ENCI - FUTURE CHANCE FOR MAASTRICHT'S INDUSTRIAL ...

positivism and in a future with no possible resources of material remembrance historical value
emerged. In the general cultural perception, not limited to but manifested in the emergence of the
subject of industrial archaeology, there seems to have been an attempts to create new historical
continuities of meaningfulness, after the destruction and turmoil of the war. Maurice Daumas 10
explains these movements as based on value recognition in emotions, imagination and aesthetics
(in Hauser, p. 136).
The 1960s – the major onset of structural change
In the 1960s, again two important streams can be recognized. One the one hand one finds the
onset of structural change with the increased transformation of industrial cities to sites of service
sectors. According to Alexander Kierdorf 11 and Uta Hassler 12 (Eds., 2000) , the downside of the
oversize of technology and economic structures became overarticulate when in heavy industrial
regions the boom of the economic miracles of the 1950s subsided and social and structural ills
became more obvious (p.150). For example, the first carbon crisis and the perishing of many coal
mines in the Ruhr Region of the 1960s brought the compulsions and harshness of social and
economic upheavals back to life.
Only in the late 1960s, it was recognized that the euphoria of growth and reconstruction of
the after-war years had taken more monumental material than the “total war”. Awareness was
raised by the demolitions of for example a Dorian portico at Euston Station London in 1962, or the
wrecking of the Parisian Halls in 1969 (Weber, W., in Troitzsch & Wohlauf, p.427). This also
resulted in changes in urban development theories. Traditional architectural and art monument
preservation became an important factor for environmental design 13 and urban renovation.
On the other hand, beginning social criticism and the fierce war of opinions against any
kind of tradition in the 1960s, unsurprisingly, also triggered the rediscovery of the socially
disadvantaged in conservative societal structures. Altogether a reflection took place on the ways,
reconstruction and valuation of social structures and their interrelation with the environment. In this
context especially city-constructional considerations, for instant influenced by Jane Jacobs’ The
Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961), or Alexander Mitscherlichs’ Die Unwirtlichkeit der
10 1910-1984, French historian of technology and early advocate of industrial archaeology.
11 German cultural historian and historian of architecture.
12 Professor for monument preservation and builing research at ETH Zurich.
13 The “Venice Charta” (1964) and the “Resolution of Brussels” (1969), encouraged monument preservation and its
urban integration.
10