Architettura e paesaggio costruito del XX secolo

What fate awaits the buildings of the twentieth century? The archaeologist Eric Cline observed that the artefacts produced by our culture will be gradually buried away and then excavated. However, future archaeologists will probably have more difficulty in distinguishing recycled twentieth-century material than they do nowadays in identifying ancient features in medieval and modern masonries. Structures in iron fall victim to rust; reinforced concrete certainly does not fade away into an atmospheric ruin. The consumer economy is predicated upon the continual replacement of its products and the list of buildings that have been lost includes not only examples of ‘minor architecture’, but also architecture d’auteur. Many symbols of modern architecture fell victim to decline, neglect, conversion, demilition. For those that were ‘saved’, redemption arrived in the form of a ‘réfection à l’identique’ so that their intangible value increased whereas material culture became a neglected issue. Over the coming years, however, the true innovation might be the decisive shift which has led to such architectural heritage being seems as a resource in itself, something whose obsolescence should be reversed through plans of maintenance, thus preserving the material identity of the twentieth century.