YEREVAN, OEMME EDIZIONISusanna Bortolotto – Politecnico di Milano Gaianè Casnati – Centro Studi e Documentazione della Cultura Armena Tigran Dadayan – National University of

Graphic design and editingGaianè CasnatiGohar HovakimyanRoberta Mastropirro

YEREVAN, November 2014

OEMME EDIZIONIDorsoduro 1602 30125 Venezia

ISBN 978-88-85822-44-3

Ministero degli Affari Esteri

With the high patronage of Ministry of Culture of RA

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Theories and practies in architectural heritage

Authors:

Maurizio Boriani, Susanna Bortolotto

CULTURAL HERITAGE PRESERVATION Theories, methods and best practices for Armenia and Country in transition

Formazione al restauro in Armenia. Sostegno alle Istituzioni locali per la Tutela e la Conservazione del Patrimonio Culturale.

This new series of publications does not pretend to rival the success of the first series published by Oemme edizioni and edited by the Center for Studies and Documentation of Ar-menian Culture (Documenti di Architettura Armena e Ricer-ca sull’Architettura Armena). Nevertheless, it is driven by the same spirit: to offer a platform for exchange and cultural co-operation between Armenian and Italian experts with a view to promote a shared culture of restoration in alignment with international standards and debates.The series deliberately does not have a rigid and predetermined layout; but an international scientific committee reviews all texts to ensure their quality. Conceived in the context of an international cooperation project aimed at supporting the in-stitutions of the Republic of Armenia, the series is essentially designed to be published in Armenian; but it will also include texts in English, Russian or Italian.The topics will be related to the different aspects of the conser-vation and the enhancement of cultural heritage. Particular attention will be given to the methodologies for achieving an in-depth knowledge of the heritage itself, which we believe should be the basis for any type of intervention. Furthermore, the series also seeks to promote a multi and inter-disciplinary approach.The first ten essays published were collected during the imple-mentation of the International Cooperation Project Resto-ration Training and Support to Local Institutions for the Pres-ervation and Conservation of Armenian Heritage co-financed by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Politecnico di Milano.

As witnessed in the past, it is hoped that the scientific collab-oration between Italian and Armenian experts will continue in the future even after the conclusion of this project and re-gardless of the possibility of finding substantial funding. Such collaboration should be based on the professional respect and personal ties that have been created in recent years between the individual experts involved in the project. Furthermore, the agreements signed between the Italian and Armenian uni-versities and the support of the Armenian Ministry of Culture could foster this collaboration.

I dedicate this collection to my father, Carlo Casnati, and to my grandfather, Onnik Manoukian, who have laid the foun-dations for the realization of this work with their great love for culture and concrete actions.Special thanks go to professors Maurizio Boriani and Frances-co Augelli who believed in this project and supported it, with passion and expertise, from the very beginning. I also wish to thank all the teachers who participated in the various activities undertaken.Finally, we cannot forget to pay a tribute to the great human and professional qualities of those who created the Center for Studies and Documentation of Armenian Culture (Centro Studi e Documentazione della Cultura Armena - CSDCA) and Oemme edizioni: Adriano Alpago Novello, Armen and Agopik Manoukian and Herman Vahramian.

Gaianè Casnati

Հրատարակությունների այս նոր հատորյակը պահ-պանելով “Հայկական մշակույթի ուսումնասիրման և փասատագրման կենտրոնի” և “Oemme” հրատարա-կության (Հայ ճարտարապետության վերաբերյալ փաս-տաթղթեր) կողմից հրատարակած առաջին հատորյակի ոգին` խթան է հանդիսանում հայ և իտալացի փորձա-գետների համագործակցմանը, մշակութային փոխա-նակմանը և, զարգացնելով վերականգնման ոլորտը, այն հասցնում է արդիական միջազգային քննարկման ասպարեզ:

Հրատարակվող հատորյակի առաջին մասերը հավաք-վել և համաֆինանսավորվել են Իտալիայի արտաքին գործերի և Միլանի Պոլիտեխնիկի կողմից, մշակութային ժառանգության պահպանման և վերականգնման ոլորտում միջազգային համագործակցության «Օժանդակություն տեղական հաստատություններին» ծրագրի շրջանակում:

Հատորյակը, չունի միտումնավոր խիստ և նախո-րոշիչ դրույթներ, այն կազմվել է միջազգային գի-տական կոմիտեի կողմից, ինչը երաշխավորում է տեքստերի գիտական որակը: Հատորյակը, ստեղծ-վելով միջազգային համագործակցության ծրագրի շրջանակում, ուղղված՝ օժանդակելու Հայաստանի Հանրապետության համապատասխան ուսումնական հաստատություններին, որոշվել է հիմնականում կազմվել հայերեն լեզվով, թեև քիչ չեն նաև տեքստեր` անգլերենով, ռուսերենով և իտալերենով:

