Memory, values and destiny of twentieth century inheritance

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 characterizes contemporary life. But how do we look at the recent architectural and urban inheritance? What values are we able to recognize, how can we make selections (and are we really legitimate to do that)? Which strategies could we imagine for future changements and transformations? Around these questions, the paper intends to open a reflection on recent interdisciplinary researches carried on at the Faculty of Architecture of Genoa among teachers specialized in Architectural Restoration, Urban Planning and Technology of Architecture, stressing the inevitable connections among these and even more disciplines (i.e. building physics). Researches, purchased by the Municipality, the Ministry of Culture, the Ligurian Region, are focused on parts or segments of Ligurian and Genoese built inheritance. They all deals with the future destiny of these objects or settlements, whether they are large parts of the suburb edified in the ‘80 (the so called ERP Public residential building), or residentail settlements edified immediately after the age of “reconstruction” (within and architectural value is more readable, as INA-Casa production), or even masterpieces of Modern and Contemporary Architecture (the research intends to recognize the most significant architectures, their state of conservation, their values to be preserved).