What happens to meaning or integrity when an architectural element is separated from its context

When looked at together, two recent articles in The New York Times inspire one to think about the question of how meaning and integrity are related to context and how they are affected when an architectural element or interior decoration is separated from that context. In the February 13, 2014 article, “Building May Be Lost, But Its Façade Will Live (In Storage Someplace)”, David W. Dunlap notes that the sixty-three cast copper-bronze panels comprising the façade of the American Folk Art Museum are to be dismantled and stored although they could be re-erected on a free-standing armature in the same location. He quotes architect Elizabeth Diller as saying, “Facades and buildings and their organization, their logic, are tied entirely together. You either have the integrity of a building with all its intelligence and connected ideas, or you don’t.” In the February 4, 2014 article, “At Four Seasons, Picasso Tapestry Hangs on the Edge of Eviction”, David Segal quotes architecture critic Paul Goldberger saying about the Picasso curtain “Le Tricorne” that was to be removed from its place in the Seagram Building, “It can’t be treated like just another picture that happens to be hanging on that wall and could be interchanged with something else. By virtue of years of being there, it has the effective status of being part of the architecture even if it’s not part of the architecture.”