All heritage protection is a compromise

Our modern heritage often provokes discussions not only among professionals of the field or architects but also within the broader public. Before you know it, you are faced with the question: do these objects, these signs of their times really deserve the status of protected heritage sites, which makes it possible for them to remain visible to future generations? We had a conversation about the issues regarding the concept of the value of modern buildings, i.e. ones that are less than 50-years-old, with Viltė Janušauskaitė - a specialist and expert of the protection of immovable cultural heritage, PhD of history and archaeology, manager of the heritage sites preventative maintenance project Fixus under the Centre for Cultural Infrastructure, member of the State Cultural Heritage Commission and lector in the Faculty of History of Vilnius University. Most often the objects chosen to preserve are either unique creations or ones that are highly characteristic of their time period - this applies not only to modern heritage. A good example of a unique modernist public building is the well-known Palace of Sports, which is included in the register. Meanwhile, the microdistrict of Lazdynai could serve as a characteristic example of its time, since it has plenty of characteristic buildings, although the district itself is less typical, which is why Žirmūnai would be a more adequate example, yet this district has long since been removed from the list. ln terms of protecting modernism, there is no shortage of sites to choose from. And of course, the political issue of historic memory is also becoming relevant in Lithuania. These buildings are associated with the soviet era, which is hurtful and repulsive to the absolute majority of people, therefore nobody really wants to protect or even remember these monuments of a bygone time. In this case, it is worth remembering that preserving something does not necessarily mean we consider it a good thing. One of the motives behind protecting the mass-produced modernist buildings is that this is a way to simply state the fact that they happened, regardless of whether that was good or bad. But, as we move on from the broader public to the opinions of professionals, at lest according to my research, it seems that they too only recognise the value of modernism in a formal manner; such attitude goes all the way back to when these sites were incorporated into what was then the list of protected monuments in Soviet Lithuania – by the way, also as a mere formality. lt was more or less recognised as creations of well-established architects but nobody ever considered protecting them and nobody even fully understood the idea that they should be protected