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Railroad stations --- Landscape architecture --- Railroad stations --- Railroad stations --- Gares --- Architecture du paysage --- Gares --- Gares --- Conservation and restoration --- Conservation et restauration

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Conservation professionals are united in the way they attempt to secure a future for what is deemed valuable within our built environment. Since the threat of neglect or demolition is never far away, they have become passionate advocates in their defense of existing tangible and intangible qualities. As students at the Raymond Lemaire International Centre for Conservation at the University of Leuven, we are trained to follow a scientific methodology that will allow us to make well-argued choices when dealing with monuments or sites. An integrated project proposal should always be preceded by a strong value assessment, which can only be the result of an in-depth analysis of building and context. Ideally, when it comes to reusing historic buildings, new functions are being sought or created that are in line with the previously identified heritage values. This quest for a perfect match between building and function is a time-consuming process involving a lot of expertise and financial means. Since these preconditions are not continuously at hand, one can wonder whether conservationists shouldn't consider alternative ways of dealing with our built environment. Methodologies that are equally sensitive to programmatic needs of future functions as they are to heritage values. In this thesis six program-based projects and initiatives will be presented as a starting point to find out how innovative professionals outside of the conservation realm, who are not a priori focused on heritage values, are dealing with today's changing use paradigms. This confrontation serves as an exercise to see what happens if we conceptually reverse our methodology: from function to building rather than building to function. After the presentation and discussion of references outside of conservation, criteria are formulated that can be used to embed the future within our built environment. References from within the conservation realm will now be interwoven throughout the development of these criteria to prove that an interesting synergy between program renewal and heritage values is possible, and already happening. A mindset will be developed on how to create this synergy between function and building, backed by different projects that have created a coherent overall vision transcending the traditional tension between heritage values and program renewal. This thesis is a reflective exercise structured along five essential steps towards program-based conservation: Crisis - Confrontation - Change - Continuity - Coherence. It is a plea, next to the traditional methodologies based on the priority of heritage values, to start thinking differently. An impetus to take programmatic considerations seriously, as they will always be the motor behind the conservation and renewal of our monuments and sites.

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The figure of Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) adopted by the UNESCO in 2011 represents one of the most recent notions concerning to heritage conservation. This approach aims the conservation not only of properties included on the World Heritage List (WHL) but also for cities aware of the ongoing phenomena related to issues such as globalisation, rapid urban development, amongst others that threat the welfare of settlements in medium or long term. This concern was initiated in 2005 with the Memorandum of Vienna and its official recognition came along with the Recommendation on HUL in 2011 where the matters around the topic were presented. The concept as such aims to unfold the cultural heritage conservation that so far -in most of the cases- has been focused on the bulding-by-building conservation to include all the aspects that have some influence for historic or recognized areas. Santa Ana de los Rios de Cuenca, on the WHL since 1999, is the place where the present research will take place. The introduction of the concept of HUL for the city is initially foreseen since the actions for conservation are not integrated to the whole city but rather taken as separated section of the city's management. The study of the city as a whole, integrating all the elements necessary for a holistic understanding of its heritage values, has been addressed worldwide. Some examples show the feasibility of studying the city through its division on areas that bear common features. The present work aims to use the concept of HUL in order to delineate those areas or units that include key elements for the conservation of the values in Cuenca from a wider perspective. This HUL perspective includes not only features that come from the cultural heritage scope but also from natural, geographic, socioeconomic, intangible amongst other resources. They support the idea of not restricting the conservation to the areas that are included -in the case of Cuenca- on the nomination file. Since the criteria for nomination itself highlights elements such as the mixture of cultures and the patterns used to settle the Spanish colony in Cuenca, it can be inferred that the city is not limited to the beauty of its built structures but encompasses a much wider scope of elements. The information provided by these elements shape the so-called layers of information referred in the concept of HUL are overlapped in order to identify common features and delineate units that can be further analysed and integrated for the whole city. The potentialities of this approach are tested through an exploratory test of one selected unit. The further studies that can be done on it include the analysis of elements that go beyond built structures, where heritage values that have been so far overlooked for the city could be visualized.

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This tandem of booklets tells a story of the fragile living urban heritage of Cambodia. The tandem has two speeds. The first booklet ‘reporting from the frontline’ presents a detailed and critical account of my internship carried out at UNESCO Phnom Penh. The urban heritage in the secondary cities Battambang, Kampot and Kratié-Chhlong is presented. Starting from a landscape perspective, the current state of the urban landscape is examined. The existing methodology of the first step in the conservation process, the inventory, is then critically dissected. The project proposal opens the door to the future, what will happen next? The second booklet ‘reflections on urban scenography’ offers a different methodological approach. It examines the fundamentals of the scenography of the city. The concept of sameness is studied through different interpretations of the manoeuvre of imitatio et aemulatio while at the same time a matrix of antipodes offers different ways to look at the historic urban landscape.

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