dr Peter Fister, Ljubljana SI
COEXISTENCE OF THE OLD AND THE NEW AS THE BASIC VALUE OF VERNACULAR ARCHITECTURE
Superstructures of older buildings with new additions or their redesigning into new shapes was always one of the basic characteristics of vernacular (anonymous) architecture and at the same time the condition for its development. But this was never left to chance and was always based on various conditions. This could derive from the demand for the identity continuity, which was the most complex and extremely demanding task for all the builders and is still among the greatest values of vernacular architecture as the basic shaper of cultural (architectural…) landscape characteristics. It is also depends on the environmental conditions, the climate, local materials, the arranged standards, which are to ensure the quality of the living milieu to a certain way of living (rural, urbane, working… architecture). All these changes and innovations were often controlled through special demands with political, ideological, social, economical and other explanations.
From numerous standards, which were and still are (or should be) conditions for the evaluation of suitability, derived a new, changed evaluation about which innovation in the anonymous/vernacular architecture is the one we can evaluate as a quality superstructure of the existing architecture, i.e. which one leads to its reduction in value. Since these values always derive from a spaciously determinable, comparatively small (and thus determinable!) units and are at the same time constantly compared with broader, higher standards from regional to planetary range, it never was and never will be possible to set universal evaluations, let alone criteria.
At the same time we must consider the fact that man with his demands for living environment improvements did build or superstructure his old dwelling, but was extremely strongly influenced by the existing architecture, the one he knew and lived in, and conditioned his decisions for the future - in the direction of the demand for the preservation of the established ("homely") shapes as well as in the direction of the demand to improve, replace with better. The continuity - or in the Slovenian case the typical "growth" - of the house is therefore the connecting characteristic between the above mentioned various starting-points, which enables us to control the role of individual criterion.
The paper tries to introduce and establish the mentioned assertions and at the same time suggests the directions for achieving the most objective methods of evaluating the harmony and coexistence of the "old and new" in vernacular architecture.