Archaeological Department is the custodian of our heritage artifacts. They are supposed to take care of the artifacts listed for protection or even those not listed. Since architectural and archaeological conservation are sensitive issues, as a safety net, an advisory committee on architectural and archaeological conservation with relevant expertise and proven experience may be formed. Other than routine works all architectural and archaeological conservation initiative should go through that body for proper guidance. In many countries ‘Heritage Commissions’ are there which perform the role of guardian and guide.Demolition of the boundary wall of Lalbagh Fort and the aftermath
Architectural conservation is not only architectural preservation of historic evidence but retaining the cultural
significance, the intrinsic value of areas, environments, monuments, buildings and living communities
Qazi Azizul Mowla, PhD, FIAB
Archaeological Department is the custodian of our heritage artifacts. They are supposed to take care of the artifacts listed for protection or even those not listed. Since architectural and archaeological conservation are sensitive issues, as a safety net, an advisory committee on architectural and archaeological conservation with relevant expertise and proven experience may be formed. Other than routine works all architectural and archaeological conservation initiative should go through that body for proper guidance. In many countries Heritage Commissions are there which perform the role of guardian and guide.
Architectural conservation is not only architectural preservation of historic evidence but retaining the cultural significance, the intrinsic value of areas, environments, monuments, buildings and living communities. Its scope may range from town planning, urban design to preservation of crumbling artifacts. The focus of conservation should be on Authenticity, Conjecture, Integrity, Patina, Right of the local community, Respect for the contribution of all periods, Inseparable bond with the setting or identity and so on.
In nutshell, an architectural conservation must look into the following: The condition of building must be thoroughly recorded before any intervention is attempted. Historic evidences must not be destroyed, falsified or removed; any intervention must be the minimum necessary; any intervention must be governed by unswerving respect for the aesthetic, historical and physical integrity of cultural property. All methods and materials used during treatment must be fully documented. All the cases must be individually judged, and thoroughly studied, before a conservation decision is made.
Having mentioned the ideal process let us post-mortem what had happened in the Lalbagh fort recently. Authorities had demolished a part of boundary wall (though not very old -still not acceptable) of Lalbagh Fort to make way for parking in the fort area (that is also not acceptable from the heritage conservation standards point of view). Department of Archaeology, who are the custodian of this heritage site, should be careful in handling such sites and must follow the international norms and standards. People who resist these types of unwarranted acts should also be aware of norms and standards to guide the people who are ignorant. It is learnt that the Archaeological Department, had actually formed a committee with people like Prof. Shahnewaz of the Department of Archaeology, Jahangirnagar University and Prof. Abu Sayeed Ahmed of the Department of Architecture in a private university. Together with the archaeologist of the department they did some brain storming, but perhaps, they themselves were not convinced about execution process. That is why they did the blunder and did not have the moral strength to stand and face the agitation against the demolition of the wall. Mysteriously, Prof. Shahnewaz and Prof. Abu Sayeed also kept mum and did not come forward to explain the things. Nor did the agitators do enough homework before protesting the demolition. Is the halting of the work their real goal or they wanted the work to follow norms and standards? Now days it has become a fashion to talk about architectural and area conservation without any serious studies or understanding of the problem. All classic heritage sites bear lot of interventions to keep them relevant with the present context and that were done under the careful guidance of experts. You cannot ignore ground realities; therefore, all protest must come with detail road map to mitigate the root problems. In a dynamic urban setting you might sometimes need some interventions in an historic or heritage site for its improvement or to make it contextual there are ways to do that, its fossilization is no solution.
It is believed that the first step towards any conservation (or even listing for conservation) endeavor is to identify its value, i.e. Architectural Style and quality, the impact it is making in the society or physical surrounding, significant (both positive and negative) events it is associated with, particular era or event or memory it is representing, Educational and scientific value, Contextual value due to its being important representative of a particular period and culture in history. The Social and economic value (tourism and recreation) and or the Identity value because of its uniqueness and representing local values, culture and so on.
However, Environmental value provided by all of the values listed above, is very important. Considering these entire factor, if some intervention is desirable, we must go for that under the guidance of the experts.
The writer is Professor of Architecture and Urban Design, BUET
