IN-PERSON: Prague – Section B

Abstract

How to Bring a Monument to Speech. Architectural heritage is not something that we preserve for itself, but rather for the cultural values that it bears, which are important for humanity and for society. We could even say that we protect our built monuments to improve human life, both present and future. Hence it is worth posing the question – in what way can they influence it? And wherein lies this improvement of life? Such a conception of the monument requires a no less complex understanding of how to protect it. It could be characterised on one hand by an active approach, and on another by a holistic one. One of the possible ways of implementing an approach both holistic and active emerges from the actual meaning of a monument, i.e. the transmission of information about the past to the present and the future. The active conception of protection means: to find this information, identify its bearers, protect it, evaluate (revive, develop, elevate) it, and find a method of how to communicate it on individual and social levels. As such, we could therefore speak of a “communicative monument”. How, though, do we “make a monument speak”? How do we interpret the intellectual contents saved within the monument? How do we make it part of a conversation with the present? The various possible forms of this approach, are display both in general and as they are applied in work of the Prague studio MCA atelier of architects Pavla Melková and Miroslav Cikán.