Page 23 - Bulletin 19 2015

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1.29.) He also made detailed sketches and paintings of rocks, plants, birds, landscapes,

architectural structures and ornamentation. His major work, The Stones of Venice (1851-3)
has been described by Roger Scruton, the English Philosopher as “The greatest description in

English of a place made sacred by buildings”.

Ruskin very powerfully stated, “When we build, let us think that we build for ever”.

His views on Preservation are still debated today and I would like to expand a little here

because I believe the theory relating to this is important for understanding the way we
conserve and preserve. The debate around how best to safeguard and take care of our

historical buildings can be reduced to a number of possibilities or combinations thereof. (This

topic is the subject of a thesis but I will give an outline summary for this talk).

In 1877, William Morris and Philip Webb founded the Society for the Protection of Ancient
Buildings. Both men were strongly influenced by John Ruskin who said that Preservation, or

what we now refer to as Conservation, is far preferable to Restoration which was being
practised in France by one Violett-le-Duc, an architect and theorist famous for, amongst

others, his restoration of Notre Dame in Paris and many other projects.

Ruskin argued that it was important above all to preserve the status quo and not to add or

subtract elements of a building. This was, he said, because the most important aspect of a
building was its age. Any change and that would be lost. Le Duc's Restoration on the other

hand, combined historical facts together with creative modification. For example, in Notre

Dame, the building was cleaned and restored but also gained its distinctive third tower as
well as other smaller changes.

Today we find ourselves with a rather more complex situation in regard to historical buildings

by the addition of terms such as rehabilitation, creative or adaptive re-use, restoration to a

specific period (ie. possible removal of layering from a previous time), total reconstruction
using either new or original materials, etc.

All of this is complicated further by the Venice Charter which was created in 1964 for the

Conservation and Restoration of Monuments and Sites. Under the heading Restoration, it
states in Article 9 that “any extra work which is indispensable must be distinct from the