Preservation
Preservation: the action or process of protecting, maintaining, and/or stabilizing the existing materials, form, and integrity of a historic place or of an individual component, while protecting its heritage value. |
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Preservation can include both short-term and interim measures to protect or stabilize the place, as well as long-term actions to retard deterioration or prevent damage so that the place can be kept serviceable through routine maintenance and minimal repair, rather than extensive replacement and new construction. |
A number of terms used in this document have very specific meanings in the context of heritage conservation and are defined as follows:
Character-defining elements: the materials, forms, location, spatial configurations, uses and cultural associations or meanings that contribute to the heritage value of a historic place, which must be retained in order to preserve its heritage value.
Conservation: all actions or processes that are aimed at safeguarding the character-defining elements of a cultural resource so as to retain its heritage value and extend its physical life. This may involve “Preservation,” “Rehabilitation,” “Restoration,” or a combination of these actions or processes. Reconstruction or reconstitution of a disappeared cultural resource is not considered conservation and is therefore not addressed in this document.
Guidelines: statements that provide practical guidance in applying the Standards for the Conservation of Historic Places. They are presented herein as recommended and non-recommended actions.
Heritage value: the aesthetic, historic, scientific, cultural, social or spiritual importance or significance for past, present or future generations. The heritage value of a historic place is embodied in its character-defining materials, forms, location, spatial configurations, uses and cultural associations or meanings.
Historic place: a structure, building, group of buildings, district, landscape, archaeological site or other place in Canada that has been formally recognized for its heritage value.
Intervention: any action, other than demolition or destruction, that results in a physical change to an element of a historic place.
Maintenance: routine, cyclical, non-destructive actions necessary to slow the deterioration of a historic place. It entails periodic inspection; routine, cyclical, non-destructive cleaning; minor repair and refinishing operations; replacement of damaged or deteriorated materials that are impractical to save.
Minimal intervention: the approach which allows functional goals to be met with the least physical intervention.
Standards: Norms for the respectful conservation of historic places.
Rehabilitation
 Rehabilitation: the action or process of making possible a continuing or compatible contemporary use of a historic place or an individual component, through repair, alterations, and/or additions, while protecting its heritage value.
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Restoration
 Restoration: the action or process of accurately revealing, recovering or representing the state of a historic place or of an individual component, as it appeared at a particular period in its history, while protecting its heritage value.
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Rehabilitation can include replacing missing historic features. The replacement may be an accurate replica of the missing feature, or it may be a new design that is compatible with the style, era, and character of the historic place. |
Restoration includes the removal of features from other periods in its history and the reconstruction of missing features from the restoration period. Restoration must be based on clear evidence and detailed knowledge of the earlier forms and materials being recovered.
These and other definitions can also be found in the GLOSSARY. |