Արծարծվող թեմաները վերաբերում են մշակութային ժառանգության պահպանման և արժևորման տարբեր հարցերին՝ առանձնահատուկ ուշադրություն դարձնելով հենց մշակութային ժառանգության լավագույնս ճանաչմանը, ինչը, կարծում ենք, որ ցանկացած տեսակի միջամտության հիմքն է հանդիսանում: Փորձ է արվում

նաև զարգացնել բազմառարկայական և միջառար-կայական կապը:

Ինչպես նախորդ տարիներին, ցանկալի է հայ և իտալացի փորձագետների միջև գիտական համագոր-ծակցությունը շարունակվի նաև ապագայում՝ այս ծրագրի ավարտից հետո, հիմնվելով մասնագիտական հարգան-քի և վերջին տարիներին առանձին փորձագետների միջև առաջացած անձնական համակրանքի վրա, ինչ-պես նաև միջհամալսարանական համաձայնագրերի և ՀՀ Մշակույթի նախարարության աջակցության վրա (անկախ մեծ ֆինանսավորումների հնարավորությունից):

Այս ժողովածուն նվիրում եմ հայրիկիս՝ Կառլո Կազնատիին և պապիկիս՝ Օնիկ Մանուկյանին, ովքեր մշակույթի հանդեպ ունեցած իրենց սիրով և անձ-նական օրինակով հիմք ստեղծեցին այս աշխատանքի իրականացման համար:

Առանձնահատուկ շնորհակալություն եմ ուզում հայտնել դասախոսներ Մաուրիցիո Բորիանիին և Ֆրանչեսկո Աուջելլիին, ովքեր հավատացին այս ծրագրին և ոգևորվածությամբ ու բանիմացությամբ աջակցեցին առաջին իսկ քայլերից, ինչպես նաև բոլոր այն դասախոսներին, ովքեր մասնակցություն ունեցան ծրագրի տարբեր գործընթացներում:

Ի թիվս վերոհիշյալների, չի կարելի մոռանալ Ադրիանո Ալպագո Նովելլոյին, Արմեն և Հակոբիկ Մանուկյաններին և Հերման Վահրամյանին, ովքեր իրենց մարդկային և մասնագիտական մեծ հատկությունների շնորհիվ նպաստեցին “Հայկական մշակույթի ուսումնասիրման և փաստագրման կենտրոնի” և “Oemme” հրատարակության ստեղծմանը:

Գայանե Կազնատի

Scientific Honorary Committee

Arev Samuelyan – Vice Minister of Culture RA

Yuri Safaryan – National University of Architecture and Construction of Armenia

Sargis Tovmasyan – National University of Architecture and Construction of Armenia

Patrick Donabédian – Université d’Aix - Marseille

Armen Abroyan – Agency for Historic and Cultural Monuments Preservation

Francesco Augelli – Politecnico di Milano

Maurizio Boriani – Politecnico di Milano

Susanna Bortolotto – Politecnico di Milano

Gaianè Casnati – Centro Studi e Documentazione della Cultura Armena

Tigran Dadayan – National University of Architecture and Construction of Armenia

Lorenzo Jurina – Politecnico di Milano

Lyuba Kirakosyan – National University of Architecture and Construction of Armenia

Luigi Marino – Università degli Studi di Firenze

Grigor Nalbandyan – National University of Architecture and Construction of Armenia

Maria Pia Riccardi – Università degli Studi di Pavia

Hovhannes Sanamyan – National University of Architecture and Construction of Armenia

Cristina Tedeschi – Politecnico di Milano

Scientific Committee

Table of contents

Cap. 1The foundations of conservation 9

Cap. 2Restoration, matter and innovative technology 18

Bibliography 25

International charter 26

9FORMAZIONE AL RESTAURO IN ARMENIA. SOSTEGNO ALLE ISTITUZIONI LOCALI PER LA TUTELA E LA CONSERVAZIONE DEL PATRIMONIO CULTURALE

Man passes – his shadow remains(Chinese aphorism)

1. The foundations of conservation

Over the course of the history of ideas and construction the term conservation has become loaded with often diverse and sometimes even contradictory meanings. Nevertheless there is one recogniseable unifying aspect, that everybody thinks of conservation as that particular type of project/intervention carried out on a pre-existing structure which is considered valuable as historical evidence (monument, document) from an era now passed.

