L’intervento sull’architettura contemporanea. Esperienze e tendenze prevalenti

Ever since the issue of preserving modern and contemporary architecture arose. about twenty five years ago, the approach to interventions has been marked by a retrospective tendency and a general preference to restore the original state, to remake and to rebuild; apart from a hypertrophic attention to the problem, this approach has, thereafter, been reinforced and rooted. A number of case-studies in this field show that the architectural heritage of the Twentieth Century has become the focus of interests and ambitions of various origin which impede its correct appreciation and the assessment of its values. Rare but encouraging experiences of proper and successful conservation move against this dominating retrospective approach, strong of being lead in respect of the main principles of restoration and of having faced the specific and undeniable technical problems that modern architecture inevitably poses. As a matter of fact, the core of the matter does not lay in the particular materiality of modern architecture neither in imaginary limits within the theory of restoration, but in the uneasy conditions within which the value assessment takes place, impeded by an insufficient ‘chronological gap’ and by a still unconsolidated historiography.