Great expectations: the second Cultura Suisse, the Swiss “Trade Fair for Museums, Heritage Conservation and Cultural Assets” invites you to Bern from January 22 to 24, 2020 The first Cultura Suisse, the Swiss “Trade Fair for Museums, Heritage Conservation and Cultural Assets” in January 2019, was a success. The organizers have therefore immediately announced the next edition for 22 to 24 January 2020. In future, the new Swiss […]
Great expectations: the second Cultura Suisse, the Swiss trade fair for museums, heritage conservation and cultural assets, invites visitors to Bern from January 22 to 24, 2020
The first Cultura Suisse, the Swiss “Trade Fair for Museums, Heritage Conservation and Cultural Assets” in January 2019, was a success. The organizers have therefore immediately announced the next edition for 22 to 24 January 2020. In future, the new Swiss Heritage Fair will take place every two years. In the exhibition halls in Bern, 130 exhibitors – the vast majority from Switzerland – will present their products, skills and services. Exhibition director Peter Plan expects 4000 visitors over the three days of the fair. The first fair attracted 2500 visitors. Plan is optimistic that the success of the first trade fair has won over the specialist public and that “many more ‘normal’ craftsmen, specialist architects and conservationists will now take the time to come to the trade fair.” He also expects significantly more visitors from museums and collections.
This hope is not unfounded, as the annual congress of the Swiss Restoration/Conservation Association SKR will take place on the last day of the fair. The “1st Swiss Museum Marketing Day” will also be held for the first time on January 23, especially for smaller museums that have little or no personnel or financial resources for visitor marketing. The day is being organized by the Swiss Museum Pass Foundation in collaboration with the trade fair and the Swiss Museums Association (VMS). According to the organizers, the aim is “to show small and medium-sized museums how they can optimize their existing marketing and expand it cost-effectively with relatively little effort.”
Communication professionals, consultants and Jasminko Halilovic from Sarajevo have been invited to take part. Halilovic was awarded the Council of Europe Museum Prize in 2018 for his “War Childhood Museum” in Sarajevo. Originally, he only wanted to publish a book about childhood during the war. In addition to the individual exhibitors’ offerings, a special exhibition on training in the preservation of historical monuments is planned with 15 specialist trades. The “Fachwerkerleben” association will set up a half-timbered house in the center of the special exhibition area and present its work. The association was awarded the gold medal at the “denkmal” trade fair in Leipzig in 2018 for its research and activities to preserve the half-timbered building tradition.
This year’s exhibitors also included many companies involved in metal, stone and glass processing. It was important to him to bring together more different trades at the fair than in the first year, says fair director Peter Plan. As usual at trade fairs, current developments will not only be discussed at the exhibitors’ stands, but also on several large panels. One panel, for example, will deal with the “Davos Declaration” of 2018, which aims to strengthen the importance of high-quality building culture in Europe. This is because there is an urgent need for “an upgrading of the built environment in Europe”, according to the text of the declaration by the European culture ministers. They want to respond to current challenges such as growing urbanization, the shrinking of rural areas, the scarcity of resources and land consumption. However, as is so often the case with declarations, the details have not been clarified. The panel will therefore ask “how much architecture, how much monument and landscape protection is contained in this “building culture”. Oliver Martin, Head of the Heritage Protection and Monument Preservation Section of the Federal Office of Culture, Stefan Kunz, Director of Heritage Protection and Judith Rohrer from the Garden Monument Preservation Department of the City of Zurich, will discuss this topic.
Another panel will deal with ideas that are the opposite of monument protection. In Switzerland, there are politicians who want to make it easier to demolish listed buildings because it stands in the way of densification. However, according to ISOS, the “Federal Inventory of Swiss Sites of National Importance”, this is not possible for 1200 particularly beautiful sites. Until now. Stanislas Rück, monument conservator of the canton of Fribourg and President of the Conference of Swiss Monument Conservators (KSD), Stefan Cadosch, President of the Swiss Society of Engineers and Architects (SIA) and National Councillor Hans Egloff from the SVP party are therefore discussing whether “densification and the protection of the townscape get in each other’s way”.
It is similarly difficult to reconcile the requirements and wishes for energy efficiency in “old-timers made of stone and sheet metal”, as the topic of a third panel is called. This panel will discuss the jungle of regulations, additional costs, restrictions and good solutions for old houses and old cars.
