MYTH

One of the earliest forms of discourse on the preservation of monuments dates back to the 15th century in Rome. In contrast to the earlier mirabilia tradition, a guidance for pilgrimage, the ruins were suddenly no longer regarded as remnants of a past world or as mere melancholic reminders of the greatness of ancient Rome. Instead, they were utilised as points of reference for the reconstruction of a new Rome within the context of shifting power dynamics.2 With a rapidly growing inventory of protected buildings and the recurring rhetoric of the discourse that obscures any engagement with the real issue at hand, we believe that there lies a great potential in discovering and specializing our understanding of the institutions responsible for heritage protection in Switzerland. By acting as points of reference, they not only help navigate physical and conceptual landscapes but also impose a certain order on how we imagine and approach the unknown. In this sense, these devices are not neutral; they carry an inherent authority in defining what is seen, remembered, or anticipated.

EXPLOSION OF PRESERVATION DISCOURSE

symbols of the monarchy, that became the epicenter of the explosion in modern preservation discourses. To avoid descending into chaos, the government needed to establish a new inventory of symbols, therefore deciding what had to be preserved and what needed to be removed. The indiscriminate destruction of certain objects was soon labeled as vandalism.3 The formulated values of French cultural preservation were then applied for the first time in the newly founded Helvetic Republic. The transformation from a decentralised federation of autonomous cantons into a unitary state with a national government destabilised the political and economic order of the previous system. The need for new mechanisms to foster social cohesion and ensure stability by promoting a sense of “national” community became increasingly urgent. It was not long before a national archive, led by Philipp Albert Stapfer, was established. In addition to the great interest in the preservation of cultural assets, a new assessment of their character seemed to be decisive for the commitment of the state Ministry of Culture. The former curiosities - often privately owned - were given the status of ‘propriété nationale’, as Stapfer calls them, in the course of the 18th century.4

THE NEW TROJAN HORSE

The Act of Mediation in 1803 following the collapse of the helvetic republic marked a pivotal moment in the preservation discourse, abolishing the feudal system and transforming land into a tradable commodity. As a result, the city - still often encircled by its ancient walls and characterized by streets designed for communal gathering rather than traffic - appeared increasingly powerless in the face of these rapid changes. It is therefore no surprise that the founding year of the “Antiquarische Gesellschaft Zürich” in 1832 coincided with the decision to demolish the city fortifications, marking a significant loss of a tangible symbol of the city’s political identity. The removal of these physical boundaries necessitated new reference points to navigate the expansion into unknown territory.5 The emergence of the concept of “Heimat” makes these modern connotations of the imagination of place particularly explicit. One could argue that this was the starting point of an aesthetic development in which the collective imagination moved so radically away from its means of subsistence that only aesthetic reform prevented the break. This need for preservation and reform was soon articulated by Camillo Sitte in 1889, who introduced the concept of protecting entire urban ensembles to maintain the integrity of a place. Thus, the gaze was soon turned away from individual objects and toward the city as a whole; the city as an object, the place as an image.6

STILLER MITERZIEHER

In 1908, under the mandate of the federal government, the newly founded Heimatschutz organization designated so-called protection zones for the most prestigious districts of Zurich, areas reflecting not so much the history of Zurich but rather the prevailing power structures of the time. Acting as a mediator between capital and labor7, the organization saw its role in both preservation and in establishing planning foundations for an erratic environment, attempting to unify radical discontinuities under a cohesive identity; Designing residential buildings as picturesque villages, distributing them throughout the urban space, and implementing an architectural style considered “authentic” and “honest” aimed to define the parameters within which city residents could shape their behaviors and form their self-understanding as members of a civil society - at least, this was the hope.8 It was within this pre-structured space that the “tactical” maneuvers of everyday use took place.9 But it wasn’t long before such a fiction could no longer be sustained. However, the codification of a national identity had already emerged in the context of a manifesto that juxtaposed ideas of a modern, but well-fortified Switzerland with a culture of preservation of the country’s natural heritage.10 By doing so, it defined the raw material of Switzerland’s territory into parcels ready for preservation or consumption. This comprehensive approach to protection gained decisive traction in its parallel movement, nature conservation, with the founding of Switzerland’s first national park in 1914.

