Do not touch? Speculations on historical intentions and their place in cultural heritage

Abstract

What is the value in historical heritage? Is it in the bricks and stones or is it in the their unique position to carry stories of the past? Stones are easily kept but how do places keep stories and what stories makes their way though time? What do we do when the stories not in physical form and are we allowed to “do” anything at all?

The subject of heritage conservation has been debated persistently since the 1800s, yet today there is no one answer to the question. One of the reasons for the many theories is the disagreement in what is to be preserved to start with. The intended use, the material itself or its symbolic value? Different theories all claim their version of what is right, true and authentic. This thesis explores mainly three different theories within the field of conservation, namely preservation, restoration and the contemporary umbrella of the communicative turn. Trough investigation and design it navigates the theories and aims to propose a design in which people’s understanding of a place is put above the protection of objects.

The site for this investigation is the castle of Skokloster, a place regarded as one of Europe’s best kept baroque castles. However one room was never completed and has been left uncompleted since 1676, the grand banquet hall commonly known as “Den ofullbordade salen” (the unfinished hall). This thesis examines the unbuilt intentions of the room through historical records and aims to propose a way for the intangible history of the unfinished hall to be communicated to the public. In the end, the unfinished hall is not proposed to be finished, but rather equipped with objects which together fills the gap in the current narrative and provides the visitor with the full story of the space. The creation of the object came to be the main focus of the thesis, as each object requires a process of several steps to be created. Where there are drawings of the intended execution, these are used as the guiding document, complemented with additional research of existing execution. Where no documents can be followed, existing objects in the castles inventory are used to lay a basis for interpretation. Together the objects make up the intervention as a whole, creating a version of truths to be read in the room. The intervention proposed encourages a tactile and explorative approach to the space, allowing people to create personal memories, adding to the story of the historical place. We will always be faced with the question of how to manage and care for out cultural heritage. This thesis emphasises the importance of allowing alterations of sites to bring forward the full narrative of spaces. For what is really the point in saving these places if they cannot communicate their history to the people that are, and will be, the future