Persistenza e vulnerabilità. Gli strati contemporanei nel patrimonio architettonico

Architecture has always been characterised by stratification and transformation over time. These strata may derive from long construction processes, functional adaptations or unforeseen events, transforming buildings into palimpsests that preserve traces of the passing of time, sometimes becoming heritage. However, the moment a building is listed, a gap is created between the past and the present, which creates differences in how pre-existing heritage and contemporary interventions on it are interpreted and treated. The significance of recent ex novo architecture is increasingly being assessed, but coeval interventions on pre-existing buildings are being disregarded, becoming vulnerable. The manuscript presents a critical analysis of recent architecture’s listing in Europe and the situation of some interventions carried out between the 1960s and the present, to start a necessary debate about this topic, so that the cultural significance of recent interventions can be taken into consideration in the development of heritage policy and guidelines in architectural conservation practice.