Formentera to have “best practises manual to assure protection of patrimony”

foto casa can damia des trullAccording to the Formentera Council's Office of Local Heritage, a team of architects specialised in restoring cultural heritage sites has since June been teeing up a study on traditional architecture on Formentera. The study follows the 2014 adoption by the Consell del Patrimoni Històric (Council on Historical Patrimony) of a national plan for traditional architecture. In the words of CiF heritage councillor Susana Labrador, the study is intended to promote “criteria, methods and efforts to document, investigate, protect, restore, disseminate and frame traditional architecture as a fundamental part of the cultural heritage of each of Spain's regions.”

The study's authors set out first to analyse and explain the influence of a shifting economic model in the 1960s and 1970s on Formentera's traditional architecture. Second, they aimed to establish the criteria and protocol to guide projects that effect traditional architecture. The goal of the study is to conserve and maintain aspects of cultural value (buildings, materials and construction techniques) without losing sight of the need to uphold current standards of comfort and well-being. The authors of the study had one year to complete their work. Councillor Labrador envisions the completed study will serve as a sort of “best practises manual, which should be a benchmark for future projects on buildings that represent Formentera's traditional architectural heritage”.

Research team
At the helm of the team are Dr Fernando Vegas and Dr Camila Mileto, lecturers at Universitat Politècnica de València. Both have strong backgrounds in historical heritage site restoration, namely in the region of Valencia, and are joined in their work by Aina Serrano Espases, who is a historical heritage specialist on the Mallorca Council and a representative of the technical committee for the national plan on traditional architecture. The team also enjoys the help of Jaume Escandell Guasch, cultural heritage specialist of the Formentera Council.

The project, which receives the whole of its €16,500 in funding from the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport, was adopted by the traditional architecture plan's technical committee after initially being proposed by the region of the Balearic Islands. As Councillor Labrador pointed out, four programmes and courses of action are laid out in the plan. Of those, the fourth deals with “dissemination, transmission and co-operation”.