METHODOLOGIES FOR THE ENHANCEMENT AND THE PRESERVATION OF CULTURAL HERITAGE: THE CRITERIA TO DOCUMENTATION, DIFFUSION AND PREVENTION MEASURES

Abstract

Recovering our building heritage has a fundamental role regarding renewal process, since it constitutes one of the strategies for urban and territorial balance. The project of building recovery, therefore, mainly addresses the adjustment to new housing and urban needs, but it is obviously conditioned and/or “restricted” by the limitation of the building itself, in particular when the intrinsic characteristics must be preserved. The concept of “restriction” extends to its relation with the site, to the quality of the image, to the living conditions. Therefore any intervention of building recovery needs a philological study as a starting point, which consists of a critical interpretation of the building and its context. Such a study is the result of an inseparable relation between the construction’s “previous state” and its “current condition”, or rather, between the materials and the constructive technique, the method from which form and function originated and the preset structural state which is obsolete. There are some fundamental principles which have to be respected in programming an intervention of building recovery: the “compatibility” of materials and of constructive techniques; the “identifiability” and the principle of “reversibility”. Reversibility gives the building the possibility to reinterpret or correct using possible solutions brought by technological innovations (new materials, techniques and constructing procedures). Other general criteria in the intervention on historical buildings are: durability, reliability, flexibility and maintainability. These are the parameters of “technological congruence” which must be respected when involved in a recovery intervention, supported by a historical critical and technical-scientific study. An accurate “philological analysis” of the building is effected starting from the historical and material data. The designer’s conscience and maturity is fundamental in interpreting rules, establishing methods and guiding the project.