"Architecture" and "Conservation" in urban context: confrontation or collaboration?
Natalia Dushkina, Associate Professor, The Moscow Institute of Architecture
The theme of communication deals with one of the central problems of urban heritage
survival linked with two correlated fields of professional activities - “Architecture” and
“Conservation”. Accordingly, balanced progress of a living historical city as well as its
preservation are based on collaboration or struggle of two main intellectual and creative
“partners” - “architect” and “conservator”, acting simultaneously in one and the same
“urban” playing ground.
Without clear understanding of this relationship, without an attempt to study the
mechanism, which bringing them together or pushing away, it is difficult to draw nearer
such notions as “integrated conservation” or “urban sustainable development”. It is
important to know what is the nature of contradiction, provoking the conflicts, and what
are the most vulnerable points? As Sigfried Giedion wrote in the late 30s, “the situation is
curious one: our culture is like an orchestra where the instruments lie ready tuned, but
where every musician is cut off from his fellows by a sound-proof wall. It is impossible to
foretell the events that will have to come before these barriers are broken down”.
Modernistic mentality, to which Russia had brought its significant contribution,
demonstrates the sharpness of this process. Started from Suprematism, continued in
Russian Avant-Garde and Constructivist architecture, prolonged in the Soviet version of
post-war “Non-Modernist” (Stalinist) architecture and neo-modernism of the 60s and 70s
it has presented active negation of heritage and contradiction to its conservative nature.
This led not only to considerable loss of historical monuments and discord with existing
urban fabric, but also to the formation of “architectural” opposition to the philosophy of
heritage protection.
One of the preservation/educational strategic targets deals with gradual change of
professional architectural mentality, and with treatment of its creative method as a part of
continuous historical process.
