The Fragile Monument, on Conservation and Modernity

The Fragile Monument, on Conservation and Modernity PDF Author: Thordis Arrhenius
Publisher: Artifice Incorporated
ISBN: 9781907317477
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
The Fragile Monument is a study of the discourse of conservation and its effect on the notion and role of the monument in contemporary western society. Through a revisionist account of the history of conservation, the book explores how the monument has been transformed from an object that originally communicated permanence to an object that is perceived as fragile and in need of protection. The argument put forward is that the expansion and popularisation of conservation is bound to a narrative of loss and danger that reveals a paradoxical relationship between destruction and preservation. In a series of case-studies the book shows how spatial devices have been used to negotiate this paradox and how this use of space has contributed to the defining of the monument as an object of conservation. Throughout its history, conservation has been surrounded by a polemic dominated by concepts of authenticity, origin and authorship. By studying that debate in relation to the case-studies, The Fragile Monument adumbrates the implications these concepts carry with them, both for the discipline of conservation and for the discourse of architecture as a whole. Identifying and examining particular 'sites of conflicts' where critical uncertainty, ambivalence, and heated debates have surrounded the 'object' of restoration, The Fragile Monument contributes significantly to expanding and shifting architectural discourse into a direction of crucial relevance today.

The Fragile Monument, on Conservation and Modernity

The Fragile Monument, on Conservation and Modernity PDF Author: Thordis Arrhenius
Publisher: Artifice Incorporated
ISBN: 9781907317477
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
The Fragile Monument is a study of the discourse of conservation and its effect on the notion and role of the monument in contemporary western society. Through a revisionist account of the history of conservation, the book explores how the monument has been transformed from an object that originally communicated permanence to an object that is perceived as fragile and in need of protection. The argument put forward is that the expansion and popularisation of conservation is bound to a narrative of loss and danger that reveals a paradoxical relationship between destruction and preservation. In a series of case-studies the book shows how spatial devices have been used to negotiate this paradox and how this use of space has contributed to the defining of the monument as an object of conservation. Throughout its history, conservation has been surrounded by a polemic dominated by concepts of authenticity, origin and authorship. By studying that debate in relation to the case-studies, The Fragile Monument adumbrates the implications these concepts carry with them, both for the discipline of conservation and for the discourse of architecture as a whole. Identifying and examining particular 'sites of conflicts' where critical uncertainty, ambivalence, and heated debates have surrounded the 'object' of restoration, The Fragile Monument contributes significantly to expanding and shifting architectural discourse into a direction of crucial relevance today.

Narrative Theory in Conservation

Narrative Theory in Conservation PDF Author: Nigel Walter
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429763212
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
Narrative Theory in Conservation engages with conservation, heritage studies, and architectural approaches to historic buildings, offering a synthesis of the best of each, and demonstrating that conservation is capable of developing a complementary, but distinct, theoretical position of its own. Tracing the ideas behind the development of modern conservation in the West, and considering the challenges presented by non-Western practice, the book engages with the premodern understanding of innovation within tradition, and frames historic buildings as intergenerational, communal, ongoing narratives. Redefining the appropriate object of conservation, it suggests a practice of conserving the questions that animate and energize local cultures, rather than only those instantiated answers that expert opinion has declared canonical. Proposing a narrative approach to historic buildings, the book provides a distinctive new theoretical foundation for conservation, and a basis for a more equal dialogue with other disciplines concerned with the historic environment. Narrative Theory in Conservation articulates a coherent theoretical position for conservation that addresses the urgent question of how historic buildings that remain in use should respond to change. As such, the book should be of great interest to academics, researchers, and postgraduate students from the fields of conservation, heritage studies, and architecture.

