reconstruction

reconstruction. Rebuilding of structures and their contiguous areas, as distinct from preservation. When the C14 Bredon Tithe Barn, near Tewkesbury, Glos., burned down in 1980, F. W. B. Charles persuaded the National Trust to permit a reconstruction based on his own records, and this helped to change purist attitudes opposed to such work. After the 1914–18 war, certain towns that had been pulverized during the fighting (such as Ieper (Ypres) ) were completely reconstructed, using photographs and other records: this was as much for Belgian national pride as anything. A similar (but greater) feat of reconstruction took place in Warsaw after the 1939–45 war, using pre-war surveys by architectural students of the Old Town, etc., as well as photographic evidence, and views of the city meticulously recorded in C18 by Bernardo Bellotto (1720–80), Canaletto's nephew: this was deemed essential to keep alive the memory of nationhood. Other celebrated feats of reconstruction include the rebuilding of the campanile in the Piazza San Marco after it fell at the beginning of C20, and in the same city the famous theatre of La Fenice was restored after it burned down in the mid-1990s. Gardens, too, can be subject to reconstruction, notably the C17 Het Loo, Apeldoorn, The Netherlands, and the late-C18 and early-C19 gardens at Arkadia, Poland. Modernists reject reconstruction out of hand.

Bibliography

Chamberlin (1979);
Garden History, xxiii/1 (Summer 1995), 91–112;
Journal of Garden History, viii/2&3 (Apr.–Sept. 1988), whole issue