Heritage Architecture Landesign, focus on Conservation, Regeneration, Innovation. Le Vie dei Mercanti. XI Forum Internazionale di Studi (Fabbrica della Conoscenza, vol. 39) / red. C. Gambardella
Strony
35-42
Data wydania
2013
Miejsce wydania
Napoli
Wydawca
La scuola di Pitagora Editrice
Język
angielski
Słowa kluczowe
theory of conservation, heritage, conservation philosophy
Abstrakt
This paper discusses the issue of physical interaction with monuments. John Ruskin suggested that “…we have no right whatsoever to touch them...”. At the same time, Violet le Duc took the opposite position, encouraging contemporaries to enter into creative interactions with relics of the past. During the hundred and fifty years this controversy remains a classic issue. At the beginning of the 21st century we face new quandaries as a result of our ‘traditional reality’ gradually migrating into ‘virtual space’. Do we still need physical interaction with authentic historic items during the current era, given that our perceptions can be so readily deceived? The human need for creativity and experience may be satisfied by digital tools, which are created and exist in the ‘virtual world’ – away from physical reality. Perhaps this is the ideal moment to discuss such dilemmas, since we have the benefit of more than a century of informed discussion and an urgent need to understand our presence in the context of the modern world, before change overwhelms our understanding of the past. Shifts in attitude towards Neo-Gothic structures are illustrated through examples from Kraków and Oxford, plans to demolish urban heritage in Vienna, Chester and Liverpool and through commercialisation of prehistoric artifacts in the Lascaux cave system.
