Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Student Participation in Architectural Conservation: Using Educational Processes to Understand Cultural Heritage

Antariksa



Abstract
Student are taught to be ‘numerate’ and ‘literate’ and the read books on conservation: but they are not taught to understand that which they see.
Given this fact, this study, which is intended as an introduction to sources on the history of architectural conservation, has been found to be highly useful in both establishing terminology and discussing the concepts and ethics of conservation. It focuses on the problem of education programs for students andincludes a series of lectures on conserving monuments or sites, local government policies, and cultural properties’ regulations within specific cases. The students work in historic sites, choosing specific cases or monuments, compiling the data and analysing to find the solution, finishing by making a report.
When visual appreciation and first hand experience play a decisive role in education, it is essential to keep alive the evidence of different periods and what was achieved within them. The survival of this evidence will be assured only if the need to protect it is understood by as many people as posible, particularly the students, who will be its future guardians. Today’s students will be tomorrow’s citizen: if they leave their own cities a little better than they found them, they will have fullfiled their duty to posterity. The challenge for us is to do our duty by them.
The final result will be the perfectly conserved historic monuments or sites that can be used as an educational setting for the general public and their own cultural identity with in the framework of local government, cultural properties, architects and institution academia.


Antariksa, 1999, Student Participation in Architectural Conservation: Using Educational Processes to Understand Cultural Heritage, Centre for Australian-Asia Studies Research Paper Heritage in Asia Series 99-1-H, Deakin University, pp. 1-32, ISBN: 0 7300 2509.