Restoring the Colors of Friedrich Weinwurm's Unitas: Hazards of Black-and-White Photography

Abstract

In the field of monument restoration of modern architecture, photography represents one of the most significant sources of information on a building’s original form. Modern photography, with its technologies and imaging methods, has often not preserved the actual form of structures but rather illustrated the photographer’s artistic impression of the object. Studies of, for example, the Unitas housing complex, which was constructed in the capital of Slovakia, Bratislava, in 1931, show the role of photographs of new objectivity in publicizing the project and at the same time point to some problems brought forth in the process of its restoration. This article discusses the significance of the Unitas housing complex within the architectonic discussion of the period, along with the position of its architect, Friedrich Weinwurm, in the local avant-garde. It provides information on the artists who photographed the complex, characterizes their artistic approaches, and evaluates the contribution of these photographs to the process of restoration. On the background of the monument restoration of the complex, the contribution shows the standard approaches of the Monuments Board and the reconstruction’s architects, and comments critically on the absence of restoration research. Only sound surveys and subsequent laboratory optical/physical and chemical/technological analyses of selected samples supplied reliable information on the original coloring of the complex. The limited documentary ability of black-and-white photography in the restoration of the original colors was confirmed in an experiment during which the authors photographed a model of the original plaster and prepared photos that differentiated the exposure length and the properties of the filters. This study reveals the necessity of applying all available sources of information, from archive research through restoration research up to laboratory analysis, in the process of monument restoration of modern architectural works.