Summary - TST 44
TRANSPORTES, SERVICIOS Y TELECOMUNICACIONES
How should I restore the heritage (also the industrial one)
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[ Abstract ]
The author takes a brief look at the rapid process of raising
awareness in the world of Spanish culture of the importance that
the material evidence left in our territory by industrialisation
could have for historical knowledge and the increase in the
country's monumental heritage, with particular reference to the
buildings erected for this purpose throughout the 19th and early
20th centuries. A process whose beginnings coincide with those
of the country's path towards democracy and has as one of its
milestones the salvation at the last moment of an important
industrial building in Terrassa (Barcelona) and its subsequent
reuse as a museum. It then goes on to review the emergence and
establishment in our context of the concept of Industrial
Heritage at the beginning of the 1980s and the role that this
heritage will play throughout the “prodigious decade” that the
country will experience, and in particular the restoration of
monuments. Based on his participation in the professional debate
that took place at that time, the author argues his disagreement
with some of the prevailing theses and defends that in his
opinion the conservation and restoration of this heritage does
not require a specific methodology, different from that which
should be applied to the whole of the built cultural heritage.
He goes on to explain the working method he created from 1985
onwards to guide all the interventions of the oldest monument
service in Spain, which he directed between 1981 and 2008.
Finally, he explains and comments on some of the specific
features of Industrial Heritage in terms of its restoration and
reuse, citing a work carried out in Catalonia at the end of the
last century that he considers exemplary.