Authentic city. Urban resilience and cult of the monument

Continue building instead of building new! – The mission statement Authentic City is an alternative to designing without a story. It is not based on the cult of the original, but on the performative creation of historical values. They increase the quality of the urban space through memory and identity.

Around 1900, with modern monument protection, the original material developed into the highest good. Reconstructions, however, were considered historically worthless. Despite this clear devaluation compared to the original, they, like „insignificant“ buildings, give the urban space historical value. If the original object is also deconstructed, its material appears marginal compared to its social construction. Only through speech acts does she make an original out of matter. This raises the question of whether the concept of the original is even suitable for assessing the historical value of existing buildings. Rather, it requires an egalitarian perspective: the evaluating original is replaced by the neutral authentic. An object becomes authentic when it is evidently ascribed historical values that encompass epistems, matter, time, space, aesthetics and ideas.

The authentic has a special effect on us. It triggers emotional states, feelings of admiration, awe, enthusiasm. It wants to create the authentic city in order to make an aesthetic contribution to urban resilience.