REVITALISATION OF RUINS AND THE IMPACT ON CONSERVATION POLICIES IN SLOVENIA. CASE STUDY OF THE CARTHUSIAN MONASTERY AT ŽIČE, SLOVENIA

The doctoral dissertation in question presents in detail the issue of protecting architectural heritage as ruins on the example of the Žiče Charterhouse complex in Slovenia. The author based her work on the history of conservation, internationally applicable charters related to architectural heritage protection and on examples taken from international conservation practice. Although the Slovenian conservation profession, as an independent technical and scientific discipline, received its formal legal status through the emergence of independent Slovenia merely a couple of decades ago, it is possible to claim that Slovenia, with its first academically qualified conservation specialists Avguštin Stegenšek and France Stele, was in contact with active policy on heritage protection as early as before World War I, when the Slovenian territory was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and also after the War, when the territory was annexed to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Despite long-standing efforts, Slovenians did not achieve the legal protection of architectural heritage until early 1980s, when an independent act on the protection of natural and cultural heritage was adopted in former Yugoslavia. Because of this, the tasks carried out by conservation specialists until that time primarily focused on documenting heritage and carrying out the most pressing maintenance works. Since all major international charters related to cultural heritage protection were signed when Slovenia was part of former Yugoslavia and after it became independent, it is not possible to claim that the profession did not follow the international legal order in this field. This is why it is sometimes difficult to understand the large gap between international technical criteria and the conservation decisions made by Slovenian conservation experts when performing intervention works on structures or sites of cultural value in Slovenia. To improve this condition, it is therefore vital that buildings be treated comprehensively prior to interventions, including in terms of carrying out natural science and technical research studies that provide an insight into the materials, structural frame and building physics of a building, as shown in the doctoral dissertation on the example of the ruin of the Church of St. John the Baptist at Žiče Charterhouse. Only by carefully analysing historic materials, it is possible to make the right decision on the use of adequate substitute materials for the needs of maintaining a ruin and, only on the basis of preliminary research made into structural frames, it will be possible to monitor the vitality of ruins in future, whereby using state-of-the-art research methods from conservation science. Since the Church of St. John the Baptist has lost its original intended use and also the possibility to get it back, the author of the dissertation proposes that the structure not be reconstructed, since this would imply a major deviation from original architecture, with a shortage of adequate documentation that would provide a basis for credible reconstruction. For this reason, the author of the doctoral dissertation defends the position that the Church be protected as a ruin. The operator of the monastery complex and the entire valley of St. John, where the remains of the lower and upper monastic houses of the Žiče Charterhouse are located, now faces quite a challenging task. It will have to prepare a management plan that will foresee expert bases for sustainable use of natural and cultural values of this site and a suitable development policy, whereby giving the key role to the local community