Louis Cloquet e la liberazione degli antichi edifici, tra restauro storico e positivismo
In: Quaderni dell'Istituto di Storia dell'Architettura: n.s. 2019, 2020
DOI: 10.48255/1182
Louis Cloquet and the liberation of ancient buildings, between «historical restoration and positivism»
In the context of «historical restoration and positivism» (Carbonara, 1997), the contribution focuses on the
examination of the theories of Louis Cloquet - a Belgian scholar writing between 19th and 20th centuries
- on the «liberation of ancient buildings». The topic has been the occasion of an intense debate at the
beginning of the twentieth century, when the historical European city was affected by the transformations
involved by industrial expansion and demographic growth. In the essay Le dégagement des anciens édifices (1903), dealing with the liberation of monuments from later additions - with explicit reference to Tournai
Cathedral - Cloquet urges caution, setting the understanding of historical palimpsests and the need for
conservation before functional and aesthetic requirements. The context of the debate is represented by that
specific moment of the overcoming of memory values attribution moving from the single monument to
the historical city, in the urgency of preserving at least the sectors characterized by the most perceivable
identity.