When conservation work is presented to the public one often hears talk of a return to former splendour, as if the task of conservation were to turn back the hands of time, returning to a mythical original state – how it was, where it was – in which the work was found at the moment of its creation. Curiously, while common sense tells us that for an elderly person it’s impossible to return to the years of youth, many people believe that this is possible for a building or a work of art. Actually, if you just give a little more thought to it, you realize that even for manufactures and buildings a return to the past is impossible: the signs that time has left on them are indelible and their removal, if and when possible, would only erase the signs of wear and certainly not reconstruct their authenticity, which consists of the matter with which, in its time, the work was made and the marks that natural and human events have left on it.

One of the acquisitions of contemporary conservation philosophy is precisely this: you don’t restore the

Figure No. 1 - The “Fathers” of the restoration: (upper from the left ) Victor Hugo, Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, John Ruskin; (bottom from the left) Camillo Boito, Alois Riegl, Marc Bloch.

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image but the matter of the work; restoration is first and foremost the conservation of the work’s au-thenticity. The task of conservation is not returning to an impossible past - as Viollet-le-Duc (Paris, 27th January 1814 – Lausanne, 17th September 1879) would have claimed, through “stylistic restoration”, with the redesign of a potential complete and united state, even if this were only conceived of and never carried out: “restoring a building is not conserving it, repairing it or replacing it, rather it means returning the monument to a primigenial condition, even if this may never have existed” (E.E. Viollet-le-Duc, en-try “Restauration” in the Dictionaire raisonné de l’architecture française du IX siècle au XVI siècle, Paris, 1854-68) - but rather enabling the work to be handed down to the future, guaranteeing the respect and care of the material document rather than a loss of identity and irreversible falsification.

From this standpoint, in today’s conservation language we speak of conservation: (virtuous alternative practice of respect and care of monument/document), which means ensuring through our efforts that the work entrusted to us will still be available for the future, for ourselves and the generations to come, eliminating or slowing down the causes of deterioration that endanger it so that it can be enjoyed and used.

This important conclusion was reached over approximately 150 years of History of conservation made of the “condemnations” and “lessons” of the great Masters of civil European thought (including Victor Hugo, John Ruskin, William Morris, Camillo Boito, Alois Riegl, Georg Dehio and others), History as a common heritage, and indispensable cultural and ethical reference.

The first European supporters of conservation counted Victor Hugo (Besançon, 26th February 1802 – Paris, 22nd May 1885) among them.

Figure No.2 - The books of Viollet-le-Duc and Ruskin


Figure No.3 Viollet-le-Duc, the Castle of Carcassonne: before and after the Stylistic Restoration.

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Between 1825 and 1832 Hugo published Guerre aux demolisseurs, in which the wreckers were not the revolutionary Jacobeans involved in storming the Bastille of Paris, but “restorers” who arrogantly inter-vened on France’s monuments.

Hugo’s commitment was aimed at ensuring that laws of protection for monuments were enacted as soon as possible, but not just that, “...a law for art, a law for French nationality, a law for memories, a law for cathedrals, a law for the great products of human intelligence, a law for the collective work of our fathers, a law for history, a law for the irreparable that is destroyed, a law for the most sacred treasure a nation has after the future, a law for the past.”

Victor Hugo would soon become emblematic at a European level; in the book Nôtre-Dame de Paris from those same years he wrote a dissertation on the function of architecture in Time. Architecture as the great book of humanity, a book of stone and, he prophesies in a sentence, an impending danger, “Ceci tuera cela”, that is to say, the book of paper will kill the book of stone, architecture. Victor Hugo’s lucid prophecy seemed to be increasingly incumbent on the fate of historical architecture, as much of it risked being archived like a “pale simulacrum of paper”. The effects of the campaign against the destruction of French monuments would sensitise public opinion towards the conservation of material heritage: it is in fact the duty of a people to protect and safeguard historical monuments!

The new conservation culture took root and became a movement of ideas; it was a momentous transi-tion. In the mid-nineteenth century the power of those, such as John Ruskin with his Seven lamps of architecture (1849), who maintained that “...so-called ‘restoration’ is the worst form of destruction, ac-companied with false description of the thing destroyed,” was explosive.

