Regeneration of historic wooden urban realm: restoration and relocation of a cultural heritage object

Abstract

Irkutsk is a city where an original wooden building of the 19th–early 20th centuries have been preserved. Wooden streets and entire city blocks are a cultural heritage that increases interest in the capital of Eastern Siberia from historical and architectural perspectives. However, the life span of wooden structures is short. Thus, wooden development, characteristic of Siberian cities for decades, is on the verge of extinction. At present, the preservation and restoration of such architectural monuments have become increasingly important. The paper discusses the problems of restoration and relocation of a wooden house, previously located in Irkutsk, Gavrilov street, 3. This building is on the List of Immovable Cultural Monuments, which can only be transferred to another site in exceptional cases following the existing legislation. We considered the stages of project development, the cultural and historical context in history and archives research, restoration methods necessary to reproduce the original appearance of a wooden heritage object, its transportation to the historical block. The analysis of restoration and relocation of the historical and cultural monument built in the early 20th century allows us to draw the following conclusion. In this particular situation, the only correct decision for saving the historic monument was its transfer to the related environment of the regenerated 130 Kvartal in Irkutsk.