Sustaining Preservation

I suggest that the pursuit of historic preservation be changed in scope, to serve our need to be connected to our past. It should be widened to include every part of the built environment which undergoes change, and preservation of physical building fabric should emerge out of the documentation we should demand, so that we can allow our history to move along with us as a living society.

All projects which alter the built environment should be required to be documented to the degree that the culture wants a connection to its past. This degree should be stated, and the documentation should be archived with the local historical society at public expense. The documentation of existing conditions and their changes would include drawings, descriptions and photographs. Doing this would establish factual conditions and relationships of the built environment through time (what remained at the date of a change) and at particular key times (the change from what to what). This would be the rich material for future historical analysis.

The parts of the built environment which are considered to be culturally valuable would merit further consideration.

• Obsolete construction would merit documentation of the construction assemblies as they are exposed  for replacement or repair. This would permit failing assemblies to be improved to perform better without losing the historical progression of building technology.
• Important planning concepts and building forms would merit additional documentation specific to the cultural significance that was identified by the culture at the time of a change, for setting the ground rules for maintaining the condition into the future (either in place or reconstructed elsewhere).
• Culturally important historic fabric which has survived intact would merit enumeration of the parts to enable its maintenance in its intact state (using historical parts and new materials manufactured in a historically accurate way). It is the authenticity which is the critical cultural value in these places.

The built environment of a living society is always changing, and the alterations of time itself alters the cultural meaning of all the parts. Documentation allows us to see our past to the best of our ability at any time. Preservation of parts of the built environment which we find important or beautiful anchors us on earth to ourselves. We strive to grow culturally, and cultural growth requires cultural memory. As we move culturally into the future, we should be incorporating the built parts of us which make us better, and retain the rest in cultural memory.