Ethical Aspects Within the Built Heritage: Breaking the Bell Jar

Abstract

Every technological process involves ethical aspects that are highlighted in the values which – more or less explicitly – underlie them, in the way of dealing with risk and in the percentage overlap between the sphere of users and the sphere of experts. The processes concerning the architectural heritage, with the objectives of knowledge, conservation and enhancement, are no exception. In this case, the ethical aspects mainly affect the public dimension and the collective interest and are intertwined with the cultural identity and the prevailing behavioural patterns. The reliability of the interventions, accessibility and communication are some of the main research topics developed in the last two decades in the field of built heritage that can be usefully looked at from an ethical point of view. The paper leverages the expression breaking the bell jar to underline the need to overcome the separations and oppositions that have characterized the approach to the built heritage, to recover a fully holistic dimension, based on the awareness of the evolution of the relationship between people and heritage.

1 Ethical Aspects Within the Technological Practices

Any artefact, as the materialized outcome of a production processes, can be understood as a social phenomenon, which – at the same time – conditions civilization and derives from civilization. Therefore, every technological practice (seen both in the procedural aspects and in the results) can interfere – in various ways and to an extent – on people, in terms of health, behaviour, habits, ways of life and even attitudes of thought. For this reason, technological disciplines are inextricably linked to ethics, defined as “moral principles that govern a person’s behaviour or the conducting of an activity” or as “the study of what is morally right and wrong or a set of beliefs about what is morally right and wrong” (Cambridge English Dictionary n.d.).

Awareness of the link between ethics and technology emerges, above all, when the effects of technological innovations manifest themselves in a sudden and massive way, causing heated controversies. Consider, for example, the advent of electric lighting in the streets understood as a threat to vice, or more recently the perplexities about the disruptive effects of digitization on the concept of space and time (“space of flows” and “timeless time” (Castells 1996)), and even more the contemporary bewilderment aroused by the potential of artificial intelligence (Forbes 2021).

During the last century, the profound transformations that the developments of science, and related applications, have caused within the very essence of human action have posed the need to renew the ethical foundations of technology, centring them on the principle of responsibility (Jonas 1979). As Hans Jonas has demonstrated, technology was morally neutral in the past (he quotes the Chorus of the Antigone, in which Sophocles celebrates the capabilities of human ingenuity, which can address both evil and good, as opposed to nature). In this sense, technology was considered in the past a tribute to individual and collective needs, linked to both the spatial and chronological contingent.

With the fracture of pre-industrial continuity, the potential of technology began to transcend the contingent, both for the spatial and chronological extensions of their consequences and for the invasion of previously unimaginable spheres. Having demonstrated that morality must penetrate into the sphere of production, from which it once stayed away, Jonas has argued that the ethical foundations of today’s technological civilization must rest exactly on the ethics of foresight and responsibility. In the light of the new technological ethics, the attitude towards problems must no longer be the presumption of the challenge, but a new kind of humility: a humility induced no longer by limitation, but by the abnormal greatness of our power, which manifests itself in the excess of our power to do, with respect to our power to predict and our power to evaluate and judge (Jonas 1979; Germanà 2005).

Recognizing the cultural patterns that technological applications reflect, even if unconsciously, can help to better understand the role of ethics in practice of technology. To do this, Arnold Pacey proposed the idea that technological practices and products are the consequence of “values involved”, which reflect the deepest nature of every society (Pacey 1986):

• 1. The “virtuosity values”, which lead us to conceive technology as the construction for the prestige value, to look at risk as a challenge and to look at creativity as innovative, adventuring, unrestrained

• 2. The “economic values”, which lead to the conception of technology as construction and production for exchange value, to balance risk with profit and to equate creativity with enterprise

• 3. The “user or need values”, which direct processes towards use value, tend to prevent risk rather than face it and temperate creativity by responsibility

Arnold Pacey’s definition of technology practice as “the application of scientific and other knowledge to practical tasks by ordered systems that involve people and organizations, living things and machines” (Pacey 1986) lends itself to highlighting the role of ethics, which goes beyond the “technical aspect”, to invest the “organizational aspect” and, above all, the “cultural aspect”. Such a vision of technology practice, integrated with each specific application context, leads Pacey to distinguish between “halfway” technology (“developed when professionals try to work in a self-sufficient way within the expert sphere”) and “really effective technology” that manage to be fully effective over time, as based on the appropriate interaction between the “expert sphere” and the “user sphere” (when “attention has been paid to maintenance and use of equipment, to users’ or workers’ or patients’ knowledge and experience, to personal and social values, to government regulation of industry aimed at protecting health and equally to the responsibilities of individuals for their own health”) (Fig. 14.1).

