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The Far East Land Property Credit Company (CFEO Crédit Foncier d’Extrême-Orient) is a Franco-Belgian company that specializes in mortgages and infrastructure financing and modern technology, but also in the construction and maintenance of buildings. From 1907 to 1959, about thirty mainly Belgian and French architects worked for this company in China, Hong Kong and Singapore. After introducing problems and issues relating to the archives of Belgian companies in general and Belgian companies in China more specifically, the article will present an outline of the history of the CFEO and its archives before lingering on specific architect’s firms, architects, projects and constructions. In addition to the archives of the company’s headquarters in Brussels, additional collections (architects, clients, municipal) and monumental sources (considered to be patrimony more or less) are considered. The potential and limits of the CFEO archives for the architectural historian serve as a guiding line for a critical approach.

The Far East Land Property Credit Company (Crédit foncier d’Extrême-Orient cfeo) is a Franco-Belgian company that specializes in mortgages and infrastructure financing and modern technology, but also in the construction and maintenance of buildings. From 1907 to 1959, about thirty mainly Belgian and French architects worked for this company in China, Hong Kong and Singapore. After introducing problems and issues relating to the archives of Belgian companies in general and Belgian companies in China more specifically, the article will present an outline of the history of the cfeo and its archives before lingering on specific architect’s firms, architects, projects and constructions. In addition to the archives of the company’s headquarters in Brussels, additional collections (architects, clients, municipal) and monumental sources (considered to be patrimony more or less) are considered. The potential and limits of the cfeo archives for the architectural historian serve as a guiding line for a critical approach.

This paper focused on the first imperial Mausoleum of the Nguyen Dynasty of Vietnam, Emperor Gia Long (reigned 1802-20), which is one of the components of the World Heritage property [Complex of Hué Monuments]. The paper discussed the relationship between the Gia Long Mausoleum (after this GLM) and its territory from the aspects of "Shan-Shui design", "water management system suitable to tropical monsoon climate" and "symbiosis with local com- munities". This study also revealed that the current protected area is only a tiny part of the area that Gia Long planned by deciphering an old drawing which expresses the ideal worldview of Gia Long and an old map which shows the forbidden area in that era. These research findings contribute to expanding and deepening the OUV of GLM, which was not fully taken into account when the site was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1993 and provide a basis for establishing the appropriate protected area of GLM.

The paper discusses a series of issues linked to the restauration and maintenance of archaeological structures consisting partly or entirely of earth layers and stratigraphic sections. Taking recent maintenance work on the theatre of the ancient Greek colony of Velia, southern Italy, as a starting point, the author explores the role of public accessibility for the conservation and perception of archaeological remains and monuments. With regard to ancient theatres, the multisensorial perception of archaeological structures and spaces is highlighted, particularly with regard to acoustics. The paper concludes by advocating an enlarged and inclusive conceptualization of monuments and landscapes in the field of archaeological restauration and conservation that pays attention to the visual, acoustic, and kinetic experience of archaeological sites.

Since Casabella-Costruzioni first published the Brazilian Ministry of Education building in 1939, Italian magazines have repeatedly documented modern architecture in Latin America. Looking closely at articles published in Domus, Casabella-Continuità and Architettura: Cronache e Storia along the mid-decades of the twentieth century, the paper rehearses the circumstances of this editorial concern, and argues the existence of tendentious narratives that perform an “Italianization” of Latin American architecture. On the one hand, one such arbitrary construction brings into the spotlight subterranean impulses of postwar Italian architecture, which range from the vindication of a leading role in the international scene to the need for reconciling unfamiliar instances of modernity with deep-rooted vernacularism. On the other hand, the orientations of the Italian journals also betray something far more programmatic: the priority of the political-ideological credos of the magazines” directors over the proper overview of Latin American architecture. Unravelling this tendentious narrative, the paper will seek to unmask an act of instrumentalization that has gone largely unnoticed until today. And at the same time, it will recast Italy’s encounter with the Southern hemisphere in ways that read more as a window on postwar Italian architecture than on its Latin American counterpart.