Plaster Monuments

Plaster Monuments PDF Author: Mari Lending
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691239622
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
We are taught to believe in originals. In art and architecture in particular, original objects vouch for authenticity, value, and truth, and require our protection and preservation. The nineteenth century, however, saw this issue differently. In a culture of reproduction, plaster casts of building fragments and architectural features were sold throughout Europe and America and proudly displayed in leading museums. The first comprehensive history of these full-scale replicas, Plaster Monuments examines how they were produced, marketed, sold, and displayed, and how their significance can be understood today. Plaster Monuments unsettles conventional thinking about copies and originals. As Mari Lending shows, the casts were used to restore wholeness to buildings that in reality lay in ruin, or to isolate specific features of monuments to illustrate what was typical of a particular building, style, or era. Arranged in galleries and published in exhibition catalogues, these often enormous objects were staged to suggest the sweep of history, synthesizing structures from vastly different regions and time periods into coherent narratives. While architectural plaster casts fell out of fashion after World War I, Lending brings the story into the twentieth century, showing how Paul Rudolph incorporated historical casts into the design for the Yale Art and Architecture building, completed in 1963. Drawing from a broad archive of models, exhibitions, catalogues, and writings from architects, explorers, archaeologists, curators, novelists, and artists, Plaster Monuments tells the fascinating story of a premodernist aesthetic and presents a new way of thinking about history’s artifacts.

The Challenge of Change: Dealing with the Legacy of the Modern Movement

The Challenge of Change: Dealing with the Legacy of the Modern Movement PDF Author: D. van den Heuvel
Publisher: IOS Press
ISBN: 1607503719
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 568

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Book Description
Conservation of architecture - and the conversation of Modern architecture in particular – has assumed new challenges. Rather than attempting to return a Modern building to its resumed original state, the challenge of these proceedings is to revalue the essence of the manifold manifestations of Modern architecture and redefine its meanings in a rapidly changing world of digital revolution, worldwide mobility and environmental awareness. This volume aims to provide a variety of platforms for the exchange of ideas and experience. A large, international group of architects, historians, scholars, preservationists and other parties involved in the processes of preserving, renovating and transforming Modern buildings has been invited to investigate the paradox of the Modern monument, and to reflect on the manifold dilemmas of change and continuity. The general theme is elaborated through five sub-themes. The sub-theme ‘Change and Continuity’ addresses the tensions between change and continuity from a historical-theoretical perspective. ‘Restructuring Cities and Landscapes’ focuses on the larger scale of city and landscape, while ‘Shifts in Programme and Flexibility’ draws attention to the scale of the building or building complex, and questions limits of re-use and flexibility. The fourth sub-theme deals with education and the fifth sub-theme ‘Progress, Technology and Sustainability’ considers specific issues of techniques and materials.

The Printed and the Built

The Printed and the Built PDF Author: Mari Hvattum
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350038393
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
The Printed and the Built explores the intricate relationship between architecture and printed media in the fast-changing nineteenth century. Publication history is a rapidly expanding scholarly field which has profoundly influenced architectural history in recent years. Yet, while groundbreaking work has been done on architecture and printing in the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the twentieth century, the nineteenth century has received little attention. This is the omission that The Printed and the Built seeks to address, thus filling a significant gap in the understanding of architecture's cultural history. Lavishly illustrated with colourful and eclectic visual material, from panoramas to printed ephemera, adverts, penny magazines, early photography, and even crime reportage, The Printed and the Built consists of five in-depth thematic essays accompanied by 25 short pieces, each examining a particular printed form. Altogether, they illustrate how new genres communicated architecture to a mass audience, setting the stage for the modern architectural era.

Sultanahmet, Istanbul’s Historic Peninsula

Sultanahmet, Istanbul’s Historic Peninsula PDF Author: Pinar Aykaç
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793641692
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
This book explores how the museum concept has expanded beyond the boundaries of a single building into the historic city itself through musealization. Articulating the musealization of historic cities as a specific urban process, the book here presents a study of the transformation of the Sultanahmet district on Istanbul’s historic peninsula, which has been the major focus of planning, conservation and museological studies in Turkey since the 19th century as the public face of the city. The author aims to offer empirically grounded and context-specific insight into the role of museums in the regeneration of historic cities. Musealization as an urban process varies in different geographical, cultural and ideological contexts, and across different time periods. By discussing the Sultanahmet district as a specific context of yet another city subjected to the musealization process, this book provides further insights into this important global phenomenon.

