Laisvės alėjos architektūrinės aplinkos vertinimas, remiantis šiuolaikinės paveldosaugos principais ; Laisvės avenue architectural environment valuation according the modern principles of heritage protection

Abstract

Historic architectural and urbanistic entirety of Laisvės avenue had been formed over three historic periods: government (1847-1918), interwar period (1918-1940) and Soviet times (1940-1990). Each of these periods is reflected by distinct urbanitics and architectural transformations shaping mixed visual environment of Laisvės avenue. Its uniqueness lies in the overall view of constant change. Therefore, such change should preserve not only unique urbanistic and architectural features of each era, but also the intangible heritage – the general meanings of street culture and spirit, as essential and relevant identifiers of this site. There are 19 separate and complex objects from Laisvės avenue included in the Register of Cultural Values. This makes less than 1⁄5 of all the buildings located in the avenue, which form an integral perimetrical development of both street parts. Thus, legally enforced values reflect only a part of values of Laisvės avenue, as a cultural treasure. Given that, the first part of this paper, with reference to the documents of modern heritage protection and comparing them with those of the heritage protection of the Republic of Lithuania, creates a broader assessment system, on the basis of which the buildings are evaluated in the urbanistic, façade, volume-spatial dimensions in pursuance of their identity, contextuality values, as well as artistic and rarity values of architecture. Upon the application of the given system on each architectural element forming Laisvės avenue, the predominant values of the entire Laisvės avenue, as a cultural treasure, were disclosed, namely identity and contextuality. At least a minimum identity value is characteristic to almost every building on Laisvės avenue. It stands outs that such object features like social "activity", continuity of function are the features changing in the course of time; however, namely these features are likely to link the society with the environment of Laisvės avenue by emotional relations. Contextuality value is characteristic to almost every building of government and interwar periods, whereas new objects (buildings of modern architecture) exist not as modern contextual complements to the historic setting, but as an architectural dominant disrupting the character of street historical structure and shape. The most valuable architectural objects in Laisvės avenue emerged during the period between wars, which is greatly predetermined by the relevance of their location in the composition of the urban street, as well as public/cultural purpose and high art value of architecture. Aesthetic attractiveness of Laisvės avenue is mostly disturbed by the Soviet and modern architectural buildings. Value of rarity is least characteristic to the architectural medium of Laisvės avenue. The majority of buildings do not carry this value or have minimum suchlike characteristic features. Thus, in order to preserve the cultural character of Laisvės avenue, as well as its local identity, first of all, it is necessary to protect or bring to life the former relevant functions of buildings to make them more "active" socially, ensure the affection of inhabitants or grant the features of identification that form the principal factors leading to public identification with the environment of Laisvės avenue. In the meantime, new architectural objects in Laisvės avenue should rise as qualitative modern complements of historic environment considering the feature of contextuality as the major quality criterion.