until
his death: I hope the obelisk will bear the words: truth, love and life, nothing else, and the golden cap
- a precise and perfect pyramid92 (November 13, 1956).
As a result to this interference, Plenik produced in Prague Castle an elaborate architecture,
where the concern for every detail does not, however, end up in Gesamtkunstwerk due to its
multifold openness. It is precisely this communicative character followed by Plenik all through
his life that explains his creation and constitutes the most valuable part of his heritage.
Home
Plenik moves back to Ljubljana for good in 1935 aged sixty-three. His release from the
position of the Architect of the Prague Castle was asked more and more insistently by voices seeing
him as an architect alien in his nationality and taste. There were enough native specialists who
observe with love and piety the monuments of the nation93.
His works undertaken after this date in the Slovene capital city are remarkable. Not only do
they develop further the themes invented in Prague. Due to the scarcity of funds, he often has to use
cheap materials to carry out his monumental designs. We are witnessing the opening of Plenik's
86
ibid., pp- 91-92
87
cf. Tom G. Masaryk, The Ideals of Humanity, Allen & Unwin, London, 1938, chapter II. His criticism
shows obvious closeness to Karl Popper's, cf. Societatea deschis i dumanii ei, Bucureti, Humanitas, 1993,
second volume. Also by Masaryk Die philosophischen und soziologischen Grundlagen des Marxismus, Wien,
1899
88
the Crete of the new State art, cf. Damjan Prelovek, op. cit., p. 92, phrase from a letter of Alice Masaryk
89
cf. Klein Rudolf, op. cit., p. 13
90
for this matter see Boris Podrecca, Modernit de Plenik, in LArchitecture dAujourdhui, nr. 305
91
Bhalov, Vra, Alice Masaryk, Plenik and the Castle, in Josip Plenik, an architect of Prague Castle,
exhibition catalogue, Prague, 1996, p. 82
92
ibid., p. 87; Plenik dies on January 6 1957.
93
cf. Klein Rudolf, op. cit., p. 15
Plenik's Art
24
architecture towards a social command of a great diversity. There is an outstanding coherence in his
entire oeuvre ranging from grand scale urban planning94 to the design of small objects. The sources of
this coherence are to be found in the early biography of the architect and in the solidity of the moral
basis of his whole creation.
Forms
Plenik found his inspiration by Cretan palaces when he had to invent an architecture to
symbolise new democracy. A careful analysis of a few Slovene creations of the architect95 reveals
three traditions that, melted together, were the source of most of his architectural vocabulary. These
are the Wagnerschule style, vernacular peasant tradition and Mediterranean classicism.
The sketchy ideological basis96 (pan-slavism and democracy) invents forms gathered from
remote areas of architectural history. Yet the words of this eclectic vocabulary are each time
reinvented. Not only is the accent unusual: the whole syntax is created anew thus issuing an
architecture of unique expression.
The creation of architectural riddles is combined with its unfinished composition. Found
objects are inserted to the buildings to express respect for the forerunners. Creative perception of
architecture is encouraged in order to ensure continuous re-inventing. Plenik knows that architecture
exists only if it is actively approached, involving the body and soul of its inhabitants. Therefore he
opens up his buildings to- both semantic and physical - changes. In this sense his great final
achievement, the reshaping of the building complex of Krianke monastery in Ljubljana can be
considered as his artistic testament.
Continuous Architecture
A look on the church of the Ascension in Bogojina (1925-1927) takes us, finally, to the grounds
of close relationship with built heritage thus introducing our conclusions.
Initially the small Mediaeval-Baroque village church was to be replaced by a bigger building.
Instead Plenik decided to extend the space of the old church. The way in which he solved this
problem has created an exemplary pattern of architecture open on multifold levels of perception.
Plenik began by opening three aches on the Northern side of the old nave. The two uneven
naves of the new church building comprise two and one of these arches. The old, lower nave becomes
the vestibule of the new sacral space, its apse shelters a side altar. Symmetrically to this apse a new,
cylindrical belfry was built. The whole is covered by one monumental roof covering all the spaces.
One can enter the new church by crossing the old one and by climbing the six steps of the stairs
separating the two liturgical spaces. The new altar is left behind in order to reach the new one. The
access to the tower is also ensured through the old-church-vestibule. Above the vaulting of the latter
there is room for a gallery. The pre-existent church is integrated structurally, functionally, spatially
and symbolically. It becomes threshold, measure and foundation of the new sacral building.
Modernist treatment of the volumes and surfaces goes with the simplicity of the village
community. Ornaments are scarce and always semantically loaded. Cheap materials are made to look
94
For the analysis of the urban planning for Ljubljana see especially Damjan Prelovek, Andrej Hrausky,
Janez Koelj, Pleniks Ljubljana, Dessa, Ljubljana, 1997, Damjan Prelovek, Vlasto Kopa, Zale by
Architect Joe Plenik, Delo, Ljubljana, 1992, ura Gzan Butina, Ljubljana, master Plan and Spatial
Structure, in Plenik, Urban Design, Oxford Polytechnic, Headington, Oxford, 1983
95
cf. Ian Bentley, Design for a Common Cause, in Joe Plenik, Urban Design, Oxford Polytechnic,
Headington, Oxford, 1983, especially pp. 44-46
96
for a detailed analysis of the ideological basis of Plenik's architecture see Damjan Prelovek, op. cit.
25
Plenik's Art
to their best. Gilded roses on the coffered ceiling are there for the imago coeli; the Saviour is raised on
the top of a column in front of a modernist rose-window on the main faade.
According to today's terminology, the small old church from Bogojina would have been a
historical monument of modest value. Without being a being a restorer, Plenik understood to keep
the old building without giving it a museum sort of conservation. On the contrary, his intervention
hides the old volume of the monument, meltsit, although leaving enough marks for its
identification, into the architecturally balanced main composition. The new ensemble has taken
further the old construction which otherwise would have disappeared. We are having a historical
monument whose value is enhanced by the intervention.
Architecture is open on both ends: towards the past and towards the future. Generations to
come are invited to follow the example set by Plenik. They should approach freely and respectfully
the work of past generations and their environment and leave open the way for those who would
follow.
Such approach o the context97 offers an alternative to contemporary patrimonial attitudes. Most
of these are stoned in a paralysing respect, essentially non-constructive. On the other hand,
Corbusian doctrines that have dominated building activities in the second half of this century
contributed to enlarge the gap between pre- and post-industrial built environment. They also created a
fake ideological incompatibility between the fields of building anew and preserving built heritage. In
exchange, Plenik's architectural discourse works in a coherent reference system that integrates the
whole range of constructive attitudes. The features personalising his architectural creation are all
subsumed to a set of specific values associated to architecture as anthropological activity:
- Respect shown to the works of past generations (vertical openness in time);
- Permissiveness towards later - inevitable - interventions (openness in time also
vertically);
- Creative intercourse with the commissioners (horizontal opening towards his
neighbours);
- Modesty in front of the environment - be it natural or built - in which new architecture
needs to be integrated (spatial, spherical openness).
- To respond to these requirements, Plenik uses simple strategies, independent from the
style of the architectural undertaking, therefore adaptable to any morphological
universe:
- Economical use of material means without giving up semantic maximalism;
- Care and understanding for the materials used and adequacy of these to the functions
they are meant to fulfil; materials are not necessarily expensive but they are made to look
their best;
- Observance or hierarchies in the mutual relationship of spaces, volumes, materials,
surfaces and details.
We can note that the above precepts are translatable on the domain of the preservation of
historical monuments. Ore, vice versa, it can be said hat the principles contained in the Venice Charter
are applicable to Plenik's architectural procedures. Once his idea accepted, it becomes evident that
both museifying conservationism and intolerant progressivism do wrong to architecture considered as
anthropological activity. Plenik's lesson, readable in the smallest of his architectural gestures, is this:
we are capable of creating living architecture in continuity if we act towards extant architecture with
97
For an analysis of the role of the context in Plenik's architecture see Wolfgang Kemp, Context as a field of
field of reference and as a process, in Josip Plenik, an architect of Prague Castle, exhibition catalogue,
Prague, 1996
26
Plenik's Art
non-complexes respect. In other words, we can build new architecture as if we would be restoring
historical monuments, and we can preserve built heritage as if we would create new architecture by
showing in both stages the same careful respect towards the edifying gesture, renewing and
conserving in equal share.

