Historical buildings and contemporaneity in Europe. Operating scenarios, cultural perspectives and the role of restoration

The conservation is born in Europe as an aware activity that deals with the preservation of heritage. As a product of a culture of élite – strictly connected with the knowledge of history and art – since the beginning it showed a clear transnational ambition. More recent studies insisted on the fact that incidental reasons – as social and economic influences – have actually exercised a great influence on the conservation praxis. But, if the relationship between restoration and social-economic conditioning is an important element to consider, neverthless the analysis of the topic must be wider. The judgment on the heritage and the way to conserve it can not be flattened just on the identification of exterior reasons, without considering the material and figurative aspects which identify the specificity of historical architecture. The deduction of the present trends from the analysis of the buildings involves some prior choices about the evaluation criteria. In this article, these criteria will consider the figurative relationship between the new components and the pre-existing architectures and the attention to the diacronic identity of the historical building. First of all, the intervention on the heritage reveals the way in which the man and the woman relate themselves to the past, the present, the future. Selection, descriptions and connections estabilished among some representative interventions on existing architectures of this Millennium allow here to clarify goals and problems emerging from different approaches. This analysis want to understand the deep reason of the choices so to estabilish if we can still speak – beyond the various narratives – about a common european attitude toward conservatio