In 1849 the work of John Ruskin provoked a shock to the conformism of European conservation and must be considered a breaking point, capable of stimulating the birth of the “Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB)”, which saw the active involvement of William Morris (24th March 1834 – 3rd October 1896), Philip Webb (12th January 1831 – 17th April 1915) and their friends in countless campaigns against restoration (Anti-Scrape or Anti-Restoration Movement) and against the destruction of architectural heritage, which belongs to all humanity. The debate continued in Italy into the late nineteenth century with the essential contribution of Camillo Boito (Rome, 30th October 1836 – Milan, 28th June 1914), who put the lessons of Ruskin and Morris to good use. To Boito it was necessary “to conserve, not to restore”, which meant taking every type of “addition” that an old structure may require beyond discipline and therefore into new planning terri-tory: “Far io devo così che ognun discerna / essere l’aggiunta un’opera moderna” (Do this I must so that everyone understands it is a modern addition). Boito clearly expressed the idea that the monument should be treated and respected like a document, that restoration interventions must be limited to the correct conservation of the existing and additions must follow the rules of contemporary planning. Just like Hugo, Boito reaffirms that the monument is a book, a stone witness, a handwritten document and can therefore welcome more pages into its chronological palimpsest (quality additions of contemporary planning to be precise), the writings of new generations of architects.

Camillo Boito’s reflections launched the construction of the corpus of the first Italian Charter of Re-storation (1883). On the basis that “...it is necessary to consolidate rather than restore, repair rather than consolidate, maintain rather than repair” – golden advice indeed – and adding that if “additions” and “renovation works” must be carried out, they must stand out from and not blend into the old facies; he introduces the concept of distinguishability between old and new, against complete stylistic restorations. “Completions, if they are indispensable, and additions, if they cannot be avoided, must not look like old work, but clearly show that they are the work of today” (Camillo Boito, I restauri in architettura, 1893).


However, conservation is not inaction: it is necessary to combat the causes that threaten the survival of the work, whether they are due to natural phenomena, wear, fatigue or improper uses, present or past.

Another conviction that must be questioned is that a work is significant solely in its original state, the moment immediately after its creation. In this case, too, it’s easy to demonstrate that that was certainly a decisive, incomparable moment, but that equally significant can be later moments, when the work was used or even transformed. As each one of us is an entity representing a whole life’s story, so an object (and especially a building) is an entity as the original work but also as all of the events and stratifications that it has undergone through time, from its origins to the present day.

Finally, it needs to be said that we now have enough sensitivity to appreciate the documentary historical value of many works that once seemed to us to be insignificant. For example, now included in assets of cultural and legislative interest are: farm buildings, industrial archaeology, the 20th century heritage, the traditional agrarian landscape.

Taking to extremes the consequences of what we have said the inference is that whatever mark human-kind has left on earth is per se of interest because it is potentially rich in meanings that can be found through an aesthetic or scientific experience.

Furthermore, past history has shown that what was once viewed in negative terms today is greatly appre-ciated: remember, for example, that in their original meanings terms like gothic, baroque.Impressionist connoted styles that were negatively viewed. Hence the relativity of the historical judg-ment: there is no absolute but only relative artistic worth, wrote Alois Riegl (Linz, January 14th, 1858 - Vienna, June 17th, 1905) in The Modern Cult of Monuments, published in 1903.

At the turn of the new century, it would be the timely theoretical contributions of Riegl (charged with the organisation of the monument protection service by the Austrian government) to define the goals and limits of correct conservation intervention. He notes that the approach to conservation is an eternal conflict of opposing demands. If the objective is HISTORICAL VALUE, this “is greater the more intact the original appearance of the monument is... for historical value, alterations and partial deterioration are unwanted and unwelcome additions”, consequently the initial objective leads the worker/restorer to return to the style unitarity of the architectural work. If the objective to pursue is instead the VALUE OF AGE of the monument, this “is manifested... in an imperfection, in a lack of unitarity, in a tendency towards deterioration of form and colour...” therefore age value will lead the architect to a ‘non-inter-vention’, working against the very demands of conservation because “the cult of age value condemns... not only every violent destruction of the monument at human hands... but also, at least in principle, ever conservational action and restoration...”.

So how are we to resolve the conflict between these two values? Riegl maintains that “respectful human intervention is a lesser evil for the cult of age than a more violent natural intervention... the interests of both values go... hand in hand, even if age value only requires a slowing down, whereas historical value requires the total blocking of the process of dissolution; in terms of today’s care of the monument the main point remains... that a conflict between the two values seems to have been avoided at present. What is the true enemy of monuments? Riegl sees the VALUE OF THE NEW as the enemy of the good resto-rer, that is the popular prejudice by which intervention on a decayed context is not considered successful if it does not eliminate every embarrassing sign of dilapidation, of “disintegration” and deterioration, in the name of systematic “renovation” or replacement of structural and material components; a very present value, especially in work on historical widespread construction...”

Finally, Reigl recognises and assigns importance to the VALUE OF USE as necessary to guarantee the

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Figure No. 4 - “Fondaco dei Turchi” (Venice): before the Restoration of the façade.

