Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Restoration versus Conservation
Arun Menon
Department of Civil Engineering, IIT Madras
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Outline
• Terminology
• Conservation Engineering
– Historical Perspective
– Current International Practice
• ICOMOS recommendations
• Challenges
• Repair
– To restore what is damaged or has degraded,
implying some reconstruction.
• Rehabilitation:
– The return of a structure to useful state, meeting
present requirements, generally implying some
upgradation.
• Renovation:
– The process of substantial repair or alteration that
extends a structure’s useful life. Also, called
remodelling.
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• Retrofit
– Upgradation of a structure to improve
performance, function and/or appearance,
generally involves some strengthening.
• Restoration
– Replication of structure as originally built,
generally implies that structure is of historical
importance.
– Newman (2001)
Conservation Engineering
• Historical and monumental buildings
– Often require remedial structural interventions
– Deterioration caused by natural phenomena
• Ageing and weathering
• Natural hazards (e.g. earthquakes), and
• Man‐made hazards (e.g. terrorism).
• Strengthening historical buildings
– Compromise between requirements of
structural mechanics and conservation
principles
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Conservation Engineering
• Conservation engineering
– Interdisciplinary confluence
• Art, architecture, history and science
• More specifically civil and structural engineering
– Preservation and restoration of historical
monuments
• Interventions
– “As much as necessary, but as little as possible”
– Least invasive
– Fully reversible (removable)
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Historical Perspective
• Restoration versus Conservation
• Eugène Emmanuel Viollet‐le‐Duc (1867), French
theorist:
– “Restoring a building is not maintaining, repairing
or rebuilding it but re‐establishing it in a state of
completion that may never have existed at a given
moment…
– ...re‐projecting on conjectures of a potentially
unitary and complete state, perhaps only imagined
and never realised: “stylistic restoration”.
Historical Perspective
• John Ruskin (1849), English art critic:
– “So‐called restoration is the worst form of
destruction, accompanied by a false description
of the object destroyed.” (Seven Lamps of
Architecture).
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• Camillo Boito (1883): The First Italian
Restoration Charter
– “The monuments of the past are not only
valuable for studying architecture, but serve as
essential documents to clarify and illustrate all
parts of the history of times and peoples, …
– …should therefore be religiously respected as
documents, where even a slight modification
that may look like the original work can deceive
and lead little by little to mistaken deductions.”
• Camillo Boito (1883): The First Italian
Restoration Charter
– However, the monument‐book shall be open to
the writing of future generations, …
– and since to keep the monument‐document
alive it is necessary to ensure its use,
• Necessary additions should be made according to
contemporary methods,
• Clearly show the added parts by using evidently
different materials.
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• Athens’s Charter
– Use of words like “safeguard”, “protection”,
“conservation” instead of “restoration”;
– Collaboration of “monument conservators” with
technicians in physical‐chemical disciplines.
• The Venice Charter (1964):
– International Centre for the Study of the
Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property
(ICCROM), Rome
– The International Charter for the Conservation and
Restoration of Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS)
• The International Council for the
Conservation of Monuments and Sites
– ICOMOS Charter (2003)
– International Scientific Committee for the
Analysis and Restoration of Structures of
Architectural Heritage (ISCARSAH)
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• Recommendations: Desirable, necessary
– Ensure rational methods of analysis
– Repair methods appropriate to cultural context
– The conservation and restoration of monuments
must have recourse to all the sciences and
techniques which can contribute to the study
and safeguarding of the architectural heritage.
• Article 2, ICOMOS, 1964
• The intention in conserving and restoring
monuments is:
– To safeguard them no less as works of art than
as historical evidence.
• Article 3, ICOMOS, 1964
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• The aim of restoration is:
– To preserve and reveal the aesthetic and
historical value of the monument,
– Based on respect for original material and
authentic documents,
– Must stop at the point where conjecture begins,
– Any extra work which is indispensable must be
distinct from the architectural composition and
must bear a contemporary stamp.
