Zprávy památkové péče 2015, 75(5):457-464

Regulating the conditions for the preservation of items of a cultural nature in historic buildings

Jan Červenák, Zdeněk Vácha

One of the basic strategies today for long-term conservation and preservation of cultural properties, including immovable and movable items, is the principle of preventive conservation. This is a current strategy that falls into the category of measures aimed at long-term sustainability, because its aim is to create conditions that minimize the need to remedy damage. This is usually expensive and ultimately is no longer associated with a loss of the values of a work. In particular this relates to their authenticity, especially the authenticity of material and form. Prevention is therefore the most effective in this regard, since these are measures which are designed to optimize the conditions for the existence of the artifact so that the degradation processes are slowed down and subdued to the greatest extent possible.
This is also a further level of discussion about the methods of preservation and heritage conservation which, at the turn of the 19th and 20th century, dealt with issues of minimizing intervention (=respect for authenticity); "Konservieren, nicht Restaurieren" was the motto attributed to Georg Dehio. After nearly a hundred years, the discourse has changed and one of the key questions is: how does one proceed preventively to avoid even the minimum necessary intervention - conservation? Any intervention implies principle changes (=reduction of authenticity) whose repetition could lead to a substantial loss of the artifact's value; interventions should therefore be eliminated or at least minimized.
A considerable part of the movable cultural property, and not only in our country, is traditionally located in historical buildings, which has its historical justification - this may be the initial situation in terms of equipment and furnishing of the seats of important families, respectively sacral objects. At the same time, a number of museums and galleries are housed in historic buildings which originally served a different function. Even in the case of buildings intended for this purpose from the outset, they could be representatives of unique documents of the development of buildings designed for storing valuable mobiliary; in this case, these are buildings with unquestionable historical and architectural value apart from the cultural and social values associated with them. Here, the measures regarding preventive conservation, thus optimizing the environment, are available only to a limited extent; limits are given by heritage considerations - intervention to the property (construction work, installation of properly sized technical infrastructure, etc.) may be made only to a limited extent, given by the values of the buildings that are the subject of protection. Natural financial limits, in the event that intervention would be essentially non-invasive, have already been mentioned. This is why attention is directed to regime-focused measures of a regulatory nature which may have the desired preventive effect and yet do not require extensive modification of buildings, are also economically viable and relatively quick to implement. Even this, or especially this, however, requires a thorough knowledge of the situation on the basis of an accurate examination of the buildings.
It has long been evident that from a practical or simple economic point of view it is optimal to link, to the maximum extent possible, to means that the buildings provide on their own and which have a character of regulation based on their structural nature. This can be achieved by optimizing the environment of the mobiliary funds through dislocation, building and regime measures, and technical means.
The environment of historic buildings for the long-term and economically sustainable preservation of items of a cultural nature depends on many factors. The building in which they are located is of course a central point, its location (while minimizing external risks whose analysis is summarized in the attached table), its physical characteristics, orientation and dislocation of function space, and its condition. It is also important, however, to what extent its own mechanisms of regulation are utilized and how the regime measures are applied which in the past formed a natural part of its method of use. Monitoring of the environment is of course a natural factor, and in the event that favorable conservation condition is not achieved, then also the application of appropriate technical means.
Experts and technicians often quite blindly put their trust in technical equipment and sometimes use the irrelevant information of costly measuring devices (often placed incorrectly with no idea what information is needed) instead of conducting a thorough analysis of the building, getting to know its characteristics, and continuing in their conceptions on the historical method of its use and maintenance.

Keywords: historical buildings, cultural mobiliary, preventive conservation, regulation, regime measures (micro) climate, monitoring

Published: December 1, 2015  Show citation