The Twentieth-Century: a fragile century, to be safeguarded and consciously nurtured

While the 1900s can be considered the short century of History, we can also define it as the “fragile century” of Architecture: in a short space of time, we saw the production, across the world, of an unparalleled quantity of constructions but with an undoubted decline in architectural quality. The construction techniques of this historical period are now at the centre of the debate on the future of late Twentieth-Century heritage. It is a tricky issue, precisely because the materials and technologies with which this heritage was built have now revealed a series of problems of degradation and physical decay, not only due to exogenous factors. The “short century” is also “fragile” for historiography and critics, still vitiated by many prejudices and lack of objectiveness. However, there is another issue of “fragility” that, until now, has not been properly considered: this relates to copyrights. At first glance, it may seem to have nothing to do with construction quality; however, it hits the mark as, if a building needs “care”, this should be implemented in respect of and in safeguarding the authorship of the work. This, however, often does not happen. It is an issue that relates to the “Culture of the City”: we must first get to know the Heritage that we have before us and learn how to interpret, analyse and assess it critically, to propose its regeneration in an informed manner