The conservation of Historic Fabric in the Third Millennium

The historic buildings and urban fabric are a capital of irreplaceable cultural, social, environmental and economic value. This is true for Europe, as it is for the rest of the world but we need facts and figures to prove and illustrate this conviction. “Articulating the value of our heritage by providing quantitative and qualitative evidence of its benefits and impacts, will indeed give more strength to the voice of cultural heritage in Europe. Where does come this engagement with the protection of Cultural Heritage in Europe? Since the enlargement of concept of Cultural Heritage as “the entire corpus of material signs – either artistic or symbolic – handed on by the past to each culture and, therefore, to the whole of humankind”, the conservation of historic features is mandatory to reach a sustainable development of our settlements. Despite of many attempts to promote a policy and legal framework for the conservation in Italy and in Europe, the protection of Historic Buildings is often reduced to a financial estimation of costs and income, underestimating the importance of the cultural and social components of a real sustainability. Within this scenario, the institution for the education of the designers of the present and future city have a prominent role to propose the proper approach to the project for new uses of historic buildings. The education to “listening” the building comes together with the assumption of the criteria of compatibility, reversibility, least intervention, recognition. Moreover, there is an increasing consciousness of the challenges deriving from the need of accessibility, energy efficiency and safety. This means that the current approach of invasively adapting the historic buildings to the standards for contemporary buildings has been changing towards the improvement of the residual performances. The schools of architecture and building engineering are the natural cradles to learn how to study of the best solution for any specific structure instead of applying a “ready-made” project that matches current fashion and tastes. Conservation and restoration of third millennium are based on the skills of the architects; also they require tools and specific knowledge in many fields and disciplines that the architects have to learn to lead in a multidisciplinary team.