Metamorfozy [antikvár]

"The future for the past"From its early days, the International Cultural Centre has been tied inseparably with the building at 25 Main Market Square in Krakow. This prestigious address soon became a vital element of our mission and our identity. The Centre came into existence spurred by the spirit of the turn of the 1980s and 1990s, and by the need to open to the world. It is a fruit of Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki's international initiative announced at the Paris summit in November 1990, and of a new strategy adopted by local self-government, which revived in that memorable year. To reinforce the Polish presence in intercultural dialogue and to promote Krakow as the face of Poland were the key motives that actuated the central government and local self-government authorities to jointly transfer a building in Europe's largest market square to what was only a germinating institution at the time. That was also a reason why the Centre's seat has from the very beginning been most of all a space for dialogue rather than a "culture factory".25 Main Market Square is an address that soon became an important place of international debate on cultural heritage. The 1990s, the first period of the Centre's activity, was the stage when the institution took shape, and the cultural fiinction of the seat donated to us by Krakow authorities ossified. The Centre's international success and its development made it necessary to commence a large-scale investment project aimed at integrating the new institution's activity with the place.Taking more than a decade, the process of conservation, upgrade and adaptation of the Ravens House's historical interiors was not only a financial and organisational challenge for the ICC, but above all a pioneering conservation experiment. Cultural heritage, which is the principal area of the International Cultural Centre's activity, ceased to be but theory for us: by taking up the necessary adaptation of the building at 25 Main Market Square it turned into hands-on experience. Tie process of intense reading of the layers of heritage that had built up over the centuries at the Ravens House went together with a deep-rooted confident that a unique change was opening to us. What I mean is not only an opportunity of full integration of form and function of the historical premises, but above all a chance to try an important experiment of transition from conservation doctrinairism, in which the local conservators' milieu is still mired, to methodological pluralism. Have we managed to translate that new philosophy of heritage into the new language architecture in historical context? Let the future decide.