Lifts as cultural heritage

Lifts as a technical invention that enhanced the world are nowadays considered cultural heritage objects. Lift-cabins built in blocks of flats at the beginning of the 20th century were small masterpieces of artisans, a marvellous mixture of the aesthetic and functional. 'Culture-aware' architects and art collectors of today trade in parts of these lifts. As we can look upon heritage as a collection of ideals but also a collection of objects, the issue can be raised, what is it like and what is it that we wish to preserve, is it ideas or things? Can we learn to appreciate cultural, spiritual and technological achievements of the world that we belong to, and how much is it that our identity with its cultural and value system conditions the limitations of our worldview? Finally, could quite ordinary lifts, of which were thousands built in by the year 1920, be universal heritage?