Figure No.5 - “Fondaco dei Turchi” (Venice): after the Restoration; it was rebuilt (the late nineteenth century) in “Byzantine Revival” style by Federico Berchet.


survival of the monument itself thanks to its consistent use. The innovation of Alois Reigl’s thought also lies in having supported the con-cept of monument/document. “Every human work, even the smallest, is a witness to history and culture and is a document of historical and cultural development.” A concept that would subsequently be developed at the Annales Scho-ol (École des Annales o Les Annales) by Lucien Febvre (Nancy, 22nd July 1878 - Saint-Amour, 26th September 1956), Marc Bloch (Lyon, 6th July 1886 – 16th June 1944), Fernand Braudel (Luméville-en-Ornois, 24th August 1902 - Clu-ses, 28th November 1985) and followers. It was Bloch in the book The Historian’s Craft (original title Apologie pour l’Histoire ou Métier d’Histo-rien), published posthumously in 1949 by Lucien Febvre, that claimed “the thinking of historians on the concepts of ‘document’ and ‘monument’ has tended to equate the two terms, recognising for every document of the past the dignity of a monument, that is, an object capable of transmit-ting the memory of the facts (monere – remind), life (docere – teach) and ideas of our predeces-sors.” The new method for a whole History, a full History, would therefore be conducted not only with written documents (indirect sources) – where they exist – but also without written do-cuments if they do not. How is it possible to do so, maintains Febvre, if not “by means of all that

Figure No. 7 - Raffaele Stern and the Colosseum, Rome (1806/1807): the teaching of Archaeological Restoration.

Figure No. 6 – The Colosseum, Raffaele Stern: not only conservation of matter, but also the events of instabili-ty, (as if Stern stopped a frame).

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Figure No. 8 - Capitolium, Roman temple, is located in Brescia. The pediment and portico were reassembled (1939-1945) with the reintegration of lacunae with diffe-rent material: brick and concrete (Athens Charter 1931).

Figure No. 9 - Capitolium. Only one column of the por-tico survived. This was supported by pillars and arches of brick and concrete (1939-1945): traditional technolo-gies, re-edited in innovative and modern forms.

which the ingenuity of the historian uses to produce his honey, in the absence of the flowers normally used. Therefore, by words. By signs. By landscapes and bricks.. by the research on stones by geologists, or the analysis of metal swords by chemists. In a word, by means of everything which, being of man, de-pends on man, serves man, expresses man, signifies the presence, activities, tastes and behaviour of man. Is it not perhaps true that part of our work as historians is the constant attempt to make dumb things talk, to make them reveal that which alone they do not reveal about man and the society that produced them, in order to build that vast supportive network of mutual aids between them that can compensate for the absence of a written document?” (Lucien Febvre, Verso un’altra storia, Einaudi, Torino, 1989, p.20. The Struggle for History [Combats pour l’histoire]).

The task of the historian and of the worker/restorer in conservation practices is increasingly defining itself as respect for materiality, in the sense of material culture, and care of cultural assets that are mate-rial testimonies with civil value.

In support of good practices in the field of restoration were the ‘International Conservation Charters’. We will mention at least three here, the ‘Athens Charter’ (1931), the ‘Venice Charter’ (1964) and the ‘Am-sterdam Charter’ (1975).

The first document known as the ‘Athens Charter’, produced by participants in the International Confe-rence of Experts for the Protection and Conservation of Monuments, Art and History, confirmed the validity of the dictates of the first ‘Italian Conservation Charter’ by Camillo Boito in 1883 and marked an important turning point in this specific subject. The Charter banned restorations, stylistic reconstructions and took the time to consider maintenance and care as well as physical and chemical techniques for rein-


Figure No. 10 - Ca 'Granda, Milano: photo after the bombings (1943).

Figure No. 11-12 - Restoration of Liliana Grassi (1954). The "new" is juxtaposed to the "old". The interface is recognizable thanks to undercut or "scuretto" of the "new thickness" over the "old surface".

forcement and conservation of materials to be implemented only after careful examination of degrada-tion and instability.

The ‘Venice Charter’ drawn up by Roberto Pane (Taranto, 21st November 1897 – Sorrento, 29th July 1987) and Piero Gazzola (Piacenza, 6th July 1908 – 14th September 1979) for the second international exhibition of monumental conservation in Venice, clearly sets forth the working methods that are consi-dered incorrect and therefore to be avoided: “1) stylistic or analogical completion; 2) removals or demo-litions that erase the setting of the monument over time; 3) the removal, reconstruction or relocation to a place other than the original; 4) the alteration of the accessory or environmental conditions with which it came to us; 5) the alteration or removal of the “patina” of the historical monument/document.