The life and career of Arturo Mezzedimi are the rare tale of an immigrant who conquered the main stage of his adoptive motherland. This paper reconstructs the trajectory of a young technical surveyor who became the semi-official architect of Ethiopia’s last emperor, Haile Selassie. From his apprenticeship in Asmara’s Italian bourgeois society to the construction of “Selassie’s gifts” to Eritrea, Mezzedimi reached the highest levels of achievement, building the Africa Hall and the United Nations headquarters in Africa, and shaping the modern face of Addis Ababa as the moral capital of a continent. The paper reassesses Mezzedimi as a cosmopolitan global expert with a gift for interpreting Haile Selassie’s ambitions to mix European modernity and resilient Ethiopian traditions. This process of cross-pollination led the Italian architect to interpret Ethiopian millennial history and future aspirations while acquiring a self-taught professionalism that allowed him to design and build more than 250 constructions at an impressive pace of hyper-production.

This investigation approaches the annual Shinkenchiku Residential Design Competition (1965-2020) as a productive cross-cultural medium of exchange that generates new architectural knowledge. It situates this international competition of ideas in a long history of transnational encounters, to identify the contours of the ideological shift from the consolidation of modernist ideals to their critique. The paper highlights the iteration of the lack of “comfort” of modernist architecture, tracing the origins of this critique by referencing the 1977 and 1988 competitions, during which the respective judges Peter Cook and Toyō Itō challenged architects to devise innovative housing proposals to attain “comfort in the metropolis.” It initially employs a synchronic approach to investigate the origins of Cook’s competition theme, the multiple winning entries, the judges’ final remarks, and the after-effects of the competitions to apprehend how discrete geographies negotiated the notion of comfort. Next, the paper juxtaposes the outcomes of both years of the competition to offer a diachronic analysis of how architects have conceived the house and the city differently through time. This investigation reveals that the mechanism of this longstanding, idea-based competition confronts two judges’ positions to understand their cultural and architectural differences.

This investigation approaches the annual Shinkenchiku Residential Design Competition (1965-2020) as a productive cross-cultural medium of exchange that generates new architectural knowledge. It situates this international competition of ideas in a long history of transnational encounters, to identify the contours of the ideological shift from the consolidation of modernist ideals to their critique. The paper highlights the iteration of the lack of “comfort” of modernist architecture, tracing the origins of this critique by referencing the 1977 and 1988 competitions, during which the respective judges Peter Cook and Toyō Itō challenged architects to devise innovative housing proposals to attain “comfort in the metropolis.” It initially employs a synchronic approach to investigate the origins of Cook’s competition theme, the multiple winning entries, the judges’ final remarks, and the after-effects of the competitions to apprehend how discrete geographies negotiated the notion of comfort. Next, the paper juxtaposes the outcomes of both years of the competition to offer a diachronic analysis of how architects have conceived the house and the city differently through time. This investigation reveals that the mechanism of this longstanding, idea-based competition confronts two judges’ positions to understand their cultural and architectural differences.

The paper, through the analysis of the case study relating to the morphometric and chromatic documentation of the Facultad de Arte Teatral of the ISA (La Habana), aims to highlight the essential role that the survey of architecture plays in the process of enhancement and protection of Cultural Heritage. The survey is the critical investigation tool by definition: when it’s understood in the broadest sense of the term, it constitutes the necessary cognitive premise at the basis of any design action. This is even more true when the intervention involves the restoration of a cultural artefact aimed at its conservation and management, an operation that assumes a careful analysis of the existing state and the correct reading of the architectural organism in all its parts.

This paper contributes to the ongoing debate on methods and tools for the preservation and management of architectural heritage, and presents the Conservation Management Plan developed between 2018 and 2020 for the National Schools of Arts of Havana. The authors focus on the GIS based tools created to manage information collected by the different work groups who contributed to the drafting of the Plan. The outcome is an articulated and flexible system which aims to describe the complexity of the schools, as well as to actively involve interested actors in order to share cultural values, operational needs and priorities of intervention. Indeed, the objective of a Conservation Management Plan is to clarify the significance of a place, and define in which ways such significance will be maintained in future transformations. The GIS developed for the National Art Schools enabled to archive, systematize, and analyze data according to the double-scale approach which characterized the entire research (the territorial and the architectural one), thus becoming an essential tool for the implementation of the CMP.

