Change to Preserve. A Conservation Strategy for Tashkent Modernist Heritage

This paper discusses how to balance the needs of preservation, enhancement and use of the Modernist Architecture of Tashkent, the capital city of Uzbekistan. It is by now widely acknowledged that preservation is to be intended as management of change rather than strict conservation. A sustainable preservation implies reducing waste by conserving as much as possible, while adapting the pre-existent to meet the evolving requirements of use. To this end, it is essential to acquire a thorough knowledge of the building, hence to identify the most significant features that need to be retained. Adopting this approach, the authors illustrate the process that brought from the analysis and understanding of a building to an effective conservation strategy able to bridge preservation and management of change