Point four represents a further step forward with respect to the range of conservation, it moves from the Monument to its context, from the historical centre to the cultural landscape. Conservation changes scale, it becomes a functioning instrument in a more general plan of protection and development on an urban and regional scale. In 1975 – the year of European architectural heritage – the ‘Amsterdam Char-ter’ accepted that conservation “...must not be regarded as a minor problem, but as the main goal of urban and regional planning.” It was here that a new term was coined, ‘integrated conservation’, namely conservation integrated into new planning and technical and economic management strategies of town planning on diverse scales.

In the past thirty years the polemics surrounding restoration/conservation have seen prevail a type of

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thinking that, while originating from very different schools, consolidated around ideas of respect for the material fact of architectural works and the concept of authenticity/integrity of the work. The ICO-MOS Nara document (1994) extended the concept of authenticity, which became no longer strictly con-nected to the physical dimension of works and artefacts. This document claimed that authenticity itself could not be defined universally or on the basis of fixed criteria, but that it was always necessary to take into consideration the differences between different cultures.

In fact, it underlined that the material dimension cannot be the sole criteria for authenticity: the customs, traditions and spiritual values that the object/heritage carries with it are equally deserving of protection. The need arose therefore to protect intangible assets, which a UNESCO conference in Paris in 2003 defined – “by ‘immaterial assets’ it is intended practices, representations, expressions and knowledge – as well as the tools, objects, artefacts and cultural spaces associated with these – that communities, groups and, in some cases, individuals recognise as an integral part of their cultural heritage. That intangible cul-tural heritage, passed down from generation to generation, is constantly recreated by communities and groups interested in compliance with their environment, their interaction with nature and their history, and gives them a sense of identity and continuity, thus promoting respect for cultural diversity and human creativity”.

A proper conservation intervention cannot currently transcend an initial act of familiarisation which is effected through historical research of direct and indirect sources in order to reconstruct the phases of construction in chronological order.

The next step is a geometric and material survey and assessment of the degradation/instability; funda-mental cartographic bases for organising the conservation project.Moreover it has become clear that there is a need to practice techniques of preventive diagnostics (a growing area of research today) and monitoring which allow the object of the intervention to be passed on in the future, with maximum possible attention to its historical truth.

The conservation project should also keep in mind its context and surrounding conditions so as to inter-vene on the intrinsic and extrinsic causes of degradation (structural or material). The examination con-ducted should consciously lead to a correct conservation project that on the one hand sees a commitment aimed at any possible consolidation, and on the other hand at the care for the existing material facies and its stratified palimpsest, thanks to a planned maintenance programme. Finally, in respect of the VALUE OF USE, the need for new interventions to be expressed in contemporary language – language of the 21st-century man – asserts itself, as a quality design addition thus producing extra authentic cultural and economic value.

2. Preservation, materials and innovative technology

The concept of “monument” has been enormously enriched, starting with reflection on the themes of material culture and anthropological research and gradually including new types of cultural assets and the entire territory humans inhabit. These new topics imply the fact that, on the small as well as large scale, the amount of care we need to take with what we have inherited from the past has been greatly increased. This reasoning is often accused of being prohibitionist: if all of the past is potentially interesting and everything has to be conserved, no transformational intervention should be permitted for the simple fact that it would mean the loss of the pre-existent.

We don’t believe that this objection is a valid one because it confounds a value judgment with a univocal work decision: instead, what is intending in speaking of conservation is that a transformation of the


Figure No. 13 a, b, c - Vat Phou, Laos - Topographical survey and geometrical survey of Nandin Hall: plan and section.

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Figure No.14 a, b - Vat Phou, Laos. Nandin Hall, investigation about the structural and physical damages.

world is in any case inevitable, whether made by people or nature, but that this transformation needs to be guided by an awareness of the meaning of what we have inherited from the past and what would be lost should it be unwittingly destroyed.

We would like to give some examples here, to be better understood. We know today that there are many possible ways of dating the epoch of a manufacture’s creation using specific age-measuring techniques (carbon 14, thermoluminescence, tree-dating, etc.); and we also know that recent progress in genetics enables us to acquire information - until just recently unimaginable - about the composition/provenance of and reciprocal relations between organic materials; we have also learned to use stratigraphic survey techniques not only for the subsoil but also to study architecture. All these examinations often enable us


to come to new conclusions about the age of a building or some of its parts, about the living conditions of the people who inhabited it, about the environmental context in which they lived. This is informa-tion that would be lost if we didn’t conserve the matter in which it is incorporated. In the same way, the chemical and physical tests we use today to study decay phenomena and their causes and to assess the efficacy of possible conservation work make it possible to deal with restoration problems on concrete scientific bases such as: detailed knowledge of the materials constituting the objects entrusted to us, the chemical and physical phenomena to which they have been subjected, the environmental conditions that could have an influence on them. All of this is not only important in reconstructing history but also in identifying conservation problems and, for the future, regulating inspections and maintenance. It’s easy in this case to draw parallels with the medical sciences and the importance diagnostics and treatment have acquired for them: in our case, too, proper treatment comes from diagnosis and the conservation project.