The Architecture of Disability

The Architecture of Disability PDF Author: David Gissen
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452968543
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
A radical critique of architecture that places disability at the heart of the built environment Disability critiques of architecture usually emphasize the need for modification and increased access, but The Architecture of Disability calls for a radical reorientation of this perspective by situating experiences of impairment as a new foundation for the built environment. With its provocative proposal for “the construction of disability,” this book fundamentally reconsiders how we conceive of and experience disability in our world. Stressing the connection between architectural form and the capacities of the human body, David Gissen demonstrates how disability haunts the history and practice of architecture. Examining various historic sites, landscape designs, and urban spaces, he deconstructs the prevailing functionalist approach to accommodating disabled people in architecture and instead asserts that physical capacity is essential to the conception of all designed space. By recontextualizing the history of architecture through the discourse of disability, The Architecture of Disability presents a unique challenge to current modes of architectural practice, theory, and education. Envisioning an architectural design that fully integrates disabled persons into its production, it advocates for looking beyond traditional notions of accessibility and shows how certain incapacities can offer us the means to positively reimagine the roots of architecture.

The Architecture of Ruins

The Architecture of Ruins PDF Author: Jonathan Hill
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429770561
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 358

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Book Description
The Architecture of Ruins: Designs on the Past, Present and Future identifies an alternative and significant history of architecture from the sixteenth century to the twenty-first century, in which a building is designed, occupied and imagined as a ruin. This design practice conceives a monument and a ruin as creative, interdependent and simultaneous themes within a single building dialectic, addressing temporal and environmental questions in poetic, psychological and practical terms, and stimulating questions of personal and national identity, nature and culture, weather and climate, permanence and impermanence and life and death. Conceiving a building as a dialogue between a monument and a ruin intensifies the already blurred relations between the unfinished and the ruined and envisages the past, the present and the future in a single architecture. Structured around a collection of biographies, this book conceives a monument and a ruin as metaphors for a life and means to negotiate between a self and a society. Emphasising the interconnections between designers and the particular ways in which later architects learned from earlier ones, the chapters investigate an evolving, interdisciplinary design practice to show the relevance of historical understanding to design. Like a history, a design is a reinterpretation of the past that is meaningful to the present. Equally, a design is equivalent to a fiction, convincing users to suspend disbelief. We expect a history or a novel to be written in words, but they can also be delineated in drawing, cast in concrete or seeded in soil. The architect is a ‘physical novelist’ as well as a ‘physical historian’. Like building sites, ruins are full of potential. In revealing not only what is lost, but also what is incomplete, a ruin suggests the future as well as the past. As a stimulus to the imagination, a ruin’s incomplete and broken forms expand architecture’s allegorical and metaphorical capacity, indicating that a building can remain unfinished, literally and in the imagination, focusing attention on the creativity of users as well as architects. Emphasising the symbiotic relations between nature and culture, a building designed, occupied and imagined as a ruin acknowledges the coproduction of multiple authors, whether human, non-human or atmospheric, and is an appropriate model for architecture in an era of increasing climate change.

Archaeology and Capitalism

Archaeology and Capitalism PDF Author: Yannis Hamilakis
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315434202
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
The contributors to this volume focus on the inherent political nature of archaeology and its relationship to power, and explore how archaeologists can become more overtly agents of social change for individuals and communities.

The Challenge of Change

The Challenge of Change PDF Author: Dirk van den Heuvel
Publisher: IOS Press
ISBN: 1586039172
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 568

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Book Description
"The legacy of the Modern Movement has gained legendary status, largely as a result of the appreciation of the masterworks and the visionary architectural concepts. In the reality of everyday life, however, it has been difficult to maintain the architectural creations of the Modern Movement in such a way that they still reflect the original intentions of their designers. Many buildings and ensembles of the Modern Movement have already been saved; the icons amongst these have even become so precious that they are treated like pieces of art rather than as buildings in everyday use. But despite the successes that have been achieved, many buildings and ensembles are still at risk of demolition or maltreatment. The bi-annul international conference is one means by which it is possible to continue furthering the aims of Docomomo. Knowing that many modern architects aimed at functionality and changeability, the challenge for today is how to deal with the modern heritage in relation to its continuously changing context, including physical, economic and functional changes, as well as socio-cultural, political and scientific ones. It is with this in mind that conservation in general, and the conservation of modern architecture in particular, has become a new challenge. Rather than attempting to return a modern building to its presumed original state, our challenge is to revalue the essence of the manifold manifestations of modern architecture and redefine its meanings in our changing world of digital revolution, worldwide mobility and environmental awareness."--Jacket.