In Chapter 10 – Definitions and trends, the author makes a distinction between traditional and modern conservation, while quoting Alois Riegl’s terms “Kunstwollen.” The former aims for intact message, while the latter aims for alternate concept of historicity.
He first delineates the modern aspects of heritage and conservation
Architecture and environment becomes essential in heritage conservation not only because the overall environmental setting is important for architectural artifacts, but also for recent concerns in safeguarding culutral heritage along with the conncern for nature and environent.
UNESCO has set one of its top priorities as “Creative diversity of cultures” and certifies a growing need of education and building of know-how, and I guess it is not only for future “professionals,” but everyone. Finally, the question of historical conservation is not necessarily returning the past, but rather align with our contemporary pursuit of sustainability, or in the author’s words “… it demands courage to underake sustainable human development wihtin the reality and the potential of existing cultural, physical and environmental resources.”
Note:
The urban landscape of Hanoi has undergone many abrupt changes in its urban environment. Recently, with its administrative expansion, this process of change has been ever more speedy and has brought about discontinity inside-out as well as outside-in. In the city old core, new towers and multiple story buildings are inserted into low-rise buit fabric, including the old French villas, traditional tube houses and spiritual buildings (temples, pagodas etc.). The urban landscape of Hanoi is therefore a “mixture” of old and new buildings, as artifiacts of old and new ideologies and cultural identities. Its appeal is very “ad hoc.” Whether in the KTT or in French villas, we can see this ad hoc architecture character throughout, in the buildings’ facade of course, but also in the way space is divided and occupied by the various users.
How to harmonize between the old and new architecture in our ongoing urban development? This is a difficult question. Heritages are an component of the urban development context and have influences and relations with other urban elements. The city’s buildings and quarters represent the absorption of various cultures and the symbiosis of vietnamese culture and colonized or “imported” ones. Together they create a distinct and particular urban life.
In order to create a harmony between old architecture and new urban development, we need to consider an architectural heritage as part of the urban entity that contains it, which subjects to continuous changes. The conservation strategies, therefore, need to be synthesized from problematization processes and critical analysis of the building artifact, its surrounding and the participation of its stakeholders.