ALIBI FOR DESTRUCTION

It could be argued that the established values of heritage preservation were only institutionalized in the wake of large-scale destruction, not as a mere response, but as part of a broader initiative. The Athens Charter in 1933 elevated the value of heritage conservation on an international scale, though its chapters remained shaped by national perspectives.11 Following the Second World War, the theme of urban reconstruction took on significant momentum. Though cities had been laid to waste, plans for their reconstruction and for the radical reorganization of urban space had already been conceived behind the scenes.12
In Zurich, the city council argued quite straightforwardly, after a study trip through Germany, that the undamaged buildings in the city center were a disadvantage — fully in line with Churchill’s motto, “a disaster - but an opportunity.” Improving traffic routing in the area of the railway station, the projects of Bahnhofbrücke and Central had already been decided when the liquidation of the remaining buildings in the Limmat area, in particular the Papierwerdareal, was initiated in 1948. The clear-cutting that had been caused elsewhere by the bombing was thus set about as a kind of “dry run”. A referendum in 1951 ensured that the view from the Bahnhofsbrücke to the Grossmünster and beyond could sweep as far as the Alps, and a few years later the doctrine of the ‘Free Limmat’ became a fait accompli with the demolition of the 19th century Fleischhalle.13
Yet, historic city centers had to retain their symbolic role, anchoring the ideology of organic growth of the European city within tangible reality.14 The establishment of the “Büro für Altstadtsanierung” in 1946, under city architect Albert Heinrich Steiner, institutionalized this hybrid approach. The office sought to preserve the overall “Stadtbild”, continuing to endorse significant alterations, demonstrating how the construction of the monumental character of the city center became a form of “managed change15, that emphasized continuity, authenticity, and the universal value of cultural heritage, often concealing the social and political realities, such as the displacement of lower-income residents. This sentiment of change would later resonate in the eighth CIAM conference, The Heart of the City.

THE JURISDICTION OF AMBIANCE

The Venice Charter 1964 must be recognised as a reaction to these historical beautification projects of Europe’s historic towns. It emphasized respecting the valid contributions of all historical periods to a monument, moving away from a singular focus on stylistic unity and instead acknowledging the multiplicity within buildings. This development was accompanied by a formalization of heritage practices, which shifted the focus from isolated monuments to entire “ensembles,” thereby transforming this perceived urban coherence, rooted in aesthetic subjectivity, into an objective legislative criterion.16 Simultaneously with the compression of space and time and the increasingly fluid circulation of capital, alongside the growing homogenization of space, a stronger, alternative construction of local identity emerged. Places began to compete for distinctiveness.17 Viewed from this perspective, the Venice Charter’s principles were no longer assessed nationally, but locally. This development became hegemonic in 1972 with the establishment of the World Heritage Sites. It was within this context that Sibylle Heusser began to inventorize the “townscapes” of Switzerland in 1973, founding the organization now known as ISOS. The state-led institution would emerge as a mediator of the opposing forces amid the rapid urbanization of the 1970’s and the concurrent homogenization and global struggle for identity. Since then, the inventory has been continuously enlarged and finally published in 2016. It is said to serve as a snapshot of the so-called “urban landscapes” of variously sized population centres. Based on the assigned cultural or historical value, preservation goals are set for these landscapes. As it is the overall image of a place that is of importance, the preservation goals often don’t treat the built substance but focus on the character of districts, specified by façades or squares, designating disturbances in the homogenous image. The concept of the “townscape” naturalizes these forces shaping the image, thereby reinforcing inequalities by attributing intrinsic values to entire neighborhoods and concealing their local and global dimensions.18

FROM RETROSPECTIVE TO PROACTIVE

The need of the authorized heritage discourse to offer a cohesive image and narrative leads to its struggle to acknowledge and engage with the inherently multivocal and dissonant nature of heritage. It denies the understanding that heritage is formed through cultural processes and not through a simple preservation of a static past.19 The breaks in the linear history must therefore not only be made visible but become the landmarks of future development in order to dissolve the spatial boundaries that the authorized heritage discourse has created.
And so as the objects of interest grew from single monuments to façades, entire houses, neighborhoods, and finally cities, the ramifications of the acts of preservation also gained importance. The rapid development of the protected status has led to a reduction in the time span between an object and the moments of its preservation to just a few decades.
This rapid increase in the production of wishful images of a synthesizing perception during our lifetime arises from a desire to create images whose clarity does justice to the complexity of the modern city.20 Thinking and developing the European city as a project oriented towards the future has always depended on the power of the ability to form a picture, to imagine images. Modernism as an expression of modernity made the claim that in order to control the future, one has to make a radical break. In the speed of change, one was confronted with a rapidly discontinuous reality. One way of dealing with this was to invent the future, to preemptively establish it. This led to a peculiar response to our environment: the drive to dominate and reshape it to fit an idealized image of how it “should” be.