Extended on a surface of two hundred hectares that features a multitude of funerary building remains, the estruscan necropolis of Banditaccia, near Cerveteri, defines a suggestive and peculiar archaeological landscape. To the present day, the burial ground is a set that consists of musealized ad fenced areas – a minor portion –, as well as areas in semi-abandoned state widespread on the territory. This paper aims at deepening these sectors outside the visiting perimeter, focusing on the ancient funeral street known as Via degli Inferi. Due to its prolonged state of abandonment, here survives an unaltered and evocative landscape result of the symbiotic bond established over time between architecture and nature. Starting from a reflection on the theoretical concept of perception, the paper tries to develop specific guidelines for the conservation of this archaeological landscape, with special attention to the relationship between ruins and vegetation.

This paper considers the role of missionary architecture as an instrument of colonial governance. It focuses on the case of Mapoon, a German Moravian mission station established on the remote Cape York Peninsula in the colony of Queensland at the turn of the twentieth century. In its conception, the Mapoon mission would serve as a mechanism in the wider regulation of Queensland’s late-nineteenth-century colonial frontier, working to segregate the colony’s Aboriginal population from settler-colonial expansion. The architecture of the mission station formed the material basis of this project, redeploying aspects of a unique settlement model developed by Moravian Pietists since the eighteenth century. The paper argues that the history of Mapoon is one of transnational connection in which individual actors, organizational structures, and spheres of activity crossed porous imperial, colonial, and national borders. It examines this mobility—of ideas, expertise, and institutional projects—in order to rethink the conditions for telling a history of Australian architecture. It seeks to question the notional limits of these categories—of what can meaningfully be called “Australian” in this historical moment, and of what is deemed permissible as an example of historical “architecture”—in order to reveal that, even at its founding moment, Australia was already a global enterprise.

Abstract The aim of this paper is to broaden the Eurocentric architectural history of climate control by introducing a discussion of the interrelation of architecture and thermal practices in the Southern Chinese “non-heating” zone. Based on a governmental policy that dates from the 1950s, China is divided into a heated North, where urban houses enjoy the amenities of a district heating infrastructure, and a non-heated South, which lacks this infrastructure. Most high-rise buildings in this zone are constructed without insulation, and a rapidly growing middle class heats under uninsulated conditions. Residents mitigate the winter cold through active means of climate control, primarily with electric devices that serve to warm certain parts of their bodies, or warm limited spaces in their apartments. This paper is based on a methodology that combines ethnographic building analysis, discourse analysis, architectural theory, and building science. Most of the fieldwork data ⸻including home visits and interviews with residents and thermal experts ⸻was collected in winter 2017-18, in the northern part of the non-heating zone of China, especially in the city of Chongqing. Our architectural view of heating in the non-heating zone perceives buildings as agents that mediate between the macro- and the micro-scale, between the North and South, and between inside and outside.

Abstract The primacy of sunlight over shade is a relatively recent historical phenomenon in Australian architecture. In this paper, it is argued that shade was a priority for northern Australian settlers in the state of Queensland and evident in their architecture until the 1920s when ideas about thermal comfort, race and climate elevated the desirability of sun exposure. This paper considers the cross-cultural exchange of colonial shade and the increasing avoidance of sun exposure linked to European beliefs about human health, derived from the field of tropical medicine and evidenced by northern Australian clothing styles and the Queensland house. Later sections consider the social and cultural underpinnings of a Modernist shift in architecture prioritizing sun exposure over deep shade. Finally, the paper will consider a refocus on shade provision since the 1990s, linked to rising rates of preventable skin cancer. Keywords: Oceania, Australia, Queensland

The large-scale appropriation of modernist architectural features in everyday housing projects in postcolonial India is remarkable. This article examines how regional architects adapted their engagement with architectural modernism to the evolving circumstances of architectural production within the context of the developing world. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s “field theory”, it presents a detailed case study of two decades of residential work by Architects United, a medium-scale architectural practice founded in the Indian city of Pune in 1961. While the architects’ earliest projects demonstrated an opportunity and desire for architectural innovation, this approach became increasingly restricted as new patterns for housing provision emerged, resulting in a more subdued and hybrid form of modernist architecture. The paper makes use of the architects’ previously undisclosed archive and oral history to demonstrate that these architectural adaptations were the indirect result of governance practices and societal change, particularly the government’s stimulation of co-operative housing initiatives and the emergence of a postcolonial middle class with distinct housing expectations. As such, this “peripheral” case exposes some of the processes that have been overlooked in the rhetoric of Architectural Modernism as a Western import in India, which is primarily centered around the discussion of exceptional public building commissions by “global experts” or their Indian disciples. The paper further highlights the need to investigate the processes of architectural production, in addition to the built product itself, so that a pluralistic rather than romanticized understanding of architectural practice may emerge.

