Heritage values: Endangered Heritage

The protection of heritage ultimately seeks to prevent the disappearance of cultural milestones that are considered to be depositaries of the values that society must preserve. Protection is normally associated with laws and regulations preserving the integrity of the item. Therefore, protecting a building as heritage is a powerful weapon to prevent buildings in vulnerable situations from being destroyed or disfigured. Designating a building as heritage is also a way to give it social relevance and attention when reporting situations of danger or degradation. Society is not always aware of the interest of many of the XXth century buildings that are endangered. This happens due to several reasons. Often, they are too recent, in other cases, their style or their typology doesn’t fit what it is commonly considered as heritage. Therefore, anticipation is necessary to prevent what might be considered as heritage in the future from disappearing prematurely. Heritage experts play an important role, since it is possible to revert the protection of a building, but it is very difficult to recover it once disappeared: the demolition of Miguel Fisac’s Jorba laboratories in Madrid, known as “Pagoda Building” is an example on the fragility of 20th century concrete architecture. On the other hand, very few buildings that once disappeared, like the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion in Barcelona, have been rebuilt later once architectural historiography had widely confirmed its importance, usually with great effort and at huge costs. A more accurate conservation policies would prevent from this kind of situations from happening.