Architectural restoration in Western Europe: controversary and continuity
Architectural restoration in Western Europe, originally published in Dutch in 1987, has quickly become a classic in its field. By critically analysing policies and practices related to the preservation of historic monuments in England, France, Germany and the Netherlands since the end of the eighteenth century, Dr. W. F. Denslagen demonstrates that ideas about the restoration of old buildings have been less subject to change than is generally imagined, and that the idea that the restoration of a historic building should imply the conservation of that building as a historic document is not an invention of the twentieth century. The restoration case studies included here, which draw on the work of Sir George Gilbert Scott, Viollet-le-Duc, Franz Kugler and J. VerLoren, and the contemporary debates that surrounded these projects, provide dear examples to support the author's claims.