The conservation of individual, identical and traditional values of cultural and natural heritage is one of the main requirements of the present-day society formulated also at international level. At its session of 1972, in Paris, the General Conference of UNESCO adopted the Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage and the Recommendations concerning the Protection, at National Level, of the Cultural and Natural Heritage. Misunderstanding of interrelationships of cultural and natural values brings about irretrievable losses of identity and uniqueness of the seat and the country. The need of protection of individual, identical and traditional values ensuing from the connection of nature and cultural property of the specific place is also declared in the Melbourne Charta, 2002: “Every city has a distinctive profile of human, cultural, historic and natural characteristics. This profile provides insights on pathways to sustainability that are both acceptable to their people and compatible with their values, traditions, institutions and ecological realities. Building on existing characteristics helps motivate and mobilize the human and physical resources of cities to achieve sustainable development and regeneration.” The above principles also play an important role in the field of education and training.
The project is aimed at complex preparation of source materials concerning interdisciplinary approach, identification, assessment of cultural-historic natural and technical values, and at proposal of the way of protection regeneration and cultivation of the site of the “old“ hospital in Topoľčany (National cultural monument), both as a whole and in relation to wider surroundings and the region.
The location choice was done in view of the project needs to introduce interdisciplinary approach in higher education oriented at the protection of cultural and natural heritage. Such a potential is provided by location of the site of the “old“ hospital in Topoľčany. The site of the “old“ hospital in Topoľčany creates a suitable position for interdisciplinary study of sustainability of environment quality that covers the historic, cultural, artistic and natural fields.
The interdisciplinary approach in the project is expressed by partnership of the pedagogues, research workers, students and practitioners representing various trends, branches and professions − archivists, scholars of fine art, historians, architects, urban planners, landscape architects, dendrologist, ecologists, artists, designers, ethnographers, sociologists, geodesists and technicians.
Project partners
Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava ̶ Faculty of Architecture of SUT, Faculty of Civil Engineering of SUT;
Comenius University in Bratislava ̶ Faculty of Arts of CU;
Trnava University in Trnava ̶ Faculty of Philosophy and Arts of TUT;
The composition of the research team enables to cover to the widest degree the profiles and qualifications, which enter the correlation links of the project. The aim rests in development of interdisciplinary and innovation procedures in education and training for academic environment, their transition between the participating partner universities. To enable that the representatives of several branches together, based on comparison and synthesis, propose new approaches and solutions to professional problems in such a way as to be innovative and complex for the students of the given fields of study and to increase their career prospects.
In 2016, 130 years (1886) will pass since the opening ceremony of the “old“ hospital in Topoľčany opene (1886), built by Baron Stummer and more than 70 years (1939) since construction of the new Pavilion of Infectious and Internal Medicine, the building was built from a stimulus from a MUDr. Eugen Gressner, founder of the Geriatrics and Gerontology in Slovakia. It was not a result of pure chance, it had a remarkable influence on development of health not only in the town, but in the whole region, too, with an impact on several aspects of life of the society, including the social ones. The inappropriate interventions in the given territory, misapprehension of interlinks of cultural and natural values bring about irreplaceable losses, a loss of identity and uniqueness of the site of the “old” hospital, distort its “Genius loci“, and become unattractive and many a time even stressing. The project objective is therefore to formulate proposals and recommendations for rehabilitation of the site of the “old hospital“ in Topoľčany, to provide the representatives of self-administrations and specialists of various branches a guidance on its engagement and involvement in local and regional plans of development.
The project’s contribution
- experimental verification of complex interdisciplinary procedure of solution, as an approved, example for eventual analogical use in education as well as in case of other historical objects and areas;
- development of documentation, assessment and documenting the architecture of objects (specific typological categories of architecture), proposals and recommendations for the further use;
- elaboration of a proposal for involvement of the area of the “old“ hospital into active protection of cultural and natural values of the town of Topoľčany and localities near, including strengthening the significance of the protected area at the regional and supra regional levels with a possibility of use for the
- increased attention and perception of population of the town and region to this cultural monument as a part of national and cultural heritage and a document of historical-cultural and societal relations and popularization of cultural and natural heritage as a source of the contemporary life;
- improvement of training of students of the fields of study which are relevant for provision of professional care for cultural heritage – by acquiring professional skills for the field work.