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The Historical Settlement Opposed to the Contemporary Town

The Historical Settlement Opposed to the Contemporary Town

The Historical Settlement Opposed to the Contemporary Town

in Diog ne, Paris, June 1983

second edition, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, 1988

in La Pierre dAngle, Paris, October 1997

The Historical Settlement Opposed to the Contemporary Town

op. cit. p. 100

The Historical Settlement Opposed to the Contemporary Town

Summarising the positions of Choay and Rykwert:

Prec, Georges, LInfra-ordinaire, Paris, Le Seuil, l989

Thucydides, cf. The Idea of a Town, op. cit., p. 23

Evolution of the Idea of Historical Monument

Evolution of the Idea of Historical Monument

Evolution of the Idea of Historical Monument

III.France and England

Franoise Choay, Alegoria patrimoniului, Bucureti, Simetria, 1998, p. 186

ibid., pp. 19 sq.

ibid., pp. 39 sq.

Evolution of the Idea of Historical Monument

National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty

Cf. National Heritage Act, 1983

Legg, op. cit., p. 22

Evolution of the Idea of Historical Monument

V.CIAM and the World Wars

VI.Romania within the European Context

cf. supra, note 5

Evolution of the Idea of Historical Monument

Cezara Mucenic (coordinator), Legea Monumentelor Istorice - proiect

Choay, op. cit., p. 4

Choay, op. cit., especially the closing chapter: La comptence d'difier

Evolution of the Idea of Historical Monument

cf. supra, note 5

cf. Georges Prec, LInfra-ordinaire, Paris, Le Seuil, 1989

Criteria for the Evaluation of Historical Monuments

Criteria for the Evaluation of Historical Monuments

I.The Value attributed to Historical Monuments

1.Values Representations and Functions

Franoise Choay, Alegoria patrimoniului, Bucureti, Simetria, 1998, p. 7

ibid .p. 131

Alois Riegl, Le culte moderne des monuments, Paris, Le Seuil, 1993

Criteria for the Evaluation of Historical Monuments

2.The Documentary function

3.The Aesthetic function

Choay, op. cit. pp. 32-33

Riegl, op. cit., pp. 41 i 111

Criteria for the Evaluation of Historical Monuments

4.The Function of Ancientness

5.The Identity Function

Ernest Gellner, Naiuni i Naionalism, Antet - CEU, 1997, pp. 90-91

Choay, op. cit. p. 185

Georges Prec, Linfra-ordinaire, Paris, Le Seuil, 1989

Nara document on authenticity, 10

Venice Charter, in S. Nistor, Protecia monumentelor i ansamblurilor istorice n documente internaionale,

Criteria for the Evaluation of Historical Monuments

Franoise Choay, apte propoziii... in Alegoria patrimoniului, op. cit.

Criteria for the Evaluation of Historical Monuments

Riegl, op. cit., p. 89

Sanda Voiculescu, Stabilirea listei monumentelor istorice, propunere de metodologie, in Monumente