East Asian Values in Historic Conservation

The Venice Charter, the foundation of modern conservation, has been viewed as a fundamental document reflecting the internationally accepted philosophy for protection of architectural heritage throughout the world. The Charter represents the acme of progress, in the European context, in architectural conservation, and is thus inevitably and fundamentally based on European conditions and attitudes. So strongly are European attitudes to architecture and its conservation embedded in the Charter, that it has skewed all conservation thinking towards the concept of the European monument, that emphasizes visual beauty through its material substance. Thus, some of the basic tenets of the Venice Charter seem ill-suited to East Asian architecture, which is conceived in a different spirit from its European counterpart. This paper discusses the need for approaches to the East Asian architectural heritage that are different from the modern Western view of conservation, and to make suggestions for developing conservation principles that are more suited to the unique values and aesthetic sense of East Asian culture and architecture. The conclusion is that conservation principles in the East Asian societies are determined in relation to the spiritual and naturalistic sensibilities of East Asian culture and architecture. These principles are put forward as a more appropriate basis than conservation principles that are developed within the Western cultural tradition.