How about we all agree to hang Bill in effigy and return to the battlefield
of preservation.

There are several themes that run through many of the threads on BP and PL
as subtexts that I wish could be tackled more directly. As a relative
newcomer to the electronic dialog, maybe I'm asking the gang to beat a
previously beaten-to-death horse. If so then please ignore me. But I am
trying hard to elaborate for myself  some philosophy and some rules of
engagement that I can use as guidance when I am "on the ground", so to
speak.

I have several questions in mind, but I think that it would be more
productive to throw them out one at a time. So the first question I have is
this:

What is the relationship of preservation to restoration? Can a structure or
community be considered "preserved" if it's future is safeguarded without
regard to its intentional history? We have talked about the various
criteria and motives, historical, cultural and aesthetic, that impel the
effort to preserve a particular project. But can a project of preservation
be said to be successful if the material fabric is retained for one of the
three motives mentioned above but out of a context that includes the other
two.

I am not so innocent to think that compromise isn't necessary in almost
every act of preservation. But is it possible to establish a guideline so
that the argument and methodology to preserve a structure or community
would consider the project contextually and work from there to the
possible.

I ask because, admittedly without a thorough knowledge of the history of
the preservation movement, it seems to me that the approach has been
entirely situational and lacking a cohesive philosophy.

This is something that I am not used to or comfortable with, since in the
world I inhabit, the restoration of objects (antiques) and isolated
residential structures of the 18th and early 19th Centuries, these
guidelines do seem to exist and in dealing with clients I, and those I work
with, habitually take as the starting point the possibility that the object
or structure could be returned to its state at a particular point in its
history.

Any takers?