Strategie di finanziamento e pratiche di long-term care per il patrimonio architettonico del Novecento

In the international scene, grants dedicated to the conservation of significant architectures actually represent increasingly known and widespread funding sources. These tools offer important starting points to reflect on issues of conservation planning and on the strategy changes in funds-allocation practices in this field. In particular, the paper aims to document processes generated by competitive grants such as ‘Keeping it Modern’ awarded by the Getty Research Institute, which shows how the foundation’s attention is gradually shifting from the funding of conservation works, to the economic support aimed to achieve conservation management programs. The investigation concerns two different grants dedicated to Twentieth-century icons such as the Eames House (1945-49) and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies (1959-65). Carried out between 2011 and 2017, both interventions are based on a knowledge-plan that shifts the focus from conservation projects to conservation programs: the funding is not directed to emergency works aimed at contrasting the decay, but to processes which lead to long-term care practices defined both for buildings and their environment. The two experiences finally allow to underline that the funding structure and its attractiveness induce forms of aggregation between specialists, researchers, professionals and stakeholders whose active participation in the process steer the methodological perspective adopted in building conservation.