EcoPerspectives Restoration

The time has now arrived to start interrogating oneself on the possibility of also applying the ecological principles within the discipline of restoration. The need for energy requalification of pre-industrial buildings is now a compulsory regulatory requirement that, before a technological definition of the practical activities required, needs new concepts that can be integrated with the theoretical thoughts behind conservation. Thinking about restoration from an ecological perspective means reaffirming the complex nature of the cultural heritage. During the years this has undergone a double mutation: that of its gradual expansion, and a mutation connected with the recognition of its value, the preservation of which is a moral and social requirement, with the conservation being a subsequent and due action, but not within the inactivity of the binding system. Buildings, landscape, nature, environment, demographic and ethnographic anthropology objects, and immaterial objects, are the heterogeneous components of the heritage, which main properties are the result of space-time relations made stable by a dynamic and fragile balance, which is subjected to continuous perturbations of natural and anthropic origin. In the same way as other disciplines, like the historic, technical, and chemical ones, ecology can direct its basis towards restoration, contributing to set the methods and the means for the conservation of the existing, within the wider framework of environmental compatibility. This means investigating restoration as a set of objects and processes, with the assessment involving not only the manufactures, but also the relationships between objects and subjects.