At the Venice Architecture Biennale 2010 OMA proclaimed: ‘as the scale and importance of preservation escalates each year, the absence of a theory and the lack of interest invested in this seemingly remote domain becomes dangerous’.
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Beginning this year, Footprint will be indexed on Elsevier's Scopus.
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Hardcopies for issues 7 and 8 are now available.
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At the Venice Architecture Biennale 2010 OMA proclaimed: ‘as the scale and importance of preservation escalates each year, the absence of a theory and the lack of interest invested in this seemingly remote domain becomes dangerous’. This assertion demands a critical response from experts in the field of architectural conservation. The tenth issue of Footprint aims to open an academic discussion on this theme.
Over the last decades the discourse on the built heritage has intensified, particularly around the issue of architectural authenticity. Recent technological developments allow us to explore the material history of a building in detail. The tendency to resort to architectural imitations of historic buildings has increased to the point where our architectural heritage is at risk of becoming a simulacrum of our glorious past. At the same time, some recent restoration projects of architecture of the 1920-30s have received international recognition, and the renewal of post-war architecture has become the subject of debate.
Despite several attempts at critical examination of recent conservation and re-use projects, an overall theory is still lacking. The question is whether such a global theory is possible, or indeed necessary. Practice confronts us with many questions: how do we deal with historic building stock? It is clear that architectural heritage consists not only in monuments with statutory protection: where should the borderlines of protection for the built environment be drawn? Is our aim to establish a certain level of recognition of protected identity? We observe the recent widening of the preservation field both in territory and time: should a new theory fix its limits?
This issue of Footprint intends to bring together American, West-European, and Asian theoretical approaches towards the adaptation, alteration, extension, or demolition of buildings and complexes. Are the approaches of different cultures comparable? Is preservation merely ‘a western invention’, as OMA claims? An emphasis on the comparison of ideas about preservation from East and West should focus our perspective.
Finally, authors are invited to suggest a theoretical answer to the longstanding crucial challenge, again put on the architects’ agenda by OMA as ‘the world needs a new system mediating between preservation and development’.
The deadline for the submission of papers of circa 6000-8000 words (including notes) is 1 November 2011. Please submit papers as Word files to editors(at)footprintjournal.org with ‘Issue 10’ in email title. Papers that relate to the topic and meet acceptable academic and writing standards will be peer-reviewed. Footprint 10 will be published in spring 2012. Please see 'paper submission' section at www.footprintjournal.org for more details.
Susannah Charlton, Wim Denslagen and Ivan Nevzgodin, editors