Introductory Remarks and Congress Aims
Monumental Cemeteries have to satisfy prescribed requirements. Conceptual Design has to rationally define the basic procedures to get sound arrangements not only safe but also economical, aesthetical and of good quality.
Without wanting anything to remove from the expressive potential offered to the designer by the funeral theme, and to the role of the cemetery structures within the theoretical debate and the routine European architectural practice, the seminar proposes to create the conditions for a renewed approach to the spaces of the burial in the European countries. It is important to understand what is the historical and monumental meaning which the cemetery assumes as a projection of architecture today and to consider the intervention on the existing cemetery structures as a transforming typology and house building with specificity, and such characteristics to be asked for basic technical, operational and trial approaches on up-to-date concepts. Strategy and management needs are to be known, such that are to support a planning activity able to qualify and to check the project of knowledge and recovery in the different phases of planning, designing, realization, management and fruition.
In this optic there must be considered: the historical and artistic information of the good, the diagnostic one, the evaluation of opportunity of intervention in technical-economic terms, the economic validation of the interventions, the possibility to intervene with technical solutions able to support the maintenance and the improvement of the performances in to be.
The seminar proposes, in a picture of thematic and correlated parameters, to:
- contribute to the editing of tools for supporting decisional actions, to appraise and to validate the action of maintenance and retraining of the cemeteries, starting the elaboration of coherent trial, systematic and informative statutes to the plurality of the existing cemetery typologies in Europe and other continents;
- diffuse the knowledge of the monumental cemeteries all around the world;
- ensure renewable interest towards the importance of the historical-monumental cemeteries inside the national and international institutions;
- promote initiatives for common projects concerning the conservation of the monumental cemeteries;
- share the best experiences in intervention: reuse and restorations on existing cemeteries and innovative projects;
- involve people in education on historical and social values of historical-monumental cemeteries;
- provide a forum for networking.
The conference invites papers concerning “Cemetery Complexes in open and covered spaces”, “Mixed cemeteries (Christians, Moslems, Jewish, etc.)”, “Disused Monumental cemeteries in inhabited centers”, “Military cemeteries”, “Protection of the Ancient Necropolies”, on the following themes.
Theme 1: Knowledge
- The cemetery and the relationships with the architecture and the sculpture.
- The spaces of cemetery in different cultures: state of the art
- Cultural Identity of modern urban cemeteries.
- Tanatology, “Death as a cultural theme”
- Life in the “Cities of the Dead”: where the living live next to the dead
- Knowledge of cultural values of the cemeteries and sensitization/education/participation of the citizens to the protection and restoration activities.
- Promotion of the historicity of a sacred space
- The memory of the lived experience in small cemeteries
- ICT and the valorisation of commemorative monuments
- Promotion of tourist activities and environment enhancement in the cemetery places
- The burials inside the churches
Theme 2: Conservation and Reuse
- Conservation and Restoration
- Environmental impact on materials characterizing the cemetery complexes
- Remedy and proposals
- Conservation problems for rural parish cemeteries, when adjacent to churches classified as historical monuments
- Conservation problems for rural parish cemeteries
- Risk Assessment and Management
- Policy, New management processes for the cemeteries
Theme 3: Restyling and Innovation
- Cemeteries and urban burials
- Modern metropolitan cemeteries
- Interventions of rehabilitation, of space amplification, Functional and Normative adaptation
- Cemeteries as Cultural and Historical institutions and the demands of modern society: Contempory solutions, Define the burial traditions of tomorrow
- Tumulus burials in the urban context. Interventions and management based on environmental aspects
- Multi-ethnic cemeteries between tradition and research
Special session: The rediscovery of the underground heritage and the redevelopment of the burial structures