Fig. 14.1

Interrelation between the expert sphere and the user sphere within a generic technology practice. (Elaboration of the A., on the basis A. Pacey’s vision (Pacey 1986))

When technological practices fall within the logic of the market, the invocation of ethical principles runs the risk of becoming, so to speak, pathetic, overlooking the nuanced limit of hypocrisy (Torelli 2021).

To design and develop the technology so that “ethics washing” does not become a default engagement, six basic criteria have been proposed for applying an ethical “thick approach”:

• 1. External participation: early and regular engagement with all relevant stakeholders.

• 2. Provide a mechanism for external (not necessarily public) independent oversight.

• 3. Ensure transparent decision-making procedures on why decisions were taken.

• 4. Develop a stable list of non-arbitrary of standards where the selection of certain values, ethics and rights over others can be plausibly justified.

• 5. Ensure that ethics do not substitute fundamental rights or human rights.

• 6. Provide a clear statement on the relationship between the commitments made and existing legal or regulatory frameworks, in particular on what happens when the two are in conflict (Wagner 2018).

Applying similar criteria requires distancing oneself from the segmented vision, prevalent in the twentieth century, to acquire a holistic vision, in which the technical, organizational and cultural aspects of technology practice are able to be considered contextually, based on awareness of cultural models and priorities of reference.

The paradigm shift that has already taken place in the field of technological disciplines can be considered a sign of a renewed centrality of ethical aspects, which here we propose to summarize with the expression breaking the bell jar, to indicate the search for increasingly permeable boundaries between the user sphere and the expert sphere (Fig. 14.2).

Fig. 14.2

Schematization of an expert sphere more permeable to user requests, which includes the cultural and cultural aspects of technology practice, taking into account the specific application field. (Elaboration of the A., on the basis A. Pacey’s vision (Pacey 1986))

Therefore, ethics is by no means an abstract theme; on the contrary, it finds clear confirmation in practice, when it is necessary to know and evaluate a process or a technological product. Among the aspects that ethics leads us to consider in this area are (1) if the objectives of prudence and responsibility have been pursued, and how; (2) if the link with the specific context has been considered, and how; (3) if the users have been involved, and how, in the design and management choices; and (4) whether a procedural vision was followed, in order to achieve and verify the results.

2 Ethical Aspects Between the Built Environment and the Built Heritage

2.1 Ethical Aspects and Holistic Vision

The tendency to consider the built heritage as one of the various possible configurations that the built environment can assume is today increasingly widespread and shared. This trend is consistent with the vision of the built environment as a unitary whole, which derives from the concept of Baukultur, for which the technological practices connected to the building sector are seen as an eminently cultural phenomenon: “Baukultur embraces every human activity that changes the built environment. The whole built environment, including every designed and built asset that relates to the natural environment, is to be understood as a single entity. Baukultur encompasses existing buildings, including monuments and other elements of cultural heritage, as well as the design and construction of contemporary buildings, infrastructure, public spaces and landscapes” (Swiss Confederation Office of Culture 2018).

In order to be able to look at the built environment as a unicum, it is necessary to overcome the conditioning of the segmentations rooted in the dominant mentality of the last century, which were based on contrasts such as urban vs rural, central areas vs peripheral areas and built heritage vs ordinary settlements.

In this change of perspective, the ethical aspects can play a decisive role, because they focus above all on human beings, who live in the built environment carrying out the most disparate activities, always having the same basic needs with reference to safety, health, well-being and accessibility.

