QUALE “INNOVAZIONE” PER LA TUTELA DEIQUARTIERI SPERIMENTALI DEL DOPOGUERRA?

A series of residential estates - in particularly QT8 estate (Milan, Italy), Merlan estate (Noisy-le-Sec, France) and Demostration Houses (Northolt, Great Britain) - which were built in the immediate post-war period and inspired by an experimental and “innovative” approach (urban-planning, architecture and building techniques) to the urgent problems posed by post-war reconstruction. The experiment lay in producing “prototype” houses before launching rebuilding programmes to test new layouts and distribution of volumes, new industrialised building technologies and assess building costs and timelines. This paper aims to focus on the way these experimental estates, which contain structures created using very different materials and modes of assembly, have withstood the passage of time and which kind of safeguard strategy choose for them. Decay, the need to adapt structures to the standards of comfort and housing expected by a new generation of inhabitants, ongoing demolition, the small alterations continually being made to the structures raise the question of how to protect the architectural heritage represented by these prototypes - part publicly part privately owned -, which bear material witness to the initial application of prefabricated building systems that would later be employed in the construction of large parts of our cities. The aim is to consider how inevitable and necessary transformations might be “governed”, with full recognition of the need to safeguard both the architectural characteristics of individual housing units and the overall appearance of the area as a whole.