Publish at February 23 2021 Updated August 03 2022
" Everything is to be remade at the same time. "
Starting from scratch, or being in the state of mind of renewal, is to open one's capacity to dream and desire for oneself a new world. One may be compelled to do so on an individual and/or collective level in circumstances of crisis, and one may also decide for oneself to restore a new vitality.
No need to break everything to rebuild, except perhaps the mold of one's thoughts.
The thesis of architect Nicolas Detry, a specialist in the restoration of historical sites and monuments, is symbolically in the realm of " the geography of anger ", as anthropologist Arjun Appadurai rightly named it, in which cultural heritage finds itself threatened by globalized dominations and violence.
In particular, his research exposes how Europe rebuilt and reinvented itself in the aftermath of World War II and how this work mobilized the positive forces of protection and restoration through the development of creative and artistically high-level working methods.
Symbolically, the exit from the war also called for: " rebuild the broken mirror in which human societies look at themselves to face the present and the future. [...]In a universal way, [humans]need beauty, stories, memory, pride in their ancestors, values that are in the "heritage object and subject. "
Heritage is indeed a concrete reflection of time, of humans and their relations with each other, in the face of the mighty and the deities, and/or of their freedom.
The author details several patrimonial modalities for what concerns his research:
The thesis focuses on works of art and monuments in Germany, France and Italy.
These countries have strong traditions of restoration with, respectively, Denkmalpflege (one understands the notion of care, maintenance and upkeep of monuments carried by Pflege), restoration of historical monuments and restauro di monumenti.
The selected examples are protected under the historical monuments of the different countries.
They are in connection with the ancient city as an organism, and also include pictorial works.
The works of art and architecture are classified into three families:
When one is not an architect or archaeologist, it is possible that one may experience the works in a kind of stillness. Indeed, by their construction and use, these go far beyond our temporality, and perhaps we will tend to relate them to our measure.
But Nicolas Detry gives them back their rightful thickness with examples of monuments built in several phases, lived over several times and reused over a long period of time.
Such as the example of Roman monuments reused as fortresses in the insecure periods of the Middle Ages: the arcades were blocked, defensive towers built and dwellings built inside.
The living has its thickness that it will be a matter of rediscovering and understanding to revive it when the monument has been destroyed or damaged by a war.
" After the ruin of Troy, the matter was far from being settled, the history of civilizations being an uninterrupted succession of wars between gods and men, between men and men, between gods and gods. "
In the 1930s, Europe began an important work of protection of cultural property with the establishment of conventions and laws (legal protection) and the material protection of works.
The principles are still valid for today's conflicts, provided that states are provided with institutions capable of organizing themselves.
The protective measures that were put in place:
Aside from the positive forces of protection and restoration, it was necessary for this research to analyze the negative force of the destruction. It was inscribed from the Second World War onwards in the heart of the world of civilians and what makes their identity. With as current examples the destruction of the giant Buddhas of Bamiyan in 2001 and the site of Palmyra in Syria, in 2015.
There are different ways of destroying a work of art or architecture in times of war:
In Italy, the restoration operations that followed the Second World War recast the tradition of restoration and initiated a profound revision of theories and methods.
The Higher Institute for Conservation and Restoration, known in Italy as the Istituto Centrale del Restauro (ICR), was created in Rome out of the need to work simultaneously on several major restorations, particularly on valuable wall paintings that had been reduced to rubble: the frescoes of Viterbo and Padua.
This experimental laboratory led by Cesare Brandi was organized as a creative group that mobilized the best technical and scientific skills (physics, chemistry, restoration), from the humanities (art, archaeology, literature, history of techniques), and from legislation and economics (laws, financing).
The ICR articulated the laboratory, the restoration workshop (organized according to a form of Taylorization of work), research and teaching (documentation, training school for curators / art restorers, center for dissemination of theoretical and practical production, journal).
His principles are those of a critical and creative restoration:
From the concept of lacune, Nicolas Detry, unveils the philosophical, critical and creative process necessary for restoration:
" The lacuna is an interruption in the continuity of matter/image/structure. It is an unacceptable loss in its current state that must be understood before it can be repaired, healed. "
" The gap is [...]like the main trunk of my tree: gaps of all kinds, of all dimensions, the response of populations and experts to gaps and the treatment of gaps. The gap, this is the major theme of restoration post bellica."
In conclusion, he offers a summary table of the types of gaps and the societal responses to them. All the actors of the restoration are involved, those who will carry it out (in the polysemy of the "understand"and of the "do"): that is, to different degrees, those who will live it and/or those who will make it happen.
| Marker | ResponseMeaning | Example | |
| Rejected | Demolition Reconstruction to the identical | Loss of trace, of memory Repair/risk lack of trust | Opera Cologne Mostar Bridge |
| Accepted | Conservation of ruin and critical reconstruction | Conservation of traces of history | N.-D. de Saint-Lô |
| Comprehension Accepted Protected | Reconstruction Critical | Renaissance on Renaissance on | Verona Bridges St Johann Baptist Cologne |
| Lacuna Total Refused | New architectural project Reconstruction to the same standard | Confidence in the present and the future Nostalgia and fear of an uncertain future | Ronchamp Chapel Dukes of Vilnius Palace |
" The city is a natural fact like a cave, a nest, an anthill. But it is also a conscious work of art that encloses many simpler, more individual forms of art in a collective structure. Thought takes shape in the city; and urban forms in turn condition thought." Lewis Mumford, urban historian
Image source: Pixabay - Engin Akyurt
Nicolas Detry. Martyr heritage and post bellica restoration: theories and practices of historical monument restoration in Europe during and after the Second World War. Architecture. Université Lumière Lyon 2. 2016 (two-volume dissertation searchable at HAL, open archives).
Nicolas Detry. Martyr Heritage: destruction, protection, conservation and restoration in post bellica Europe. Paris, Éditions Hermann, 2020 (link on publisher's website).
Nicolas Detry, audio sources on France Culture.
William Langewiesche. American Ground: deconstructing the World Trade Center. Paris (translation), Éditions du sous-sol, 2011. Article from the newspaper Le Monde.
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