As is known, the performance approach is an outdated but still useful tool, which is based on the definition of quality as the ability to satisfy, through performance, expressed or implied needs, classified as safety, well-being, usability, appearance, management, integrability and environmental protection (as specified, e.g. by the Italian performance-based rules UNI 8289/1981, Edilizia. Esigenze dell’utenza finale [Building. End-user requirements] and UNI 10839/1999, Edilizia. Terminologia riferita all’utenza, alle prestazioni, al processo edilizio e alla qualità edilizia [Building. Terminology referring to users, performance, building process and building quality]). This approach has been confirmed at European level, establishing the “basic requirements” that buildings must meet during their entire life cycle and for an economically reasonable duration (mechanical resistance and stability, safety in case of fire, hygiene, health and environment, safety and accessibility in use, protection against noise, energy saving and heat retention, sustainable use of natural resources) (UE 2011).

But if we refer to the built heritage, the performance approach manifests its limitations in a more evident way than in the ordinary built environment: the needs, although generically classifiable in a few categories, in practice constitute a changing whole in the specific circumstances, in which the public dimension often provokes the conflict between contradictory requests and to which it is difficult to trace less objective aspects, such as those found in the built heritage (elements of identity; evocative and representative potential).

A vision of quality that can be assessed with objective criteria, within the contemporary unitary vision that holistically embraces the built environment, without segmentations between “heritage” and “non-heritage”, is the background to the Davos Baukultur Quality System (Swiss Confederation Office of Culture 2021) and to the New European Bauhaus (NEBC (New European Bauhaus Collective) 2021).

In this framework, the evaluation of sites of cultural interest is confirmed as a specific objective of broader principles applicable everywhere: for example, among the criteria put in place to evaluate Baukultur, “functionality” is mentioned here: “To be functional over the long term, high-quality Baukultur places are maintained, planned, designed and built so that they give access to basic public, commercial and cultural services, satisfying the needs of mixed people, allowing mixed uses. High-quality Baukultur places adapt as simply and successfully as possible to changing and diverse conditions, requirements and purposes (types of use), as this is one of the main factors for the longevity of a place, integrating and safeguarding built heritage” (Swiss Confederation Office of Culture 2021) (Fig. 14.3).

Fig. 14.3

Group exercise in Villa Torlonia (Rome, IT): a good example of mixed use within a cultural site. (Photo of the Author., 2016)

2.2 The Prevailing Public Dimension

Another consideration that reinforces the need to keep ethical aspects in mind in the built heritage is the prevalence of the public dimension. In general, the built environment, defined as a physical form in which the complex of social and economic factors that characterize the way of life and the structure of a community is expressed (Lee 1976), reflects and summarizes many aspects of the social, cultural and economic who produced it and who use it. At the same time, at all scales, the built environment affects the behaviour and lifestyles of the people who live in it: as Winston Churchill stated, “we shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us” (Churchill 1943). Even restricting attention to the single building, regardless of its destination and ways of use, its quality level does not only concern those who use it directly, as is the case for many other products, but it also potentially affects passers-by or occasional users: not even the most attentive man can do anything against the brick that collapses from the neighbouring house (Dostoevskij 1869).

All the more reason, the public dimension is emphasized when that “conspicuous historical, archaeological, artistic, scientific, social or technical interest” is recognized in the built environment, when it is considered as built heritage (CoE (Council of Europe) 1985). The interest that distinguishes heritage goes beyond what may concern the single individual (affective attachment and sense of belonging to a place), to involve multiple meanings, concerning different types of public subjects (general public, administrators and managers, visitors, host communities, scholars, etc.). The same cultural heritage, understood as a whole of inherited resources, which “includes all aspects of the environment resulting from the interaction between people and places through time” is characterized by an intrinsic social value (CoE (Council of Europe) 2005).

The public dimension of ethics, both in the environment and in the built heritage as well as for any artefact, with the advent of the concept of sustainability has acquired, in addition, an intergenerational dimension: “Conscientious, fair, responsible, careful, cautious action is guided by the evaluation of assets and ethical action regarding collective assets, which are often intangible. In our built environment it is particularly clear that our motivation not only concerns respect for our ancestors and responsibility for our fellow humans, but also, as with nature conservation or language cultivation, in view of future generations” (Germann 2020).

