Group Charlie. Bataria da Raposeira

Climate emergence has become a significant topic in urban, landscape, and architectural heritage policies and, it is presently noticed that many policy efforts, at an international, level have already been taken to address numerous major problems we are currently facing. UNESCO’s “Policy Document on Climate Action for World Heritage”, which establishes a “Policy Framework” together with an “Implementation Policy Document” has a new concern focused on the heritage adaptation to the climate impacts in heritage, but also on “climate mitigation”, as point 59 describes, by creating “value and inspirational power of World Heritage properties to showcase "win-win" mitigation practices that both reduce greenhouse gases and safeguard Outstanding Universal Value” (UNESCO, 2021, p. 12). This book and, in particular, this introduction considers the implications of cultural heritage and collective memory in our climate emergency scenario and asks if the pithy dictum “form follows function” couldn’t give place to a “function follows form” as a new approach when looking into, what we call here, "hard-heritage". Along the pages of this book, we will look into military architecture in the form of bunker as a paradigmatic example of material and imaterial resistance in this present scenario of climate crisis. Calculated to resist to bombing attacks, bunkers are real “anthopofossils” (fossils from anthopocene era) and are then made to endure and survive this conjuncture, being so objects of interest in architecture, landscape, territorial and heritage studies when addressing the issue. The reading will cross some concepts from Heidegger’s trilogy impetus of Building/Dwelling/Thinking to the symbolism of the hardness and the ruiness that caracterize the spoils of our era. The “function follows form” positioning will be here dissected and discussed by understanding its origin and meaning regarding heritage and the crises of accumulation from the past, facing climate emergency?