The “Right” to the quality of the “Preservation” for Italian architecture of the Second half of the 20th century

The research addresses the issues of preservation, conservation and possible new destination of the Italian architecture of the Second half of the 20th century, which is more and more the object, particularly in recent years, of complex interventions managed, most of the times, through quite contradictory procedures that can compromise the integrity of the buildings involved. As Bruno Reichlin states: «The preservation of the modern and contemporary architectural heritage [...] is perhaps one of the great opportunities currently offered to the architect in order to rethink his/her profession», the “architect of the safeguard” should be in the position to operate directly in the field, having a deep knowledge of the genesis of the architectural work, its materials and construction techniques, the state of its conservation or alteration, as well as the procedural and operational issues necessary for is future spatial layout and functional destination: the project, the call for tenders, the works management, the construction site. This body of knowledge has to be compared with the current legislation, which in Italy – as far as the preservation of the architecture of the Second half of the 20th century is concerned – is unfortunately still lacking a significant consolidated jurisprudence. In a path that is in part alternative to what has already been produced by the institutional authorities set up for preservation, moreover, the research intends to propose some methodological suggestions about the categories and classification criteria present or excluded in the existing heritage lists, with the aim to include, in a more systematic way, all the restoration interventions entitled, for their architectural value, to be considered part of the heritage of the second half of the 20th century. Placing the emphasis on the specific figurative and distributive characters of some emblematic architectural cases, the proposed working method, while dealing with a new use of the building, intends to preserve as much as possible its original formal expression, language and perception.