BUILDINGS THAT SEEMED LOST APPEAR IN A NEW LIGHT.

One of the greatest challenges of stonemasonry is the reconstruction or repair of partly or entirely damaged and thus irretrievably lost objects of art or buildings. Reconstruction concentrates on the process of new creation or recreation of the original substance, for example the cast or new creation of a sculpture or of one individual building upto the reconstruction of an entire façade.

In reconstruction it is indispensable to find orientation by examining fragments which still exist, historical sources or even pieces of evidence, which considerably increases the challenge for our stone masons and stone carvers. Based on the quantity and quality of suppositions, a reconstruction is always hypothetical and in most of the cases it is rather an approximation to the original than a one hundred percent copy.

The most impressive, but also the most controversial reconstruction project is the reconstruction or the recreation of an entire object, like for example of a complete façade. What can be done with some effort for individual, smaller objects, can only be done with enormous technical and financial efforts in the field of building reconstruction.

In addition to the enormous efforts necessary for such a reconstruction, the scientific and technical parts of the assignment are also complicated. Sensible and feasible solutions must be found for all steps of the reconstruction project, which will not, however, make the originality of a building or part of a building recede into the background or even falsify it, but it should rather emphasize it and highlight the uniqueness of the property.