Innovation in Conservation of Architectural Heritage

It is more and more important to recognize that, nowadays, the crucial and essential question for the Safeguard of Cultural Heritage and in particular for Architectural Heritage is perhaps: “why do we research, teach or practice, within the field of conservation/restoration”?. The contextual use of these two words simply tries to avoid any preventive selection connected to the meanings that the two words can assume in different cultural contexts, while everywhere a great interest as regards tutorship, safeguard and management of architectural, urban and environmental Heritage seems to grow up. But the question “why” regards, in a broader sense, the deep reasons of our present attitude and of our efforts toward the destiny of several artifacts that were conceived and built by other men during the past ages. In this perspective, an outstanding role has been acquired by the themes related to the knowledge or better to the many forms of nondestructive studies and inquires we can develop about what we want to take care of. On this level, we must thus highlight, the crucial role that analytical and diagnostic apparatus (historical, artistic, archaeological, structural, chemical, biological and so on) has assumed during the past years. A sort of satisfaction exist, a propos, because a common language has certainly been acquired on this field, with evident and appreciable fallouts. Nevertheless, some worries emerge as regards the risk of a kind of consolidated “orthodoxy”, which may hide a simply formalistic respect for some apparently inescapable rules, accompanied by a certain passiveness of our way to handle restoration interventions. In any case, we are always intent in achieving the sure capability to develop: • rigorous architectural surveys, supported by adequate technological devices and, first of all, clearly based on methodological geometrical basis recurring to traditional methodologies of longimetric nature, to topographic devices, to analytic or digital photogrammetric instruments and tools till the most updated laser scanning possibilities ; • serious historical inquiries, grounded on strong critic and analytic apparatus and on rigorous studies of indirect archive sources always compared with deep archaeological inquires of the artifacts considered as first and direct sources of their past history ; • meticulous analytical and diagnostic studies, collecting and organizing data concerning the physical state of the artifacts, as regards the building materials, the techniques for their construction and their state of deterioration/conservation, conducted with rigorous empiric methodologies supported by sometimes very sophisticated laboratory tests and simulations, faithfully visualized and synthesized in “thematic maps” of sure communicative and perceptive impact; • refined and reliable virtual simulations of the designed interventions, regarding the built materials and elements but also the spaces of the ancient buildings we are working on; • more accurate systems for monitoring the conditions of our monuments in strict relation with the environment in which they are inserted. Every day, on the other hand, we discover that is almost impossible (or even dangerous and un-useful) limiting our look to the conservation’s culture, considered as a withdrawn, self-sufficient or self-related world. It tracks a route between searching and understanding marked by profound connections, polarities and reflected images. This deals with a today’s reality in which architecture and conservation often look like “poor neighbors”, not reciprocally communicating and subjected to the perennial contraposition between the exaltation of pure (or abstract) “creativity” and the research for “analytical rigor”, between the tension towards knowledge and professional pragmatism, in a time of deep transformations which would rather demand their profound integration. The emphasis should thus be placed also on the need for a “programmed conservation” and on the “conservation of the whole”, more than of single artifacts or masterpieces of art. These concepts have remarkable implications because they pay attention to the “system” of goods that constitute the built heritage (from the single artifact, to the city and the landscape), going beyond its single elements. This situation requires, with evidence, new competences and professionalisms we have to create both in the University and in the world of professional training and formation. In front of the challenges proposed by the destiny of our monuments, cities and cultural landscapes, on the other end, what is needed is not only new and secure “technical professionalisms” (analytical, diagnostic and design oriented). We have rather to avoid that this crucial field for the future of the world be reduced to a simple and indistinct sum of separate responses to the various emergencies every day occuring. These could be in fact acceptable, but are always arguable (on the cultural, economic, technological, technical, functional, political field). Is therefore necessary that the “training” sector and the universities identify and create new professionalisms and promote a strong sensitivity to the strategic aspects of the tutorship in terms of structural and long term governance of the “system” of goods of our interest. This will not reduce the spaces devoted to the cultural and scientific debate in the field and to our experimental work, even out the technical side of the question that remains crucial in the quest for a more open and shared quality of future interventions. This goal, nevertheless, will be easily achievable only thanks to the existence of new professionals capable of facing the pre-existing problems and those emerging during and after the single interventions, rationalizing the resources, improving the possible solutions, exploiting the synergies, confrontations and corrections that can only result from a clear, recorded and widely shared accumulation of experiences. The work to be made in this direction is every day more urgent, facing the new challenges our Heritage will be invested by, like those proposed by the needs for a true environmental and energetic sustainability of its recovery and uses, for a real universal accessibility of our monuments and sites, for their effective defense against the risks of fire, earthquake or other natural and human disasters. A clear example, in this perspective, can be found in the several computerized systems applied to surveying and cataloguing the existing cultural goods (it is not self-centered or exclusively directed to a passive administration of tutorship bonds), the technical databases used as a necessary reference by the operators (in the analytic, diagnostic and intervention areas), the intentions for the management and improvement of the goods themselves (in the planning, administrative, didactic and divulgation fields. In such a perspective, should thus emerge the full recognition of the global (systemic) and not occasional nature of any intervention (yet in the respect of the local specificities) but, above all, a new awareness regarding the quality of the interventions themselves carried out on the existing artifacts (small or big, famous or unknown), maybe considered insignificant by our traditional but insufficient means of evaluation. All this requires an attention and commitment that the world of the university, of the institutions and of the professionals involved within the field still find hard to express loud and clear.