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( Miguel Ramis)
La SPAB ( Society for Protection of Ancient Building)
es una asociación fundada por William Morris
en 1877 para intentar frenar las intervenciones destructivas
que arquitectos victorianos hacían sobre edificios
medievales. En la actualidad es el organismo más
antíguo y técnicamente experto centrado
en la protección y salvación de edificios
históricos en peligro.
Entre otros hechos notables, la Sociedad ha conseguido
un papel estatutario como expertos en recomendacion
para las autoridades urbanísticas locales. Por
ejemplo, cualquier demolición parcial o total
en Inglaterra o Gales debe de serles informada antes
de ser autorizada.
Ejercen un papel de vigilantes del patrimonio, realizan
labores pedagógicas para concienciar a la sociedad
de la importancia de proteger la herencia arquitectónica.
Su programa formativo anual funciona desde 1930 y cubre
arquitectos, ingenieros y artesanos de la construcción.
También realizan cursillos para constructores
y propietarios.
Architectural students are encouraged in design and
conservation projects by the Philip Webb Award.
The manifesto of the SPAB was written by William Morris
and other founder members and issued in 1877. Although
produced in response to the conservation problems of
the 19th century, the manifesto extends protection to
"all times and styles" and remains to this
day the philosophical basis for the Society's work.
Applicants for SPAB membership must sign to say that
they agree with the manifesto's conservation principles.
William Morris, SPAB founder "A society coming
before the public with such a name as that above written
must needs explain how, and why, it proposes to protect
those ancient buildings which, to most people doubtless,
seem to have so many and such excellent protectors.
This, then, is the explanation we offer.
No doubt within the last fifty years a new interest,
almost like another sense, has arisen in these ancient
monuments of art; and they have become the subject of
one of the most interesting of studies, and of an enthusiasm,
religious, historical, artistic, which is one of the
undoubted gains of our time; yet we think that if the
present treatment of them be continued, our descendants
will find them useless for study and chilling to enthusiasm.
We think that those last fifty years of knowledge and
attention have done more for their destruction than
all the foregoing centuries of revolution, violence
and contempt.
For Architecture, long decaying, died out, as a popular
art at least, just as the knowledge of mediaeval art
was born. So that the civilised world of the nineteenth
century has no style of its own amidst its wide knowledge
of the styles of other centuries. From this lack and
this gain arose in men’s minds the strange idea
of the Restoration of ancient buildings; and a strange
and most fatal idea, which by its very name implies
that it is possible to strip from a building this, that,
and the other part of its history - of its life that
is - and then to stay the hand at some arbitrary point,
and leave it still historical, living, and even as it
once was.
In early times this kind of forgery was impossible,
because knowledge failed the builders, or perhaps because
instinct held them back. If repairs were needed, if
ambition or piety pricked on to change, that change
was of necessity wrought in the unmistakable fashion
of the time; a church of the eleventh century might
be added to or altered in the twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth,
fifteenth, sixteenth, or even the seventeenth or eighteenth
centuries; but every change, whatever history it destroyed,
left history in the gap, and was alive with the spirit
of the deeds done midst its fashioning. The result of
all this was often a building in which the many changes,
though harsh and visible enough, were, by their very
contrast, interesting and instructive and could by no
possibility mislead. But those who make the changes
wrought in our day under the name of Restoration, while
professing to bring back a building to the best time
of its history, have no guide but each his own individual
whim to point out to them what is admirable and what
contemptible; while the very nature of their task compels
them to destroy something and to supply the gap by imagining
what the earlier builders should or might have done.
Moreover, in the course of this double process of destruction
and addition, the whole surface of the building is necessarily
tampered with; so that the appearance of antiquity is
taken away from such old parts of the fabric as are
left, and there is no laying to rest in the spectator
the suspicion of what may have been lost; and in short,
a feeble and lifeless forgery is the final result of
all the wasted labour. It is sad to say, that in this
manner most of the bigger Minsters, and a vast number
of more humble buildings, both in England and on the
Continent, have been dealt with by men of talent often,
and worthy of better employment, but deaf to the claims
of poetry and history in the highest sense of the words.
For what is left we plead before our architects themselves,
before the official guardians of buildings, and before
the public generally, and we pray them to remember how
much is gone of the religion, thought and manners of
time past, never by almost universal consent, to be
Restored; and to consider whether it be possible to
Restore those buildings, the living spirit of which,
it cannot be too often repeated, was an inseparable
part of that religion and thought, and those past manners.
For our part we assure them fearlessly, that of all
the Restorations yet undertaken, the worst have meant
the reckless stripping a building of some of its most
interesting material features; whilst the best have
their exact analogy in the Restoration of an old picture,
where the partly-perished work of the ancient craftsmaster
has been made neat and smooth by the tricky hand of
some unoriginal and thoughtless hack of today. If, for
the rest, it be asked us to specify what kind of amount
of art, style, or other interest in a building makes
it worth protecting, we answer, anything which can be
looked on as artistic, picturesque, historical, antique,
or substantial: any work, in short, over which educated,
artistic people would think it worth while to argue
at all.
It is for all these buildings, therefore, of all times
and styles, that we plead, and call upon those who have
to deal with them, to put Protection in the place of
Restoration, to stave off decay by daily care, to prop
a perilous wall or mend a leaky roof by such means as
are obviously meant for support or covering, and show
no pretence of other art, and otherwise to resist all
tampering with either the fabric or ornament of the
building as it stands; if it has become inconvenient
for its present use, to raise another building rather
than alter or enlarge the old one; in fine to treat
our ancient buildings as monuments of a bygone art,
created by bygone manners, that modern art cannot meddle
with without destroying.
Thus, and thus only, shall we escape the reproach of
our learning being turned into a snare to us; thus,
and thus only can we protect our ancient buildings,
and hand them down instructive and venerable to those
that come after us."
Ver William Morris II
Ver movimiento Arts&Crafts
Ver Bauhaus
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