Heritage: verfall der aura

The practices of assembly, collage and remix are increasingly used in various fields of cultural production. 3D printers and the spread of copies across the network cancel any distinction between the fake and the original. These trends are also manifest in architecture, especially in recycle strategies where the intervention on the existing provokes a multiplication of time, authors and languages. These methods tend to disintegrate the concept of authorship, integrity and authenticity of the work – the parameters with which usually the interest of the historical heritage is still evaluated. The assessment of built heritage by the appointed authorities is in fact based on intangible contents (signature, witness value, originality); the real substance of the work is often blurred by an interpretation based on these categories, now unable to understand the present. The persistence of meanings arising from historical value, integrity, authorship of the work, etc. seems increasingly clash with the current need to indulge in amnesia, plagiarism and manipulation. Within the interest that in this period involves the notion of heritage, this article investigates the profound distance between the tools put in place to transform what exists, and the coordinates with which we still judge and intervene on the architecture of the past.