CONSERVATION ISSUES
It is believed that Conservation of cultural heritage must overcome the contemporary challenges to survive in the future but the conservation actions shall not alter substantial values.
Culture consists of patterns that express explicitly or implicitly the behaviours of human groups. These behaviours transformed into symbols. Culture expresses about facts, beliefs, history, and the way society thinks or believes. So, the culture has to be lived because it cannot be disassembled into elements. Culture takes time to become continually tradition \citep{Pujol_2012}\citep{abediinteraction}.
So, tradition is an essential part of culture which transfers between generations. Identity of a society depends on its traditional heritage. For that reason, many societies give a great concern to heritage values. In addition, tradition is formed through accumulated values over centuries and it needs effort to be recognized and to be transformed creatively for incorporating the contemporary values and needs.
One of the important fields that can reflect different cultures is traditional architecture. For example, Analysing the traditional architectures in Arab world can represent multilayer of past cultures manifestation
(Abedi et al., 2014).
- What is cultural heritage?
It is a group of qualities or characteristics that represent significant values for a society. It deals with senses, memories, and physical values and it also includes tangible and intangible qualities \citep{troi2014energy}.
Cultural heritage approach mainly focuses on three factors; building construction & materials, social knowledge, and values that pass to future generations. So, buildings or artefacts by themselves do not express insight into minds of past culture without understanding the other factors. This understanding can be occurred through observation and interaction \citep{Pujol_2012}.
- What are the different definitions of the cultural heritage?
The World Heritage Convention of 1972, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), clarifies the cultural heritage by defining the following terms; monuments, group of buildings, and sites (Refer to
Appendix-1)
\citep{yusuf2008definition}.
Cultural heritage and historic architectural buildings represent cultural values of a society \citep{troi2014energy}. There are several terms of architectural buildings that became part of the cultural heritage such as; traditional architecture, historic architecture, and heritage architectural. The difference between “traditional architecture” or “historic architecture” and “heritage architectural” is that “heritage architectural” can contain more recent structures comparing with the other two terms \citep{Fouseki_2014}.
Other researchers have distinguished between the “historic building” and “historical buildings”. They defined historic buildings as something important and effective in history. Meanwhile, historical building refers to anything from the past
(Mazzarella, 2015), \citep{Moschella_2013}. These different terms are created to categorize huge number of buildings in a specific context for determining the appropriate intervention and conservation actions.
For example, law no.117 of 1983 in Egypt so called “The antiquities law” mentions the term “antiquity” that is defined as “Artefacts produced by different cultures or caused by arts, sciences, literature or religion of the pre-historic era and during consecutive historic periods till a hundred years ago when it held value or had archaeological or historic importance is considered one of the manifestation of different cultures” \citep{Hawas2013Urban}. Meanwhile, Law number 144 of 2006, so called “Regulating the demolishing of Non-dilapidated buildings and establishments, and the preservation of architectural heritage” uses the term “Architectural heritage”. This term is used for buildings that are not registered as antiquities. The architectural heritage buildings have an outstanding architectural value. In addition, they are corresponding to the country’s national history, or a historic figure, or represent a historical epoch, or considered a tourist sight (Refer to Appendix-1) \citep{hassan2013Egyptian}. However, both laws did not mention clearly to the definitions of conservation, preservation, restoration works. Only there are very general explanations about the practices that relate to the building and if it is possible to use it or not. Hence, the conservation practises in Egypt rely mainly on the definition in the international conventions.
- What are the different variables of cultural heritage (General variables)?
As per figure (6), the different variables of conserving a historical buildings are required society participation, overcome contemporary needs, and (re)use the building.