What is heritage ?
The definition of the word Heritage by “Cambridge dictionary”
“features belonging to the culture of a particular society, such as traditions, language, ot buildings, there were created in the past and still have historical importance.”
When we talk about culture and heritage, we talk about the important role culture has in our heritage – it could be traditions, art, buildings, stories or whatever defines one from others relating to their living past.
Why preserving heritage ?
Preservation is a method of not losing the values of the cultural identity. Moreover, as architects, we need to know the site’s history, what it symbols to the people who have lived and are living there and get it’s full background.
What should be preserved ?
The values – its historical, artistic, functional etc. Its physical elements and identity.
All the aspects a building is made from:
matter, construction techniques, shapes, dimensions, colours, materials, textures, character, use, environment ,meanings.
How to preserve ?
There are several actions of intervention one can do in order to preserve a site.
Preservation, maintenance, repairing, consolidation, renovation, adaptation, anastylosis, restoration.
The ones who are taking the task of preserving a site should know they are about to touch and feel the history from it’s originals and, alongside with their skills, are going to enliven the spirit that might have been lost during the years.
In a personal perspective, preservation is one of the architectural fields I find the most interesting. I do believe we need to use our history as a tool helping as moving forward to the future – Maybe not copy it, as preservation may be sometimes (most of the times), but definitely lean on it’s foundations and learn from it.
On this page, I attached pictures from the city Tel Aviv – one of the main and most important cities in Israel (after Jerusalem). In these pictures we can see few of the preservation projects have been made during the years.
Interesting fact:
*Except from the first picture of the preserved building next to the sea, all the buildings are placed almost in the same street in Tel Aviv named “Rothschild“. This street is known as one of the most famous and expensive streets there are in Tel aviv. As there are preserved buildings that can not be damaged, the solution of some very rich companies (Facebook for example) for having a tower in this very important street, was to buy the land of this small houses with the promise to preserve them, and on the side, they built their huge tower.
