Planning the safeguard of hidden heritage: Standards and compromises for the physical preservation of “minor” archives of Contemporary Architecture

Contemporary architectural archives are a peculiar kind of “borderline” heritage, oscillating between the collection and the deposit status. This ambivalence raises questions about their protection and enhancement: the architectural drawings exposure and consultation are designed and managed according to Standards relating to the archival sector, in the strict sense; however, such a specific approach will not be sufficient if the documents include design drawings, characterized by different formats, techniques and supports. The balance between external environment, conservation spaces and drawings is maintainable if preventive conservation methodologies are applied to limit the chemical, physical and biological degradation through active and passive systems of environmental control. The protection strategies are explained in Standards and Guidelines, often made accessible by national and international bodies and often taken on, at the institutional level, with different results, since every archive proves to be an organism on its own. This paper proposes the analysis and comparison of the regulations, produced in Italy and abroad, on the preventive conservation and the methodologies of the architectural documents exhibition, highlighting how much the values of environmental parameters are not as important, if they are considered in end of themselves, as the investigation of other factors, ranging from the materials chemistry and physics at the past history of each archive, up to its fruition.