Built heritage is fragile. This claim may seem surprising, since we generally associate important edifices with strong, resilient constructions – and with a “heritage” status, even if not officially conferred on them by an institution – making them symbols of continuity and survival for the community and its values. These edifices seem “unchangeable” because of their historical importance. What is more, we often think of this “unchangeability” in a double sense, meaning that valuable edifices do not change and should not change at all.
However, buildings do change. First, they deteriorate. Especially if they lack maintenance or are abandoned – as it is often the case with classical buildings which are no longer in use, even if they represent an important historical inheritance of a nation or a culture – nature starts to take over. Soon enough, they would begin a “second life” as ruins. This is also a temporary stage, even when it lasts for centuries or millennia: when an edifice is abandoned and starts decaying, after a certain time – depending on its construction materials – even its ruins will be erased by natural forces.
Second, even if a construction is properly maintained, it may be intentionally modified at a later stage of its existence. It may change its function, it may be modernised to better serve new needs, and it can be made safer or more energy-efficient. These are often perceived as positive changes; however, there are changes in an existing building's life that are less desirable and acceptable. These may include a politically motivated conversion of the status of an edifice, such as the de-sacralisation of a religious place, or the reallocation of a religious place to the service of another religion. Besides these obvious examples, there are other changes, often politically motivated, that not only modify the external appearance of a construction but would contribute to a partial and historically biased narrative. Think of the glorious (re)construction of an originally modest castle, meant to display (with more or less justification and historical ground) an allegedly glorious past.
Apart from natural deterioration and intentional changes, there is another type of relevant transformations for heritage conservation and management. We observe a growing awareness, and acceptance, that safeguard of built heritage is neither uniform nor straightforward. For example, in many East Asian cultures, important but partly deteriorated buildings such as temples are regularly renovated by adding new parts made of the same material. In other parts of the world, as in the Arabian Peninsula, abandoned historical edifices, palaces, or fortresses that are exposed to decay due to extreme weather conditions and heat are often rebuilt by using a significant proportion of modern materials. In Western cultures, ruins are often kept as ruins by stabilizing their ruinous state as a “deep-freezing of time” for the sake of authenticity and for the Romantic and romanticising aesthetic of the ruins (Reference SomhegyiSomhegyi, 2020a).
Clearly, each culture paid and continues to pay particular attention to the practical solutions and the theoretical questions relating to the care of surviving but decaying remnants of their built environment (Reference SchnappSchnapp, 2014). In the following considerations, we intend to shed some light on the different approaches as well as the ethical and aesthetic implications of safeguarding architectural heritage. We will mainly focus on the inherent complexity of the issue. While a thorough analysis of these questions would deserve a much longer discourse, it might be useful to examine the manifold ethical and aesthetic aspects of heritage management.
The variety of heritage conservation practices should not be limited to a comparative catalogue of actual approaches – e.g., what would happen to a declining edifice in an East Asian context or in Western Europe. A particular focus should rather be placed on what we can learn from the diverse ethical and aesthetic assumptions underpinning heritage care. This perspective opens up a broader set of theoretical issues affecting practical solutions – including, for instance, ongoing debates on the predominately Western approach to conservation practices. According to Reference ByrneByrne (1991), a comparison of various sites reveals a considerable similarity and consistency in heritage management, primarily based on the Western conception of heritage. The leading role of the Western approach triggers very similar agendas which include, as Byrne notes, infrastructural management, supervising entities, authorities and museums in charge of the maintenance, conservation, or reconstruction, as well as prevention of further destructions (including human destruction due to neglect or aggression). A significant portion of this work involves making careful decisions about the restoration of decaying heritage.
As Byrne maintains, this is where the issue becomes complicated. Most of us would agree on having well-structured entities and supervising bodies controlling the state of important heritage sites based on objective and scholarly principles. Controversial issues and debates may, however, easily arise regarding the principles themselves, i.e., the fundamental ideas and approaches that would serve as theoretical guidelines for the practical implementation of conservation and reconstruction. Clearly, we should not expect a particular practice or set of practices to be imposed as a universal pattern. For instance, it is customary to preserve a partially survived Greek temple in its majestic and often picturesque, though fragmented form. Usually, we would not be inclined to rebuild it in its original splendour. Instead, we would make it possible for visitors to walk around it, in some cases we would add a separate explanatory board with visual reconstructions, and, for some particularly significant site, we would consider building a nearby museum to host its most delicate architectural pieces, decorations, and archaeological findings. In contrast to this kind of maintenance, an East Asian temple tends to be regularly rebuilt (in some cases, as regularly as every few decades) in order to perpetuate its noble appearance.
This sort of differences entails at least two kinds of effects, one of which is rather “ethical”, while the other is more “aesthetic”. The ethical element leads to consider that we should develop specific approaches to take into consideration local circumstances, materials, as well as social, cultural, and religious traditions when managing heritage sites (Reference Somhegyi, Jeanette Bicknell, Judkins and KorsmeyerSomhegyi 2020b; Reference WuWu, 2012). No approach should be invested with an aura of superiority, nor should any practice – especially when it is rooted in local traditions – be immediately interpreted as erroneous, or disrespectful of the past. The aesthetic-related consequence involves the idea that awareness of cultural differences in built heritage management results in understanding the difference – and the complementarity – between authenticity and genuineness (or originality). In this regard, the overt enforcement of the absolutely genuine or original, as it is usually understood in the West, may not work in other parts of the world, where original materials count less than the functional continuity of a space or an edifice (Reference ByrneByrne, 1991, see Cleere's distinction between “cultural continuity” and “spiritual continuity” in Reference Cleere and CleereCleere, 1989). To put it in different words, the regular restoration of an East Asian temple, or even its reconstruction with new materials, would appear as a truly “authentic” practice in regard to the building itself, to its function, and to the local traditions of honouring heritage.
An attentive analysis of heritage care across the world should also take into account those particular cases where people reject the notion of a duty of care. How could the humanities, scholarship, informative programs, social engagements, or even actual political actions fight those who refuse to safeguard tangible heritage, abuse it in view of specific political agendas, and rather aim at falsifying history or even at erasing it? Unlike the debates involving various forms of conservation and reconstruction that we can think of, in these extreme cases built heritage sites face a direct threat to their survival. Their destruction, often motivated by fanaticism, may be interpreted as a contemporary form of iconoclasm.
Even a brief outline of the ethical and aesthetic implications of built heritage management shows how complex these concerns become when projected on a global scale. The appreciation, conservation, and reconstruction of ruins, deteriorating buildings and archaeological sites of historical, religious, or cultural value, trigger an extremely intricate set of considerations. We must be particularly careful not to label different practices as less adequate ways of maintenance and care. Recent tragedies such as the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan or the Temple of Baalshamin in Palmyra suggest that joint international and interdisciplinary partnerships in fieldwork and education are more crucial than ever. A deeper understanding of the various models of heritage management, along with steady exchanges of experience, can enhance acceptance of the different practices of heritage care. If a particular approach is in line with local traditions and interpretation of heritage, it might represent a starting point for implementing practical actions, aiming at safeguarding of cultural values and defending them against nature's ravishes as well as against human action.
