Effetti dei cambiamenti climatici sul patrimonio architettonico del Novecento: riflessioni sulla tutela e sul restauro attraverso l'analisi di casi studio in Piemonte

The need to protect the cultural values of the architectural heritage, and the demands for conservation and conscious reuse, are increasingly coming up beside the challenges posed by environmental transition, and sustainable development goals. Innovative solutions and technical 'compromises' are often urgently needed to guarantee the integrity of the qualifying topics of historic buildings and – at the same time – satisfy the new issues imposed by the effects of climate change and claims for energy saving. The contribution investigates, through the experience of academic research and the institutional preservation activities of the Superintendence, the management of valuable 20th-century architecture concerning these challenges, by analysing the critical issues and the operative solutions - aimed at both conservation and energy efficiency - as well as the problematic synthesis between the two objectives. The essay examines Palazzo delle Poste and Casa del Mutilato in Alessandria, emblems of the Fascist Regime architecture and of the 20th-century urban transformation, thinking over the balancing of values that restoration works must nowadays reconcile. The two cases witness the fragility and vulnerability of contemporary heritage if submitted to ageing stress-test, showing the adopted solutions between conservative and improvement strategies, promoting anyhow the prevalence of public interest over the private’s, and systemic contribution to global challenges combined to the values traditionally supported by restoration theory.