Conservation Philosophy and its Development: Changing Understandings of Authenticity and Significance

This paper describes the evolution of architectural conservation theory and analyzes its impact on the implementation of the 1972 UNESCO World Heritage Convention. It demonstrates how the main outlines of the Convention were rooted in characteristically European ideas about the significance of place and the immutability of values associated with built heritage, and argues that many of those ideas have since been challenged. This has led to the recognition of the validity of other theoretical foundations and methodologies with which cultural heritage is protected. One text in particular, the Nara Document on Authenticity (1994), directly challenged long-held Euro-centric criteria for the evaluation of heritage authenticity, asserting that this quality is, instead, dependent on cultural context and expressed in diverse forms throughout the world. The Nara Document, in fact, encouraged a shift in the Operational Guidelines of the World Heritage Convention from a strictly materialistic focus on a monument's original fabric toward intangible criteria of workmanship and other aspects of cultural continuity. The paper concludes with the recommendation that as new theories and techniques for protecting tangible and intangible heritage continue to evolve, heritage professionals must acknowledge and attempt to manage change, rather than deny its inevitability.