• Excerpt from Article 9, ICOMOS, 1964
• Where traditional techniques prove
inadequate,
– Consolidation of a monument can be achieved
by the use of any modern technique for
conservation and construction,
– Efficacy of which has been shown by scientific
data and proved by experience.
• Article 10, ICOMOS, 1964
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• When a building includes the superimposed
work of different periods
– Revealing of the underlying state can only be
justified in exceptional circumstances.
• Excerpt from Article 11, ICOMOS, 1964
• Replacements of missing parts must
integrate harmoniously with the whole
– But at the same time must be distinguishable
from the original, so that,
– Restoration does not falsify the artistic or
historical evidence.
• Article 12, ICOMOS, 1964
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• In all works of preservation or restoration,
there should always be precise
documentation:
– Every stage of the work of clearing,
consolidation, rearrangement and integration,
as well as technical and formal features
identified during the course of the work, should
be included.
• Excerpt from Article 16, ICOMOS, 1964
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– “…save as many parts of
the original as possible,
since it is to the
authenticity of the old
parts that practically all the
interest attaching to the
new will owe itself....
– ...Broken or half decayed
original work is of infinitely
more value than the
smartest and the most
perfect new work”
– Marshall (1923).
• The removal of the inner structures
maintaining only the façades does not fit
the conservation criteria.
– Excerpt from §1.3, ICOMOS, 2003
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• No action should be undertaken without:
– Having ascertained the achievable benefit, and
– Harm to the architectural heritage,
– Except in cases where urgent safeguard
measures are necessary to avoid the imminent
collapse of the structures (e.g. after seismic
damages).
– Those urgent measures…should not be
irreversible
• Excerpt from §1.7, ICOMOS, 2003
Ta Prohm, Cambodia
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• Therapy should address root causes rather
than symptoms.
– §3.1, ICOMOS, 2003
• Safety evaluation and an understanding of
the significance of the structure should be
the basis for conservation and
reinforcement measures.
– §3.3, ICOMOS, 2003
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• The choice between “traditional” and
“innovative” techniques
– Should be weighed up on a case‐by‐case basis,
and
– Preference given to those that are least invasive
and most compatible with heritage values,
– Bearing in mind safety and durability
requirements.
• §3.7, ICOMOS, 2003
• …difficulty of evaluating the real safety
levels and possible benefits of interventions
– “an observational method”
– An incremental approach, starting from a
minimum level of intervention, with the possible
subsequent adoption of a series of
supplementary or corrective measures.
• §3.8, ICOMOS, 2003
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• Where possible, any measures adopted
should be:
– “Reversible” so that they can be removed and
replaced with more suitable measures when
new knowledge is acquired,
– Where not completely reversible, interventions
should not limit further interventions.
• §3.9, ICOMOS, 2003
• Sharp separation (within academics)
– Human sciences on one side,
– Mathematical, physical, natural sciences on the
other
• Pursued for centuries, still has dramatic
consequences in the field of the heritage
conservation,
– Art historians and conservation architects stand on
one side, and
– Structural engineers on the opposite side.
– “The two cultures…”, Giorgo Macchi (2004)
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– Modern Portland cement mortar
– Unprotected steel reinforcements as stone clamps
– Reinforced concrete elements
– Certain amount of anastylosis, which was not well researched
(ended up placing material in positions that were not the
original)
– (1975) …a new large‐scale restoration program, the ongoing
Acropolis Restoration Project
– …to a great extent has been involved in correcting the
restoration work done under Balanos half a century earlier!
– “...the structural elements in steel and in RC
introduced in the Athenian Acropolis in the
(19)30s have been the most severe cause of the
accelerated decay of such masterpieces...”
• Raymond Lemaire, founder of ICOMOS and co‐author
of the Venice Charter
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• Ars sine scientia nihil est
– Jean Mignot: 14th century French Architect
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Acknowledgements
• http://www.laquilablog.it/
• http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/parthenon/
rest‐nf.html
• http://iirps‐athens.org/blog/restoration‐of‐
the‐acropolis
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