Műemlék-helyreállítások tegnap, ma, holnap (A 27. Egri Nyári Egyetem előadásai 1997 Eger, 1997)

Előadások - Herb STOVEL: The interpretation of authenticity in Japan

nation. And the answer to that is a simple answer, but I think it is worth focusing on. In some ways the attributes are important to use in our authenticity analysis, must be related to our understanding of the values. But we must try to understand these values in a certain way, not just to be specific in describing a particular source of importance, but to stand back from the values and to recognize it in situations. Where the values are linked to a perception of the building as an art of act; that is perhaps the material or the substance. It is perhaps those attributes that are most important. So there is a relation between certain kinds of values, certain kinds of attributes. If I focus however in the value assessment, is on the qualities of design or form than - naturally enough - it is the attributes, the formal attributes, the design characteristics that we will seek to identifyin relation to those values. There is no formal list, no set list of such values, but you can see if you can group the source of importance or the sources of importance in categories. It can lead you to understand where should the emphasis lied in determining, which attributes are the most important in looking at the authenticity. The only point I want to examine is to recognize, that in our authenticity debates over the time, over the last 100-150 years initially all of our debates were in this area between the monument as material or the monument as form but in recent times we extended our scope, or focus to include giving more attention to these areas. The debate between material and between form is one which we find throughout the 19th century. At the beginning of the 19th century an architect was called to repair, stabilize the Colosseum in Rome, who said: „The values have to do with design and form and therefore I continue the design and form to stabilize." In the same building, within a 15 year time another architect, called upon to solve the same problem, a question of stabilizing, took a very different approach. He saw the building as an art of act, as a document. And he said: „It is my job to stabilize it as I see it, with a passage of time, visible to the eye." So two approaches, the same building at the beginning of the 19th century: one focused on what I would call attributes of form and this one focused on attributes of material or substance. Throughout the 19th century the debate layed here, between these two poles. This debate is important even today, it continues to be a debate in the late 20th century. In my country, in Quebec, which is inscribed on the World Heritage List the single largest restoration project undertaken in the country was begun 20 or 25 years ago in the lower town of Quebec to restore the lower town how its existence the day before the English began a battle against the French. The preoccupation was the form, the design, linked to an important historic monument when the French lost their identity inside British Canada, but the focus was less on art of acts and more on the early design, on the early French form of the buildings. Now in Canada and in Quebec this approach is much criticized only 20 years later. People say, we made a mistake because in erasing the history of the English also erased the history of our French granfathers. And if the same question was before the public or the professionals today I think a different choice would be made. Similar examples can be found in Europe in the recent past. After the war Hildesheim was to focus simply on the reconstructing buildings not so much were they concerned for the form, the identity of the place. But in 1985 in Hildesheim this 1960-ies building was pulled down to be replaced by a restoration of the building that stood there before the War as a means of reclaiming, redefining the identity of the citizens of that community. It can be said, this is reconstruction, not restoration, but nevertheless the focus is on the original form, the original design, not in anyway an effort to recognize history as a continuum which had had its own period, the period of the 60-ies, 70-ies and early 80-ies. A wooden church in Karelia, Russia. Perhaps the most important wooden church in the world. The combined focus of the conservators was to maintain the surviving material of this 240 year old structure. From