Roberto Pane and his lesson.

Pane proposes a very articulate point of design view, given his truly original ability to address the peculiar theme of architectural preservation with an extraordinarily rich and innovative perspective. Already in the middle of the last century, he introduced the psychological value of the connection to memory and the recognition and necessity of preserving beauty, as indispensable aspects to the enjoyment of spaces shaped by man, in time and history. Through care and intelligent preservation, places can become inexhaustible sources of perceived well-being that undoubtedly transcends function, whether merely monumental or jointly practical. For those who develop research and design for urban spaces in great transformation - during the postmodern era and in the context of the so-called information society - these logics today are vital and, if well conceived, are capable of activating a virtuous circle between memory, territory, design, use and value which allows us to restore to places that sense of common good too often lost and the virtue of being truly hospitable to all. In the third millennium, the theme of preservation and memory conservation expands its field of intervention by shifting from historical vestiges to those of mid-contemporaneity, from places once designed for the celebration of worship or civic or infrastructural actions (think of the many Roman aqueducts, bridges and roads), to places originally conceived in the 19th and 20th centuries for the expression of industrial work with its disused operating plants, and to the great disused infrastructural systems of the 20th century, which now constitute a very powerful network of cultural and landscape connections in the diffuse territory. This opens the design of spaces - in relation to preservation - to intriguing new interpretations and critical areas. It would be interesting to converse with Roberto Pane about this, to confront with respect to the sense, now possible, of a virtual and more articulated philological recovery, in the vein of his research.