Finally, it should be remembered that an open mind to information sciences and techniques is in this case absolutely indispensable because such minute attention to the tiniest details of the subject necessarily entails the acquisition and handling of a huge amount of data that cannot be processed without the help of computers. We are talking about detailed surveys of current conditions, creating mathematical models to interpret the decay phenomena underway, depicting – effectively, really and virtually – the reality we are dealing with: for the control of project stages, for the future management of cultural assets and in order to safeguard and valorise them for cultural or tourism purposes. Modern restoration work requires con-tributions from a great many fields and techniques. The restorer is not a simple re-user of old methods, at most supported by good knowledge of the history of art (and we do hope an end has come to modes of re-implementation, re-design in identical style, reinstatement, fake mimicry, simplification and inter-ventions striving to restore a mythical lost integrity!). This discipline must make us think about the role played by methods and analytic techniques, the plurality of approaches and skills, but above all about the aims of conservation as an attempt to perceive a complexity, an interrelation and a superimposition of times, things and “different ways”. Restoration as an acceptance of evolutional dynamics, to be studied with “instrumentation” capable of coping with a growing complexity that extends even to the materials and finishes of the modern and the contemporary. And it is precisely the continual and tireless search for other means of knowledge and of verification, the stubborn will to find always-new paths to explore through an interdisciplinary dialectic, that has increasingly given conservation an eclectic and multidisci-plinary approach.

It is indubitable that if there is a polytechnic field par excellence this is surely restoration, above all in its meaning of conserving and valorising the constructed of the past: we think we have already evidenced the contributions that can be made to this field – not just the traditional historical sciences and architectu-re but also physics and chemistry, information science, the environmental sciences, biology, genetics, etc. From this viewpoint, however, it can easily be seen that all these fields enjoy their own autonomy, their own scientific statute, their own specific reasons for developing research. Often restoration has come to use cognitive techniques and work methods originating in other fields of research for similar, but not necessarily identical, purposes: geotechnical surveys, industrial chemistry, the aerospace industry, etc.

Sectors that are obviously richer, in which immediate economic gain is able to support the huge expense of scientific testing and the techniques it uses. As far as we are concerned it’s a question of making two worlds meet, creating a common language, sharing the paths of research being pursued, pinpointing pos-sible collaborations, defining shared projects, letting the public of possible future users know what results have been reached and what potential they have. It’s obvious that this field opens up great development possibilities, both in research and in its applications to concrete cases of work.

One possible path to take could be creating a system analyzing and monitoring the technologies compa-nies have developed that can be used in the cultural heritage field.

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In detail, an “enterprise and cultural heritage” project could aim at building a technology/application matrix, another of enterprises/technologies and, finally, analyze the most significant companies, thus de-vising some “scenarios” of predicted technology in which to spotlight not only existent solutions as yet unapplied to the cultural assets context but also possible technical innovations to what is currently being used in the conservation sector. From the technological standpoint the “cultural assets system” presents a singular situation. On the one hand, in fact, there are very few innovations originating exclusively for application to this sector. This is not surprising: the size of the “market” for technologies for cultural-as-set work is in fact not large enough to justify the investments required for radical types of innovation.

On the other hand, however, the problems of protecting and conserving cultural heritage involve a bro-ad spectrum of fields and techniques, some specific, others borrowed from other research sectors. They regard not only problems of knowledge (history and materials), diagnostics, phenomena monitoring and conservation and restoration techniques but also the more general issues of protection oversight, of territorial and landscape planning, of budgeting intervention work, of circulating knowledge and of valorisation.

Many of these areas also touch on other parts of the economy, whose size and potential are very often in-centives to technological innovation. In the cultural assets field these innovations are therefore characte-rized less as “original” than as cross-fertilizations able to transfer to the applicative context of cultural heritage the innovations developed in other fields.

Just as examples, we can list some of the themes on which it was possible, in recent years, to “transfer” innovations generated in other sectors to the cultural heritage world:

- Diagnostics and monitoring, with particular reference to the development of non-invasive, even wireless, techniques and surveying instruments, and the perfecting of minimum diagnosis proto-cols and control of indicators of decay progression; techniques for characterizing materials, dating manufactures, monitoring the effectiveness of work.

