Ricerca-azione, partecipazione e digitalizzazione per la manutenzione delle facciate storiche. Il caso di piazza Vittorio Emanuele II a Roma

Over the last five decades Rome's late XIX century urban fabric has undergone continuous maintenance works, mostly extemporaneous repairs, sometimes drastic renovations, only rarely true conservation works. Moreover, these interventions have taken place without leaving trace of the knowledge that the opening of a building site easily allows to acquire as these façades retain historical and architectural value but are not properly “monumental”. Salient data concerning the material consistency, the construction, the state of conservation and the chromatic specificities of this valuable urban heritage has therefore been left behind. Such knowledge is, instead, essential to guide future interventions, especially today as the rehabilitation of private buildings has undergone a strong boost due to the tax incentives offered by the government, and especially in Rome where an exceptional complexity overlaps with inefficient public management and the very difficult administration of public urban spaces. Current maintenance works on the façades of piazza Vittorio Emanuele II fit into this context. A five years-long experience of research-action developed within an agreement that gathers public institutions, universities, and active citizenship has strived to develop an integrated, applied, and participatory knowledge. Maintenance works undertaken on one of the piazza’s main façades has been approached in an interdisciplinary and socially integrated manner with the aim to reorient the interventions towards the best conservation, but also to detect strategies for the filing of the information collected during the works and, finally, to build a heritage community, aware and capable of facing contemporary challenges posed by the management of the cultural heritage.