Acting upon the recent inheritance. Sustainability and responsability towards the contemporary

The rapid cultural evolution of the beginning of twenty first century, with new relationships between time and space (space expands to infinity and time is reduced to seconds), natural and artificial, real and virtual, are profoundly changing the perception of time and history, pushing us in a dimension of simultaneity (of events, of possible synchronic histories, of images and architectures) which certainly characterises contemporary life. But how do we look at the recent architectural and urban inheritance? What values are we able to recognise, how can we make selections (and are we really legitimate to do that)? Which strategies could we imagine for future changes and transformations? The paper collects some ideas developed teaching “Technology of Architecture”, a disciplinary peculiarity of the Italian Schools of Architecture, in graduate and post-graduate programs, beside the courses of Architectural Design and Construction, where the environmental and sustainable issues find a pre-eminent place. In all the teaching works, the view cannot be stopped at the pure technical level (recognising materials, techniques, state of deterioration and suitable technique of intervention and restoration or even energy efficiency improvement), but must be moved to different layers, regarding our contemporary aspirations, cultural references, values. The issue with legacies like this becomes first and foremost a cultural one. This is the result of a slow process of historicising that makes us look at our recent past with progressive detachment, from a different standpoint with respect to the way we live and therefore modifying the present. «There is no memory without forgetting» was written with regard to the never ending dispute between old and new and translated now into the dualism between conservation and demolition. The author tries to propose a multi-perspective approach to the same theme (or problem), underlining different ways in which it can be seen and solved, to help students to move within the fence of the discipline but, at the same time, to be able to gaze beyond it. This is, in fact, a necessary requisite to give convincing answers to the emergence of growing environmental problems and this requisite has oriented the teacher to search constant improvement of the didactic programs, with the indispensable help experts in different disciplines. Finally, the teaching takes place with the full consciousness that the path of learning and knowledge is always a process of long durée, whose effectiveness is measured on time, and, therefore, the teacher should promote the use of methods and approaches that can “break through” the student with a certain speed but can leave signs and messages for future development. The paper is articulated in the followings chapters: - Education for environmental sustainability - Acting upon our recent heritage - Means, ends and aims – final objectives versus technical tools - Contradictions and complexity in the «short Twentieth Century»: the role of a paradox - Responsibility towards the Contemporary - Education for responsible actions: few more issues and aims about quality