Modern Conservation Approaches

Preservation is the “act or process of applying measures necessary to sustain the existing form, integrity, and materials of an historic property.” When preserving a structure, the focus is on maintaining the existing structure rather than replacing or adding modern construction. The upgrade or addition of modern systems such as mechanical, electrical, and plumbing are seen as acceptable throughout all forms of interventions when it is done in a sensitive manner. The preservation approach is commonly used on buildings which are considered mostly intact and are only in need of preserving for future use. The maximization of retaining the historic materials and features is the primary goal of preservation. 

Restoration, unlike preservation, is focused on returning a building to a particular time period by removing features not accurately depicting the desired time period or through the addition of new construction that will restore the building to the desired period. The period of significance, or time in which the building is being restored, would be determined by the values being sought. The restoration of the building would be completed with the proper evidence (photos, drawings, or text) to support structural or aesthetic element removal or additions to insure alterations depict the desired time period and are not false interpretations. Once achieved, the goal is to maintain or preserve the building in this form for the foreseeable future. This is considered a mild impact intervention. 

The Meyer May House in Grand Rapids, Michigan is a well documented example of a restoration project. The house, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1909, was added to several times over its lifespan. In 1922 a new wing was added to the house to accommodate for a growing family. After it was sold, new owners once again added additional features to accommodate apartments inside the structure. In the 1980’s the house was purchased by an individual who sought out to restore the Meyer May house. The restoration team felt the best and most appropriate treatment was to restore the house to its original 1909 plan. In so doing, they had to demolish the two subsequent additions to the building (Weeks & Grimmer, 1995, p. 125). 

Unlike the first two strategies, reconstruction deals with new construction rather than existing fabric. The Secretary of the Interior’s standards for the treatment of historic properties states that “reconstruction is ... the act or process of depicting, by means of new construction, the form, features, and detailing of a non-surviving site, landscape, building, structure, or object for the purpose of replicating its appearance at a specific period of time and in its historic location.” Due to its lack of historical value, reconstruction is not practiced in the field of conservation as often as the other strategies. A proper reconstruction is only “used to depict vanished or non-surviving portions of a property,” where there is sufficient evidence to support the design and construction of the building (Weeks & Grimmer, 1995, p. 166). The practice of reconstruction is not meant to be used in construction a building that was historically never built, and is typically valued for its interpretive purposes.

The practice of reconstruction has fallen out of fashion in recent years.  A prime example of reconstruction is the Governor’s palace at Colonial Williamsbur which is a 1930’s reconstruction of the original 18th century palace in Virginia. The house sits atop of  what is left of the original brick foundation, which was carefully preserved in the reconstruction process. The house is meant to be an interpretive illustration of the former house, providing visitors with a physical experience of the building. In order for the Governor’s palace to be in accordance with the standard of reconstruction set out by the Secretary of the Interior’s standards for the treatment of historic properties, it must be identified as a contemporary depiction of the original structure, often times done through interpretive plaques or pamphlets

Related to the first three strategies, but distinct in its own right, the approach to  rehabilitation begins to extract different elements from preservation, restoration, and reconstruction to present a new approach to conservation that becomes much more complex in its program and position. Defined by the Secretary of the interior’s standards for the treatment of historic properties as “the act or process of making possible a compatible use for a property through repair, alterations, and additions while preserving those portions or features which convey its historical, cultural, or architectural values” (Weeks & Grimmer, 1995, p. 60). Although the standards have coined the strategy as rehabilitation, many have used such terms as adapt, retrofit, adaptive reuse, adaptive use and transform among others, all to describe the action of taking a building from its original program and adapting it to serve a new program. There are many ways of approaching such a change and many reasons this change might occur, including the benefit of retaining a historic building. Although rehabilitation has had a uptick in popularity, the idea of rehabilitation is not new. There are many examples of rehabilitation that can be found in architectural history, like the Mosque in Cordoba, the Basilica of St. Mary of the Angels, in Rome, Italy. The structures have been built up over time by different societies, creating not only a palimpsest of architectural forms, but a time capsule of cultures and their beliefs. The Great Mosque, as it is referred to, in Cordoba, Spain began its purpose as a simple square mosque built around 785. The mosque subsequently went through three enlargements beginning in 833-48 where the fabric of the building was used as a foundations for additions. This conservation of past iterations allows people to understand how past societies built giving the building a embodied educational value (Architecturally and Archaeologically). In the sixteenth century, the mosque was abandoned and a cathedral was inserted inside the mosque’s existing fabric, further adding to the already established values and conserved heritage (Fazio, Moffettt, and Wodehouse, 2014, p. 159). The builders of these past rehabilitation projects may have not been concerned necessarily with the continuation and conservation of the heritage one gains from the building. The rehabilitation of these projects may have been done solely with the intentions of retaining as much materials as possible, yet the act of rehabilitation has conserved this building for generations making it more valuable to more people at every stage.    

The ideology of why and how we rehabilitate buildings has become much more complex in recent years. The practice of values-centered conservation has lead to a more all inclusive understanding of the existing buildings and their surroundings, making for a larger list of things a designer must accommodate for in their project. With the rise of the practice of conservation, the development of defined categorization among conservationists, guidelines and some time laws began appearing in the United States and Europe in the late 1960’s, such as the International Charter for the Conservation and Restoration of Monuments and Sites (or more commonly known as the Venice Charter) in 1965, the 1966 Historic Preservation Act, and the  Civic Amenities Act of 1967, both written in the United States. With the popularity of conservation efforts on the rise to help preserve a place's heritage, the effects are wide ranging.