• Korean Journal of Heritage: History & Science
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• v.50 no.2
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• pp.62-79
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• 2017

The principle of repairing the architectural heritage in China was first presented by Liangsicheng of Society for Research in Chinese Architecture in the 1930s, and it was stated as "Restoration of Historic Condition or Preservation of Existing Condition" in 1961 in the "Provisional Regulations on the Protection and Management of Cultural Relics" after various repair experiences under the social and political background of the 1950s. Restoration of historic condition generally means restoration to original shape, and because architectural heritage was often repaired based on similar principle in Korea and Japan in the early and mid 20th century, it can be said that the restoration of historic condition was a universal and leading principle in this period in Northeast Asia. In China, however, the preservation of existing condition is equally specified along with the restoration of historic condition. When considering the leading trend of the time, it seems to be rather unexpected, which leads to questions about the formation process and meaning. The research on Liangsicheng, which first suggested the principle of repair, is very important, but there is a lack of three-dimensional analysis of his principles compared with active research on international principles in China. In order to understand the process of formation and its meaning of the principle of repair in China, we first need to analyze the principle proposed by Liangsicheng, and it is necessary to comprehensively examine how the principle have changed under the social background surrounding architectural heritage conservation after the founding of the People's Republic of China(PRC). In this paper, we first show that Liangsicheng has proposed a principle of restoration of historic condition with important values in the originality, and at the same time he opened the possibility of preservation of existing condition for the result of value judgment or realistic reason. In addition, we examine the process of equalizing preservation of existing condition with a restoration of historic condition as a realistic principle due to the influence of Soviet architectural heritage conservation system and Chinese economic development oriented policy after the founding of PRC.