The 'monument' in architecture and conservation: Theories of architectural significance and their influence on restoration, preservation, and conservation

This thesis identifies the influences that have underlain significantly different interpretations of the "monument" in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. An historical and critical discussion of this concept is central to architecture because the different characteristics that architects seek in the existing buildings they honor partly influences their perception and definition of architecture. Since the mid-eighteenth century, historians, architects and theorists have revealed the antiquarian, historical, symbolic, artistic, and critical values of specific existing buildings in order to enact them as monuments. These parameters have influenced the differing approaches to the achievement of the "authentic" and the "genuine" that restorers, preservers, and conservators seek in monuments. That there are varied opinions on the authentic value of monuments is best revealed in the conflicting restorations of the same twelfth century Romanesque basilica, Saint-Sernin de Toulouse, in France, by Eugene Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc and Yves Boiret. This aspect is also expressed in Carlo Scarpa's redesigning of Castelvecchio of Verona, in Italy. Selecting an appropriate way of treating an architectural monument requires a profound knowledge of its history, a true understanding of its relevance to the present, and an ability to anticipate the new and multiple interpretations of present and even future viewers. To preserve a monument effectively, to restore the original imaginatively, and to conserve the communicative aspects of a monument, we must first understand the purpose of our action: why are we retaining the past and for whom? do we value a monument because it is unique, because it is typical of a particular time, or because it has the capacity to simultaneously reflect several different layers of history? This dissertation concludes that the memorializing aspect of "monument" is inseparable both from the role of imagination in architecture and from the concept of continuity in architectural conservation. If we value monuments for their ability to help us remember, then the conservation of the built environment should enhance the qualities that become faint in time, even if that involves careful modification of individual monuments.