Reconciling Conservation and Modernization in Architecture

• The article examines attempts to reconcile conservation and modernization in architecture, particularly in Italy from the 1950s to 1980s

• The focus is on how these attempts address challenges highlighted by the 1972 World Heritage Convention

• It explores the impact of social, economic, and urban shifts, and uses a value-centered approach to discuss architectural, cultural and economic issues in heritage conservation during globalization

• The paper aims to define new conservation methods related to the 2011 Historic Urban Landscape Recommendation and its sustainability goals

• Modernization was seen as a force reshaping the city in science, morality, and art, and it manifested visibly (avenues) and invisibly (infrastructure)

• As a result, architectural involvement in heritage was mostly visual, featuring scholarly debates on modernism, contrast, and the impact of modern elements on historic areas

• The Venice Charter was produced, yet it lacked guidance for urban environments, leaving contemporary global urbanization as an open question

• Italian contributions in the postwar era centered the debate on planning and conservation from architecture’s viewpoint

• A value-centered approach emerged in the 1970s, involving various stakeholders with diverse interests in urban heritage

• Landscape approach developments in the 1980s emphasized historic processes and socioeconomic factors, leading to sustainability

• Shifts in urban economy in the 1990s highlighted heritage environments as new urban and economic development centers

• The 2011 UNESCO Historic Urban Landscape Recommendation aims to address these topics recognizing today's complex heritage definition

• It more of an empirical process based on architectural principles from the 2005 Vienna Memorandum

• A key goal is to find issues where architecture can help conservation and development, it will be done via international examples, including China

• It calls for a political view of the heritage city as a societal project

The Italian Precedent and the Case of Bologna

• The aesthetic relationship between heritage and development has been debated in urban conservation

• It was prioritized by the Athens Charter and current heritage documents

• WWII motivated a shift in architectural modernism regarding historic cities, with reconstruction in Europe

• The 8th CIAM in 1951 advocated for deeper urban reconstruction, emphasizing ‘dwelling’

• The experience of dwelling included continuity, community, and domesticity, leading to historic cities' appreciation

• Modern urban theory sought architectural and urban foundations beyond aesthetics in historic environments

• Urban morphology became a key school for interpreting cities

• Theorists like Saverio Muratori and Gianfranco Canniggia emphasized culture, countering generic modern planning

• History became a source for architectural and urban design

• The Tendenza school provided a basis for relating existing cities and new development from an architectural perspective

• A 'progressive conservation' evolved, based on urban science from structuralist urban analysis

• Another element was increased consideration toward identity, attending to social inclusiveness as the main guaranty for urban heritage conservation

• The 1973 Plan drafted by Pierluigi Cervellati for Bologna aimed to conserve the city from this angle

• New functions, mainly cultural, were integrated into old monumental buildings, and guided new housing designs

• Their principles can be found in the 1975 Amsterdam Declaration

• Integrated conservation had limited opportunities to transform heritage cities due to events laying the groundwork for globalization

• Scarcity of resources grew after the Oil Crisis in the 1970s, affecting urban planning, and pressure on historic cities wasn't relieved

• Bologna intensified initiatives for functional updates and social city center cohesion

• The 'Fiera Bologna,’ designed by Kenzo Tange was equal to the medieval city center, and explains investment not benefiting the heritage city

• Trust in permanent growth was broken when the powerhouses of development moved from the West

• Without a stable periphery, protection the historic center was ineffective along with periphery obsolescence

• As Bernardo Secchi warned in the 1980s, conditions changed, and urban heritage degradation was unavoidable, needing urgent responses

New Demands for the Heritage City

• The Bologna Plan managed to defer a reality in the Western world by over a decade

• Historic city centers decayed in Europe and North America due to suburban expansion between the 1950s and 1960s

• Increasing neoliberal economic globalization made political attempts to counteract this process were helpless

• The 1975 Amsterdam Declaration limitations because socioeconomics redefined culture's role as culture evolved

• The 1976 Narobi Recommendation concerning Historic Areas urged authenticity, economic revitalization, and cautioned against excessive profit

• International consensus from the 1972 UNESCO World Heritage Convention has been unsuccessful

• The lack of consistent policies led to the historic city's banalization, resulting in limited advancements

• The 1987 Washington Charter showed elements like patterns, buildings, formal appearance, territory, and functions could not address the challenges of the ‘heritage city'

• Non specific heritage menaces such as gentrification, climate change, mass tourism, commodification and poverty, occur

• The 1994 Nara Charter recognizes cultural diversity but couldn't address urban issues

• Efforts to make tourists stakeholders in urban heritage management only addressed a small part of general discussion

Agency in Urban Heritage: New Stakeholders for a Value-based Approach

• Concerns of integrating contemporary architecture in historic environments were expressed in the Washington Charter

• Negative effects of development increased Alarmingly in the 21st century

• The case of Cologne, after its inscription in the World Heritage in Danger list in 2004, was a clear example of the extent of the problem

• UNESCO's answer was how concealment development and conservation needed answers, found in architecture as the 2005 Vienna Memorandum shows

• The renewed claims for architecture deserve careful attention in updating architecture discourses in urban heritage conservation as it relates to information technologies

• Pointing at aspects of landscape as a method for history, economy, and society

• Insisting on a value assessment as a fundament of heritage convention

• Recognizing that the importance is incorporating the widest extent of disciplines and to the production of heritage

• The 2011 Historic Urban Landscape Recommendation (HUL) by UNESCO lacks clear implementation guidelines

• The current situation with cities and cultural contexts represents an opportunity for design creativity and change in heritage cities

• The Tendenza developed urban interpretation of structuralism that drew parallels with orthodox heritage production

• They described the city as a text following Ferdinand de Saussure’s work, saying architects were legitimate

• This ‘orthodox’ perspective has been surpassed with new contemporary advancements

• Contemporary advancements currently advocated in shared responsibility in heritage and city building processes with other traditional passive readers

• Following poststructuralist logic, ‘urban’ text is divided into imbricated narratives

• Landscape definition would include socioeconomic activities and historic processes, with intertwined architecture planning

• Compared to previous efforts, the new guidelines make compatible development and conservation instead of being ‘architectural stylistic, morphological, or typological'

• The HUL Recommendation offers architecture expansion identified on new stakeholders values

• Identification of stakeholders contributing to an urban landscape in their related values

• Human agents are referred to as including the citizens as producers, political decision makers as promoters, and professional administrator Nonhuman agents are paragraph the Recommendation physical support the terrritory including together with fauna and flora with the need to blur categories UNESCOs cultural and natural the

Architecture Values and the Crucial Question of Land Subdivision

• Aesthetics, morphology and typology occupied a crucial role in The Tendenza's operating history can still be seen with inter nation documents

• The interpretation of the city can then incorporate contemporary architecture through fulfillment

• The quest for authenticity first applies to style composition to avoid design principles

• The principle of modernism could favour certain architectural types this is a centered statement environments

• However this point discussion that both characterise the heritage a exceptionally important and property is and clashing that this has the interest Two global been applied during

• Of urban tradition The development of a new enterpenurial during the these