Inhabit and maintain the architectural heritage. The Convent of Christ case-study, 1979-2009.

Abstract

To inhabit is to stay in a place. It’s to interact with space, landscape, nature and men. The result of those actions is marked in the territory and it’s transmitted to future generations by the succession of times. By this way the heritage concept appears, associated to the inhabiting of the places, that could be as well a house, a Convent, a city, a built landscape, etc. The heritage places are the physical support of social memory witch is transmitted by human existence, itself. The human memory is funded in the way the man inhabits the places. By subtracting them this life characteristic, the function of inhabiting, the sense of heritage will be drastically decreased. Aiming to keep monuments alive in their multiple valences is the main task of modern society, on conservation issues of built cultural heritage. One could say that nowadays there’s a large array of tecnical solutions in order to conserve monuments and old buildings. However, in our modern world, we don’t yet have the social solutions for maintaining them alive and dynamic. The Convent of Christ case is a paradigm of this struggle, for a new conservation figure focused in the living of places, the inhabiting of the cultural heritage.