arthistoricum.net

Simple and inconspicuous architectures are particularly impressive sources of information on the living and working conditions as well as the housing standards of past times. Where the inconspicuous is also characteristic or typical, it is often attributed a socio-historical value as evidence. However, the close qualitative and conceptual connection between objects and the historical circumstances to which they are assumed to attest also encourages the assumption that the everyday is per se the unnoticed, the suppressed and the forgotten. Fatefully and all too easily, this point of view charges the everyday with a kind of stigma and turns it into a classist category. In particular, the specific definition of the everyday that is applied in heritage conservation requires the critical perspective of architectural and social history. For the everyday also acquires a name and a face when the question of who is represented by what is turned around, and the conditions under which the supposedly everyday emerged are brought into focus. Using the example of heritage conservation engagement with rural areas, this essay examines mechanisms that turn normality into the rule. In doing so, it will clarify the extent to which conservation assessment and valorization processes are (still) related to the problematic construction of the everyday – and thus run the risk of painting a picture in which cultural-critical resentments and design hegemony of the aesthetic elites of the late 19th and early 20th centuries live on.