- New materials and work technologies for the conservation of architectural manufactures, va-luable architectural surfaces and works of historical-artistic interest; the development of materials and methods for cleaning (biotechnologies, laser, etc.), consolidating and protecting surfaces (poly-meric materials and nanotechnologies); the conservation of “modern” materials, the writing of protocols for conservation project quality.

- Work methods for structural reinforcement and consolidation with particular reference to histori-cal buildings in seismic zones, bearing in mind the new paths of research financed by civil defence partly to aid the new normative.

- Information technology to learn about and manage cultural asset information (territorial databan-ks, web-GIS, programmed maintenance, cataloguing, archive management, etc.).

- Innovative ICT technologies for public administration and widespread asset protection (landsca-pe, historical centres, territorial asset systems); oversight of cultural assets, their relation to budge-ting and territorial and urban planning, relations with civil defence (with particular reference to the vulnerability of historical centres), etc.

- Museum conservation, monitoring environmental conditions and the state of conservation of manufactures; studying phenomena of interaction between the environment and the manufactures; prediction models for scheduling programmed maintenance.


Figure No. 15 - Vat Phou, Laos. Nandin Hall, Conservation project: the yard. Dismantling of the damaged structu-res from top to bottom, individually marking and documenting of each stone. Detailed survey of each course and systematic, course-by-course, storing of stones. Drawing, Washing and Numbering, (Fondazione Lerici, photo).

Figure No. 16 - Vat Phou, Laos. Nandin Hall, NW side of the platform before and after the restoring of row -1,(Fondazione Lerici, photo).

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- Preparing big exhibitions: risks connected with loaning and moving great works of art; identifying and monitoring sensitive parameters for categories of manufactures; drafting procedure protocols; risk control and predictions; data archiving.

The solutions adopted in these contexts were developed in very different sectors: health, defence, geolo-gical surveying, aerospace, telecommunications, etc.

The building materials and services industry was itself able, in certain cases, to innovate, above all in the field of products to conserve and protect manufactures. These are manufacturing sectors in which Italy has a strong presence on the national and international markets. But there are fields of research in which many developments are still possible (and necessary). In particular, there is a lack of coordination between research centres, protection boards, companies, conservation yard and museums foremen, co-ordination that should be aimed at exchanging experiences and defining shared projects for the purpose of creating the innovation born from linking different fields.

An effective link and the creation of a structured relationship between university and enterprise – aimed at spurring technological innovation in the cultural assets field, with more systematic knowledge of the sector – could, in the last analysis, also be of help in the co-preparation of requests for funds for research and technology-transfer projects.

The work procedures used for conservation, the rigorousness of responsible restoration, non-destructive or minimally invasive diagnostics and, finally, new innovative technologies can - together with an acquired ethic born from individual and collective responsibility for conserving the heritage of the past – preserve historical integrity and enable architectural and environmental assets to endure through time.

The particular nature of these inalienable collective material assets (monument, widespread building, historical centre, cultural setting) and their unique nature, puts us in a position of moral obligation both in terms of safeguarding cultural heritage as a resource, which we hope might be bequeathed to future ge-nerations in all its unique worth as evidence, and of making sector professionals, citizens and the political world aware of its genesis, its History, its vulnerability and its protection. This is a task of extraordinary technical and social commitment, a cultural challenge that can only be advanced if it becomes conscious and collective action (1).

Note (1) The first paragraph was written by Susanna Bortolotto, Researcher in Architectural Conservation at Dipar-timento di Architettura e Studi Urbani at Politecnico di Milano; the second paragraph was written by Maurizio Boriani, Full Professor in Architectural Conservation at Dipartimento di Architettura e Studi Urbani at Politecnico di Milano.


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Jokilehto, Jukka Ilmari, A history of architectural conservation. D.Phil. Thesis, I.A.A.S., York, 1986. www.iccrom.org/pdf/ICCROM_05_HistoryofConserva-tion00_en.pdf

Riegl Alois, Der moderne Denkmalkultus. Sein Wesen, seine Entstehung, Wien/Leipzig 1903.

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Bibliography

1931 – The Athens Charter, Charter for the Restoration of Historic Monumen-ts. - www.icomos.org/athens_charter.html

1964 – The Venice Charter, International Charter for the Conservation of Hi-storic Monuments - www.icomos.org/venice_charter.html

1975 – Declaration of Amsterdam - www.icomos.org/docs/amsterdam.html

1994 – The Nara Document on Authenticity - www.international.icomos.org/charters/nara_e.htm

2003 – Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage - http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/en/convention/

International Charters

Documents

YEREVAN, OEMME EDIZIONISusanna Bortolotto – Politecnico di Milano Gaianè Casnati – Centro Studi e Documentazione della Cultura Armena Tigran Dadayan – National University of