Today’s monument conservation theory and practice emerged from international conferences and professional coordination following the Second World War. Given the varying national conditions of architectural heritage and the broader geopolitical conflicts of the Cold War era, the notable increase in international understanding – evident in the shared principles and foundations of heritage conservation – calls for further explanation. 

The International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) was founded in 1965 as an international non-governmental organisation for the preservation of historic monuments. ICOMOS provided forums for exchange and facilitated complex networks of cultural heritage cooperation during the Cold War. This research project examines ICOMOS’s international conferences as "conservation contact zones," critically questioning how these spaces of interaction were orchestrated and disentangling their complex structures. It focuses on the first seven ICOMOS General Assemblies held in Krakow (1965), Oxford (1969), Budapest (1972), Rothenburg ob der Tauber (1975), Moscow (1978), Rome (1981), and Rostock/Dresden (1984). These conferences involved extensive political and diplomatic preparation, were accompanied by national and international media coverage, public exhibitions, and site visits, and produced seminal publications. The continuous expert meetings in these “contact zones” intertwined developments in monument conservation in East and West, and increasingly in the Global South as well. Through extensive archival and literature research, the project will reconstruct this international evolution of architectural heritage conservation theory and practice. It will show how national conservation practices, theoretical debates, and political circumstances influenced the field in three key areas: the expansion of the concept of monuments, the acceptance of modernisation of historic buildings, and the growing public involvement and participation in heritage conservation.