Historical motives and contemporary needs: notes for a dialogue

The theme outlined once again urges to the comparison between different disciplines that – together - are concerned with architecture, cities, environment, landscape and aims to reconsider some aspects of a complex issue based on an reality that needs to be treated to satisfy both the reasons of history and the requests of the contemporary world. In this perspective, the recovery of heritage buildings - including the ones damaged by seismic actions - implies the need to consider the 'built' in overall terms, to revisit the sources, to investigate the dynamics of the events, and to understand those values which, as factors of relation, allow the communication between the specificities of urban events, leading thus to the constitutive values of the whole. Hence, the importance of understanding limits and, at the same time, potentialities of current methods of analysis of the architectural and urban heritage, recognizing and interpreting the historical process, and to identify it as an essential assumption for a respectful knowledge able to lead to a consequent proper action. In this sense, it could be remarked the significant influence of the principles of the conservation, which show the prominence that contemporary culture gives to the relationship with the evidences of the past. It is clear that only through a systematic study of the many issues that determines the actual state of the places, we can define a methodology that allows the integration of different data and their comparability. Certainly, the principle of compatibility calls for various projects designed to promote a dialogue between strictly conservative actions and innovative actions, that is to say that every solution should be the result of the interrelationship between moments of analysis and synthesis, of understanding, comparison and verification; choices are based on the severity of the judgment, the rigor that stimulates the entire project action.