2.3 Relation Humans/Heritage and Phygital Dimension

The expression breaking the bell jar (proposed here to summarize the fact that the paradigm shift underway for any technological practice is linked to the centrality of ethical aspects; see Sect. 14.1) can also be applied to the field of the built environment and of the built heritage. In fact, as far as the ordinary built environment is concerned, the bell jar is the metaphor of the lack of communication between the insiders (administrators, companies and planners) and that of the users, most of the time unaware, despite being the final beneficiaries of any construction activity.

As regards the built heritage, the bell jar represents the niche in which the “inners” have long believed they could have their say, without seeking a dialogue with other much more numerous and motivated stakeholders. The only “legitimized relationship” between experts and visitors/users has long been only univocal: a “top-down relationship, in which the expert ‘translates’ […] the site and its meanings to the visitor. The very use of the term ‘visitor’ also facilitates the construction of passivity and disconnection” (Smith 2006). But in recent decades, theoretical and operational advances in the field have changed this relationship, making it basically mutual and attributing a central and more active role to people: “These advances concern a wider ethic dimension that should be considered, since it shapes decision-making in many areas of management of built heritage. The current tendency to consider the word “inclusion” as preferable to the word “education” of the public may be seen as a significant sign of the cultural paradigm shift that has marked the evolution of heritage studies, thanks to the research that has been undertaken for a more active role by visitors” (Germanà 2021a).

This transformation of the humans/heritage relationship can be considered the most recent stage of an evolution that began with the very origin of the concept of heritage and which has developed, first acquiring intentionality and then awareness. People’s relationship with the buildings inherited from the past has changed profoundly, as can be seen by comparing the images of some of today’s crowded archaeological sites with the ruinist images of the 18th and 19th centuries (in which human figures stood indifferently beside the evidence of the distant past, as if it did not concern them). The new dimension of the humans/heritage relationship finds its synthesis in the “living heritage approach”, “where living heritage is characterized by the ongoing use of heritage by its associated community for the purpose for which it was originally created. Living heritage is strongly linked to a community and is therefore subject to a continuous process of evolution, as change is embraced as part of the living nature of the heritage place. This maintains a continuity of community connections (as expressed both in terms of tangible and intangible heritage) and those connected communities take responsibility to maintain their heritage by traditional or established means. Furthermore, such heritage is linked to or has relevance for the contemporary life of the community who endeavour to draw various benefits from it” (Court and Wijesuriya 2015).

The humans/heritage relationship will certainly continue to evolve into the future, as both of its poles are constantly dynamic. Looking only at the last few decades, think of the disruptive operational and theoretical transformations resulting from digitization (Germanà 2019) and the sharp acceleration imprinted by the COVID-19 pandemic, which have opened up new scenarios in the direction of an ever greater degree of awareness and involvement of people: for instance, the monitoring of entrances due to health precautions has led to clearly improved visiting conditions, in terms of a more pleasant and inclusive use.

In the post-pandemic presumed “next-normal”, the way people relate to the built environment and built heritage seems to be directed towards the consolidation of a phygital dimension. This dimension (which consists in overcoming the parallelism or antithesis between the physical world and the digital world, and in the consequent search for connections and synergies on which to leverage for various purposes) was originated as a marketing trend. Then it has found numerous applications in fields such as communication, various services and telemedicine even before the neologism was formulated, about 10 years ago. In the field of the ordinary built environment, some main innovations in the ACE (Architecture, Construction and Engineering) sector can be traced back precisely to the phygital dimension: the overcoming of the dichotomy between process and product technologies and the coordination of aspects hitherto treated in a fragmented way (such as flexibility in the use of equipment for comfort and consequent energy savings; support for use for fragile users; sensors for monitoring the state of conservation and safety). The interaction between the physical and digital world made feasible by digitalization developments, such as the Internet of things and digital twins (Deng et al. 2021), will make the use of digital tools and devices systemic in common building processes, solving the fragmentation and the extraneousness of the end user.

In the field of the built heritage, the phygital dimension can contrast the uncontrolled trend towards virtualization, which manifests itself mainly in two forms: (1) as an abstraction from physical materiality, which is replaced in a digital environment, in the form of objective or augmented representation and (2) as a fruition uprooted from the specific concrete reality, detached from the usual space-time coordinates (Germanà 2021b).

