It was organized by the Architectural Museum of the Technical University of Munich, showing its expositions in the halls of the Pinakothek of Contemporary Art. As conceived by the curators, the exhibition was supposed to cover all aspects of the problem of reconstruction and, thus, rise above the eternal conflict between the public and politicians, on the one hand, and architects and specialists in the field of heritage protection, on the other. Obviously, the former usually advocate a large-scale restoration of what was lost, while the latter treat the problem of “re-creation” with extreme caution, often even exceeding the framework established by the 1964 Venice Charter.
The exposition includes 300 examples of various reconstructions (85 of them are considered in detail, with models, drawings, modern and archival photographs). In order to achieve the maximum completeness of the material, even unambiguously unsuccessful projects are presented to the attention of visitors, such as a number of facades of "old" houses on the Mainz Market Square: this decorative wall is designed to reconcile the medieval cathedral with the shopping center designed by Massimiliano Fuksas. But curators are less interested in modern examples than justifying their main idea: "A copy is not a deception, a facsimile is not a fake, a dummy is not a crime, and reconstruction is not a lie." Thus, they still take sides - and not professionals, but ordinary people. They emphasize their position with a detailed history of reconstruction, which began almost simultaneously with the appearance of architecture. Religious, symbolic, aesthetic and political reasons forced rulers and peoples to rebuild and restore temples and palaces from ruins - with varying degrees of precision. The most striking and popular example of this is the Shinto shrine of Ise, where wooden buildings are dismantled and rebuilt every 20 years, always according to the same plan. However, this example is too distant from the Western mentality, so it would be wiser to recall, for example, the deeds of Viollet-le-Duc, who, guided by his romantic ideas about the Middle Ages and boundless enthusiasm, caused damage to many unique monuments with his “renovations”, in the first turn to Carcassonne.
But attention is not focused on this: on the contrary, it is proposed to believe that any reconstruction and even a remake, no matter how carefully verified from a scientific point of view, a copy it is, is also a reflection of modernity, just as a lost monument was a reflection of its time. At the same time, no distinction is made between the restoration of monuments that died as a result of an accident (like the campanile in Piazza San Marco in Venice, which collapsed due to the 1902 earthquake and was rebuilt in hot pursuit), buildings and cities damaged during hostilities (like Warsaw and Rotterdam) or from the aggressive or criminal foreign policy of their own state, like many cities and monuments of Germany and Italy. Also, no clear line is drawn between restoration for relatively "disinterested" reasons, such as the monastery in the Swiss village of Monte Carasso, reconstructed by Luigi Snozzi, and more dubious cases, such as the third "installation" of the surviving fragments of the temple of Athena-Nike on the Athenian Acropolis or active completion of the Great Wall of China. In these, as in many others, the main purpose of the reconstruction or reconstruction is that the "improved" monument fulfills its main function - the role of a popular attraction - just as successfully (or even more successfully) than the original, that is, attracting tourists.
All the problems of the exhibition are closely related, of course, with the place of its holding. The problem of reconstruction and reconstruction is as acute in Germany as in few other places in the world. But this was not always the case: by the beginning of the XX century. in a country filled with historical monuments, the slogan "conservation, not restoration" was popular. After World War II, the situation changed radically, although not immediately. In particular, during the restoration of Goethe's home, which was destroyed to the ground in Frankfurt am Main, in the late 1940s, the court made a decision: when working with "memorable places", pay attention to political and historical circumstances and not restore all in a row (although the house of Goethe, of course, was "recreated"). But the trauma that remained in the minds of the nation after the period of fascism and war did not disappear anywhere; it was aggravated by disappointment in the architecture of late modernism, more and more boring and soulless - and it was in this spirit that the cities destroyed by the bombing were built up. Therefore, the internal demand for remakes is still strong in Germany; in the 1950s, key monuments were restored, by the 1980s, the turn of minor ones came, now they are seriously talking about almost meaningless projects, for example, the restoration of the royal palaces in Berlin and Potsdam (and in the first case, the purpose of this expensive building is not entirely obvious) … Such a total recreation clearly testifies to the desire to return the "happy" past, linking the present day with it, bypassing terrible historical events. Therefore, perhaps, the exposition did not find a place for the remarkable reconstruction of the Berlin New Museum by David Chipperfield, which preserved the historical "scars" of the building as valuable evidence of history, or outstripped not only the British architect, but even the Venice Charter Hans Döllgast, who restored in 1950- e Munich's Old Pinakothek, clearly highlighting the new parts with material and style. On the contrary, most of it is largely occupied by newly-made Baroque ensembles of Dresden or, for example, the Chinese Pagoda of the English Garden in Munich, about whose post-war origin few people know.
At the same time, the curators overlooked one of the most important aspects (and goals) of the reconstruction - the restoration or preservation of the quality of the urban environment. New-builds do not always contribute to this, and modern buildings serving the same purpose, such as the Munich Fünf Höfen complex of the Herzog & de Meuron bureau, were not included in the range of problems of the exhibition at all.
It should, of course, be recognized that the issue of reconstruction in its various aspects remains relevant outside of Germany: it is enough to recall the situation in Moscow, Kiev, Riga or even Paris (however, the idea of recreating the Tuileries Palace there is more the exception than the rule, and it is hardly will be implemented). Thus, we can say with confidence that the topic raised at the exhibition was not only not covered by it, but even not fully disclosed. The curators are unambiguously right about one thing: the reconstruction is almost the same age as the architecture, and while one exists, the other will develop and change its appearance.
