L’architetto e il restauro del patrimonio architettonico. Confronto fra formazione, libera professione e organi di tutela

The paper wishes to underline the role of the architects, as professionals, in the nowadays state of the building sector, especially considering the interventions on the existing buildings and construction, even if not protected by the Italian national law on cultural heritage, or Codice dei Beni Culturali, enacted in 2004. The trend of the ‘renewal’ as the intervention (even if it is not restoration) on the existing constructions and buildings, comparing with the market of the new ones is, almost, at the same level (as the XXIII Rapporto Congiunturale e Previsionale CRESME – 2015-2020, pp. 2-53). These data can push the necessity to verify the restoration methodologies (defined for ‘monuments’ listed in the national cultural heritage) on the existing buildings. This confirmation has a strong impact, also, on the public procurement contracts and on the role of expertise in this specific rules, meanwhile it has to define in which way the professional bodies can participate in this debate, emphasizing the specificity of the architectural restorer, as he or she is defined by the higher education national programmes. But, because of the transformation of the building labour market, with the decreasing of the new constructions, one of the main questions surveyed in the training activity is the interfering with the different methodological approaches on existing building. It is necessary to define very well, at the higher education level, the role of the restoration/conservation teaching, as it was, deeply, discussed, in Italy in the middle of the Seventeenth of the Nineteenth Cent., when the Ministry of Cultural Heritage was established. The aim of the paper is to understand, linking three different voices, one of the teachers, one of the professional and one of the administrations in charge to protect the cultural heritage, which are the questions surveyed in the training on restoration, trying to highlight the main lines according to which the higher educational programmes can fit the architectural restoration in the national and international labour market.