Learning from Modern Heritage: Methodological Tools for Re-thinking Education in Conservation

The paper concerns the experience developed in several years of teaching conservation of modern heritage in schools of architecture, international Erasmus workshops and Docomomo workshops to students coming from all over the world, with different cultural and educational backgrounds. Modern architectural heritage masterpieces have high potential for pedagogic purposes, especially for helping students to develop a critical thinking on (modern) heritage preservation. During the courses students are guided through a deep knowledge of the building in order to define intervention strategies and to develop a preservation project. The analysis of the buildings – ranging from the understanding of the radical ideas of modern architects to the survey on the field, the archival and bibliographical research, the analysis of uses, problems, materials and decay – is the starting point of a continuous challenge to commonplaces, to standard solutions, to established beliefs about the modern heritage and about the contemporary role of the architect. All this is possible through the application of a teaching method that have theory of conservation and practice of design going at the same pace, in a spiral process of awareness. This method is the most appropriate to engage students with preservation and re-use of modern architecture, meant as essential tools for their future professional background, rather than as separate fields of action. The project is a mean to pinpoint the subtle contradictions of the discipline and an occasion to develop the required critical knowledge to translate theoretical positions in a sound approach to the transformation/evolution of built heritage.