The relevant national, regional or local authorities have a duty to encourage the
most appropriate use to be made of the protected heritage of this period.
Encouragement should be given to finding new uses which take account of the needs of present-day life providing the new use that does not run counter to the architectural or historical significance. Could you please share some examples?
Churches become museums/cultural centers/centers to provide living space for poor?
Dear Marcel,
Churches are consecrated areas. Churches' main function is to respect and believe in God. Of course, it does not mean that churches cannot be places of expositions and museums.
Dear All,
In the former Soviet Union churches have been used as store houses and flats. Comrades were inventive people.
Dear All,
Monasteries confiscated by the states became schools and universities. E.g. Gembloux (Benedictine monastery) in Belgium or Gödöllő ( Premonstratensian monastery) in Hungary.
Dear Amir,
I think that keeping them as museums and/or cultural/educational landmarks is a fine idea in my view!
Architectural Heritage, should be preserved as it is, without much changes. I do not agree to to finding new uses, that are distant from the original purpose.
Disused buildings and sites located in urban and extra-urban areas, industrial archaeology:
With reference to the growing edification demand and the demographic and infrastructural transformations of the cities, has become critical individualize a global strategy for the reuse of abandoned industrial buildings or representative ones (i.e. cinemas, theatres, buildings for the craft industry, barracks, incinerates, spinning mill, etc. ...), based on a careful and interdisciplinary analysis of processes which alter the built environment.
Left to the tide of time, devastated industrial complexes, zones, warehouses and other objects of our industrial past are neglected and replaced by new „industries“(shopping malls, entertainment centers, parking lots etc.). This causes the cities to lose their landmarks, elements of city morphology and memory of a place and manufacture.
It will take an interdisciplinary engagement and clear tendencies about its future use and valorization, from urban, architectural and economic aspect.
From 1860 onwards a „fever of restoration“ (after the Italian unification 1867) destroyed lots of historic surfaces [after Danzl 1995]
Photos: 19th cent. facades near Or San Michele, behind Palazzo Strozzi and near Battistero, state 1996
Since the 1980s with changing technologies and social-economic structure of cities, urban regeneration and gentrification has gained new importance as a strategy for ecological sustainability. In many cities around the world disused urban quarters such waterfront establishments, ex-industrial plants and related residential districts are being transformed for new uses and social status. In the light of the burgeoning interests within the concept of sustainability and temporal nature of the power of increasing cultural awareness towards the ‘local’ versus ‘global’, ‘regenerating the past’ calls for a new stream of scholarly attention. In particular, words contained in the lingua franca of heritage such as ‘sympathetic’, ‘harmony’, retrospective’ or ‘contrast’, mostly employed to validate or repulse the ‘urban transformations by design professionals, decision makers and broad community groups require revisiting in this context.
What were the original purposes of places like the caves of Lascaux, the pyramids in Egypt, the buildings of the Mayas, the original Buddhist inspired buildings in the East compared to their current use? Tourism, or not tourism?
The original purpose was surely not tourism, it was demonstrating power, connection to god, creating reminescences, imposing. Tourism was a second consequence, because people wanted to visit their old pharao or wanted to share the experience of god in churches or temples.
When the architects/owners of buildings disappear, other people will take them over, perhaps also having other ideas in mind what to do with these buildings.
When the architects/owners of buildings disappear, and other people are not available for maintenance, nature will start doing its job. What will be nature's job? Decorating buildings with vegetation and create holes so that non-human biodiversity can take over the place?
You are right Marcel, if the architects are disappeared their buildings are reinterpreted. But I hope that most of the real great buildings not only in Europe will not also disappear because of lack of maintenance.
Some older architecture have modern design inside. Therefore, external design becomes disconnected from internal design?
@ Dear Marcel,
I agree with you that when the architects/owners of buildings disappear, and other people are not available for maintenance, nature will start doing its job.
I will focus on the relevant encouragement providing the new use…
Quite true in theory, however in practice the statement of encourage is in the hands of intelligence of the policy makers and decision makers. Architecture serves to gods, kings and at last to humans; somewhere in-between serves the animals, too.
Making decisions is giving opportunities for development (positive and negative) (1st step). Providing financial support is appreciated however not granted! (2nd step). The far most important is the team of experts and owners of the building to execute idea of new use. Not all the “constellations” are feasible.
Let me point out some selected examples: Gusswerk in Salzburg; Ljubjana Castle; Skrateljnova hisa in Divaca…
http://www.muzejdivaca.si/o_muzeju/zgodovina/
http://www.gusswerk.net/
Dear Kamal,
Your proposition is very attractive and democratic but its likelihood is tiny.
I think that converting some palaces and castles into museums enable the country to have running costs to maintain theses places, and make them open for all people.
See: Alfred Willis, Flemish Renaissance revival in Belgian architecture (1830-1930)
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