Towards an “integrated conservation” : the contribution of R.M. Lemaire and Piero Gazzola during the first decade of ICOMOS (1965-1975)

Respectively elected first President and first Secretary General during the first general assembly of ICOMOS in Cracow in 1965, Piero Gazzola and Raymond M. Lemaire have deeply contributed to the success of the newly born organisation. During the first years, they didn’t only provoke the creation of numerous national committees around the world, but they also positioned ICOMOS as a major actor of the international conservation scene, through the organisation of conferences and an active participation in the debates initiated by Unesco and the Council of Europe, for which ICOMOS acted as a consultant.

The study of Raymond M. Lemaire’s archive, kept at the KU Leuven in Belgium, clearly shows that one of the major concerns of both Lemaire and Gazzola, who had been, in 1964, amongst the main authors of the Venice Charter, was to broaden the scope of the document in order to address the issue of pre-industrial city centres, threatened by late reconstruction or development projects mostly promoting functionalist approaches.

Depending on the time available, this presentation will address one or various aspects of Lemaire’s and Gazzola’s contribution to the emergence of integrated conservation, consecrated by the European Charter and the Amsterdam Declaration of 1975, that is:
the new ideas (social value of heritage for example) developed during the expert meetings organised by the Council of Europe in 1965-1968, where they both represented ICOMOS. These ideas are synthesised in the report “Saving the face of Europe” in 1973,
the relation between these theoretical contributions and Lemaire and Gazzola’s contemporary field experience,
the role of Eastern Europe experiences (D. Libal in Prague and M. Horler in Budapest) in the development of an appropriate methodology to address urban issues,
the differences between the concept of “integral planning” proposed by Lemaire in 1973 and the “integrated conservation” that was promoted by the 1975 Council of Europe charters,
an epilogue could mention the revision projects of the Venice Charter between 1975 and 1981.

Based on my PhD about R.M. Lemaire, recently presented at the KU Leuven (Belgium), this presentation aims at clarifying and illustrating the shift from monument restoration towards city “reanimation” or “rehabilitation” during the late sixties and seventies, as well as paying tribute to the action of two of the most important figures of the beginnings of ICOMOS.