This trend, if it engages a closed loop around the digital dimension (with the effects of a bell jar), risks nullifying some contemporary foundations of the very idea of heritage, including the roots in the context, the uniqueness of the fruitive experience, the mixture of tangible and intangible aspects, the specificity of the material consistency and the consequent conservation issues and the concrete involvement of users, at an individual and community level. Instead, the phygital dimension allows breaking the bell jar by activating a virtuous physical/digital/physical circle, applicable, for example, to the management of information connected to maintenance activities, integrated with the active participation of visitors/users.

3 Ethical Aspects in the Processes Regarding the Built Heritage

A parallelism can be grasped between the evolution of the relationship between people and the built heritage and the change of the processes that concern it, starting from the very idea of conservation: from an absolute objective, an end in itself, to an objective integrated with the demands of the contemporary world. The question of use confirms this: initially, considered an aspect to be ignored, then, a necessary evil, and today a strategic factor on conservation and enhancement. The dynamic humans/heritage relationship, therefore, does not only affect the concept of heritage, but reverberates on the processes that may concern the built heritage, with cognitive, conservation or enhancement objectives. In fact, even for these specific processes, the glass bell that clearly separated the sphere of experts from that of users is now broken and every decision regarding the built heritage implies a broad ethical dimension, which should inform every decision.

Many general critical situations identified in the processes on the built heritage (Germanà 2014a) can be connected to the predominance of a linear vision of time which makes past, present and future incommunicable (Germanà 2018). If this aspect of a theoretical nature can be answered by resorting to the circular vision of time (which enhances the value of the continuity of processes), the answers to the critical issues deriving from the culture of segmentation and the insufficient consideration of ethical aspects require a more articulated answer.

In general, it should be emphasized that ethics for the processes that concern the built heritage, as happens for any technological process, should not be considered as an end in itself, but as a beacon that serves to orient oneself: “the aim is to provide arguments to strengthen the cause of heritage preservation and to enable a sincere dialogue with regard to other concerns of society and other tasks of the public sector. The ethics of heritage preservation places the issue of heritage preservation in a broader context of thought and behavioural patterns and can be used as a guide for advocates of heritage” (Germann 2020). In particular, to define the requirements for a management of built heritage processes that is ethical in the full sense (and not under the banner of “ethical-washing”), it may be useful to link to the usual dimensions of sustainability: (1) considering the economic dimension, the heritage processes must be reliable (durable interventions, of reasonable and affordable cost, in the name of prevention and based on ordinary and only exceptionally extraordinary planning) and integrated as much as possible with the contemporary economic and productive fabric; (2) considering the socio-cultural sphere, heritage processes must tend to involve people, individually and collectively, tending to limit the exclusion of anyone, contributing to the quality of life and social justice and encouraging the affection of host communities, especially in young people; and (3) considering the environmental dimension, the processes must produce a limited impact in terms of materials and techniques, contain energy needs during construction and management, be consistent with an intergenerational perspective (the built heritage lends itself to being considered a limited resource, on which future generations must be able to exercise a right of interpretation, coherently with their own values), and must underline the characteristic of ante litteram sustainability recognizable in many testimonies of the building tradition, not indicating models to be replicated, but rather suggestions to inspire responsible contemporary creativity.

4 Conclusions

The title chosen in 2023 by the “Architectural Heritage” Cluster of SITdA (Società Italiana della Tecnologia dell’Architettura) “ETHICS Endorse Technologies for Heritage Innovative Crossdisciplinary Strategies” summarizes the motivations and objectives that in 2013 led to the establishment of a network of architectural technology researchers dedicated to this very specific, and only apparently niche, theme (Germanà 2014b). At the same time, this title helps to confirm the need to maintain and strengthen the “Architectural Heritage” Cluster, which in these 10 years has demonstrated the remarkable potential of the theoretical, methodological and operational apparatuses of the architectural technology in the indispensable strategic innovations that this operating field requires.

Consistent with the motto breaking the bell jar, it is time to leave behind the segmentations (and also the disciplinary barriers, often of convenience) to start a shared reflection on the multiple aspects raised by the ethics theme, within the field of built heritage as – more generally – within the built environment.