Slovenian industrial heritage – complexity of meanings, their preservation and regeneration

Abstract

Industrialization caused the biggest technological changes in human history, which called for not only new ways of working but also of living, education, and life as a whole. Eventually the world became the global market that we know today, when we are on the threshold of 5.0 Industry, when utopia is becoming reality. Despite its peripheral role, Slovenia started to change quite early under the influences of industrialization; these changes accelerated in the 19th century and gained momentum during socialist industrialization, when organized heritage protection started to develop extremely quickly — first it was used for socialist propaganda and then increasingly for concrete protection actions and regenerations. In parallel, relevant domestic knowledge was developed and, particularly, awareness was raised about the significance of industrial heritage, testifying to the transformation of its value in space and time. The understanding of this is necessary for an effective, development-directed protection.