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NEWS > Conference Review 867
Ist Heritage Conference, Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Lisboa by Rui Bordalo and Teodora Poiata 14-15 February 2008, Lisbon, Portugal Organiser: Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Lisboa
The 2 days conference was divided in 6 discussion panels. The discussion panel that opened the conference, The Social Dimension of Heritage, was dedicated to the social role of heritage and the institutions that own it, such as SCML and ONCE - the Spanish National Blind Association, which also detains the lottery monopoly in Spain and develops social work towards better integration of the blind in the society.
The second discussion panel, Profit from Heritage, introduced the subject of using heritage not only as a symbol of the past but also as an important economic value. After lunch, the panel Rehabilitate Heritage, the most conservation-related panel of all panels started. Dr. Manuel Salgado, from the Town Hall of Lisbon (CML), presented a thorough analysis of the housing conditions in Lisbon: 80% are in good conditions but the remaining 20%, which are concentrated in the historic part of Lisbon, are in bad conditions. In 2007, CML catalogued 4600 uninhabited buildings. Finally, new policy measures to fight against the degraded buildings were presented, including: to discourage demolition, to induce private rehabilitation and to rehabilitate the municipal heritage to serve as example. The next speaker was Dr. Elísio Summavielle, the director of IGESPAR, the main Portuguese institute that manages the national built heritage. He underlined that there is much need to restore and rehabilitate but that before this, Portuguese should know better their heritage. He took the chance and analysed two examples of cities listed in the World Heritage List and their present condition: Évora and Guimarães. Next, Dr. Isabel Raposo Magalhães, from the newly created Institute of Museums and Conservation (IMC), introduced the history and the merging process of the former institutes that created IMC: the Portuguese Institute of Museums and the Portuguese Institute of Conservation and Restoration. Finally, Eng. Pedro Ribeiro attempted to answer why we should rehabilitate. He started by assessing the evolution of the anti-seismic historic construction technology used in Lisbon’s downtown and continued by analysing the costs involved in rehabilitation works versus new constructions. In the end, he highlighted the rehabilitation advantages: historical, economical and environmental. The last panel of the day was The Accessibility of Built Heritage. Dr. Luis Patrão, president of Tourism Institute of Portugal (ITP), stated that Portugal is one of the top 20 first visited tourism destinations on global level and that in the regions of Lisbon, Algarve and Madeira is concentrated 87% of the national tourism activity. It was also underlined that ITP has 100 million euros for “heritage intervention and improvement” of visited and noticeable areas. Hopefully, some of these funds will be used in important and urgent conservation interventions. Next, Prof. Jorge Rodrigues, art historian from the New University of Lisbon and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, spoke about the fruition of monumental heritage giving several good and bad examples to follow and to avoid, such as those of Altamira in Spain and Carnac in France, respectively. Prof. Rui Mateus Pereira, from CML, reminded that Lisbon is the origin of 87% of the cultural activity produced in Portugal. At the end of the day, Dr. Teresa Morna, curator of SCML’s São Roque Museum, presented the rehabilitation that the museum building is undergoing. The good accessibility of the visitors, the judicious conditioning and the exhibiting conditions were some of the main discussed subjects. The next day, the conference continued with the two remaining discussion panels fully dedicated to real state management and to its economic characteristics: Real State Funds: Management Models and Real State Funds: a Management Experience. Besides the interesting presentations of the participants, I should also mention the good organisation and the open entrance which encouraged a larger audience. I hope this was only the first event of a series that Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Lisboa will continue to organise and I am expecting to see in the nearest future some practical results of these discussions during my walks on the streets of Lisbon’s downtown.
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