planned conservation and local development process: the key role of intellectual capital stefano...

Planned Conservation and Local Development Process: the Key Role of Intellectual CapitalStefano Della Torre

Inauguration UNESCO Chair on Preventive Conservation, Maintenance and Monitoring of Monuments and Sites, Leuven, 24-25 March 2009

Prof. Stefano Della Torre

Glossary

Planned conservationPrevention, monitoring, maintenance, but also planning.We try to keep together, maybe to merge, a top-down approach (prevention of territorial risks, such as floods, quakes, abandon…) and a bottom-up approach (everyday behaviours of stakeholders)

Intellectual capitalThe term comes from management world, and it means something related to intangible assets of firms operating in knowledge economy. Some Author applies the term also to organisations operating in cultural field.Better than “human capital” in my perspective, because my aim is to stress the need for learning in planned conservation process. That is, to stress the role of intangibles as indicators of economic relevance of Heritage.

Local developmentImpacts and challenges of globalization are to be found at local and regional level: Culture is the tool to face challenges and to catch opportunities. The most relevant perspective in Economy of Culture is not built up by income and turnovers, but by giving Culture and Heritage the right place in development processes.


S. Gimignano, Italy:the way Heritage can be misused

Tourism pressure, kitsch, gentrification, betrayal of educational purposes… Local development or troubles?


Schönbrunn, Austria:how Heritage can be exploited in a sustainable way

Marketing innovation, careful design, research, networking, planning…


The differences

The difference is that in S. Gimignano the process produces income but fails in producing an improvement of the intangible assets of the town, while in Schönbrunn there is a policy which works upgrading the intellectual capital of the organization.

But our focus in not on marketing policies, it is on policies dealing directly with Built Cultural Heritage.

Which BCH policy yields more benefits for local development? Which are the differences between restoration/event and

conservation/process from an economic viewpoint?


Investments in Built Cultural Heritage

We know that a lot of money is spent every year in interventions on listed buildings (more than € 400.000.000,00 every year in Lombardy in the last three years, at least 3 billions per year in Italy)

Most of these works are intended to reuse buildings making them more beautiful (frescoes more colorful, facades more shining…), in order to make them attractive for tourists.

These works can be carried out by ordinary enterprises, without any commitment to “learn” or to improve their skills.

By this way, little intellectual capital is created, and the region gets a very weak contribution to a sustainable development. There is even the risk of “congestion” (remind S. Gimignano, or Venice).


From Restoration to Planned Conservation

“Preventive conservation and monitoring” stress some themes, like:

- Care- Knowledge- Understanding - Technologies- Information technology- Long-term vision- Integration- Cooperation at regional level - Endorsement by the people…





Planned Conservation implies daily care by users, by managers, by conservers and restorer, by craftsmen… care means high quality in any phase of the process





Knowledge goes beyond information, it is the way data are given structure, sense and meaning. Planned conservation is a circular process pivoting around growing knowledge





Planned conservation requires a long and quiet dialogue with the monument, so that refers less to the sense of sight, and more to listening, and understanding peculiarities





Planned Conservation means monitoring and maintenance, so that there is a lot to do with new and traditional techniques





Planning requires data filing and data management: information technologies are of crucial importance to make some targets feasible





Long-term vision, typical of a PRECOMOS attitude, is needed to handle topics like sustainability





Planned conservation requires a wide committment to integrate resouces, rules, attitudes… The concept of “integrated conservation” issued in 1975 in the Amsterdam Declaration is a basic requirement to make preventive conservation happen





Conservation policies in general are more effective when they refer to a well defined territory, a “region” where it is possible to manage integration (e.g. Val de Loire)




- Care- Knowledge- Understanding - Technologies- Information technology- Long-term vision- Integration- Cooperation at regional level - Endorsement by the people

Last but not least at all: if you want to change attitudes, towards preventive conservation, the first target to hit is getting people involved


Learning and unlearning

Inspection and maintenance require a very good knowledge of old practices and crafts

But planned conservation is very far from restoration and remaking

Therefore it is to be carefully discussed if planned conservation means to keep alive traditional crafts, or to introduce new technologies.


Learning and unlearning

- Keeping alive what still lives

- Unlearning ways of vitiating traditional crafts (of betraying history)

- Learning new technologies and new processes

- Learning from traditional practices and crafts

- Learning to learn and to unlearn


Keeping alive what still lives

Where traditional practices are still alive, they include maintenance.

In general, people have not only skills required to produce things, but also to maintain them, by means of activities which are necessary because of scarcity of resources.

A technique is living when it is understood and practiced as a whole (a matter of doing, but also of mental attitude, and of economic coherence)


Unlearning ways of vitiating traditional crafts (of betraying history)

“Traditional” stonecutting???

Reconstruction of George Washington’s barn: for which education??? To History of to Fiction???


Unlearning ways of vitiating traditional crafts (of betraying authenticity)

Declaration of San Antonio, 1996: “… we emphasize that only the historic fabric is authentic, and interpretations achieved through restoration are not; they can only authentically represent the meaning of a site as understood in a given moment.”

When an old technique is revived only for production (or re-production), within a modern framework (mentality, materials supply, Gantt diagrams…) there can be no authenticity

Preventive conservation aims to preserve historic fabric avoiding or minimizing restorations.

It requires care, knowledge and understanding, that is questioning and rethinking even those meanings which are usually accepted. Therefore it is a way to debate and to unlearn.

UNLEARNING IS FUNDAMENTAL TO DEVELOPMENT


Learning new technologies and new processes

New techniques enable to maintain even weak stones in polluted environment

New processes enable to prevent decay, or to perform early detection

in order to minimize damage

PLANNED CONSERVATION REQUIRES CONTINUOUS EDUCATION


Learning from traditional practices and crafts

Historic natural ventilation system in the Hofburg and inspired project in Schönbrunn Castle (Käferhaus 2007)


Learning to learn and to unlearn

From Heritage sector to economic chains: some ways of modelling this step are more or less popular:

- Model A: modelling an alliance between Heritage and tourism

- Model B: modelling a productive chain strictly related to Heritage activities (cultural enterprises: restorers, ICT operators, designers…)

- Model C: modelling mechanisms of cross-fertilization among different chains, so that attitude to “learn and unlearn” (to produce innovation), born in cultural sectors, stimulates society and enables innovation also in other productive chains (“learning region”, Florida 1995).


Extraordinary interventions of heritage

enhancement

Events

The trivial model

Economic growth

(mainly by tourism)


Planned conservation and heritage

enhancement

Economic growth (also tourism, but mainly other local assets)

Resources for services and for care of heritage

Quality, education, networking, scientific

research…

Cross-fertilization, attitude to

innovation…

Growth of intellectual capital

The advanced model


Economics and Culture

“Culture is assuming an increasingly strategic role for the definition of a new competitive context in the post-industrial society …

… in the post-industrial economies, … culture tends to become the basic platform for the construction of the individual and societal capability building for the production and circulation of high intangible value added that distinguish the newest local development models”

(Pier Luigi Sacco, “Culture-led Urban Development Processes: Theory and Policy, ESA 2007, Luneburg).


Conclusions

Therefore, Planned Conservation (more than traditional restoration) could have a strong impact on intellectual capital.

Planned Conservation is the main way to make the investment on built cultural heritage more effective for a local development coherent with knowledge economy models.

planned conservation and local development process: the key role of intellectual capital stefano...

Documents

stefano della torre

stefano della torre

local development process

way heritage

planned conservation

conservation prevention

local development impacts

sustainable development