This paper will discuss the scientific results of a recent sampling of the polychrome and gilded stone, stucco and clay sculptures of Gandharan art not yet published. Four years ago, we had the opportunity to begin an articulated research project focused on the Gandharan polychrome stone and stucco sculptures, and in the last two years, thanks to a very limited grant, offered by the Italian Government to the Istituto Superiore per la Conservazione ed il Restauro (ISCR), we had the opportunity to develop a new research. This allowed us to investigate some important artefacts displayed in these Museums: the Archaeological Museum of Milan, the Museum of Oriental Art of Turin, the Museum Guimet in Paris. Moreover, we had the opportunity to take some archaeological samples from the new excavations of the Italian Archaeological Mission in Pakistan and the Italian Archaeological Mission in Afghanistan. In this new research we analysed the artistic technique of painting and gilding on sculptures of Gandharan art made in different materials (stone, stucco and clay). The results discussed in this paper comes from a notable number of chemical analyses (optical stero-microscope, SEM-EDS, micro-FTIR, micro-XRD and micro-Raman).

This paper is concerned with the family as one of the key entrepreneurial and capitalist agents in the colonisation of Australia. Private enterprise has long been understood to be one of the prime factors in this history and Scottish families were particularly active. My case study is the Learmonth family who hailed from the Falkirk area in Stirlingshire, 44 km west of Edinburgh. Their story exemplifies the imbrication of family identity in its dynastic character with the opportunities afforded by the colonial expansion of the British empire and how this was figured in built works. Of significance for the paper is an understanding of what was at stake in Scotland for the Learmonth family and its lineage and how Thomas Learmonth, youngest of four sons, and his sons used colonial acquisitions to embellish their family status and identity at home. Ercildoun, the famous sheep station they established near Ballarat in Victoria was the final achievement of their Australian sojourn and it propelled them from the margins of Scottish life to somewhere much nearer its centre. The paper will show how they, as pastoralists and breeders of the “pure Australian merino” operated in the colonial enterprise-driven and global modality of economic migration that drove the expansion of the Port Phillip District of New South Wales in the 1830s and 1840s.

This paper analyses data archiving procedures carried out during emergency archaeological excavations. It proposes a model for developing an information system capable of streamlining both the survey practices and the management of the excavation site. The opportunity to digitally acquire what emerged during an archaeological campaign as well as ordering data stemming from the stratigraphic analysis in a single digital database has offered us the possibility to discuss the cataloguing systems used in emergency situations. This drove us to experiment with novel application protocols for digitally recording archaeological evidence. The aim of this research is to reduce the loss of information and create dynamic archives for knowledge. Archaeologists can fill in this digital result with their considerations and hypotheses, as well as creating a study platform directly accessible during the phase of excavation, thus combining 3D digital surveys with archiving systems.

Villa Garzoni and its garden are an extraordinary example of 18th-century Tuscan taste and culture. They are located on the slope of a hill at the mouth of the Pescia di Collodi stream in the Pescia plain (northern Tuscany). The garden presents scenographic and surprise effects that are part of a single decorative ensemble of great stylistic coherence. The steeply sloping terrain influenced the planimetric organisation, which develops along a central axis of symmetry, with an arrangement of terraces. In this paper the results of a diagnostic campaign performed on the materials of the villa and garden are reported. Stones, mortars and plasters were identified and analysed according to a well-established chemical and minero petrographic approach. Local and imported stones, raw materials and technologies used for the preparation of mortars and plasters, materials used for decoration were identified. To plan the best restoration approach their state of conservation was assess.

This paper highlights a group of buildings built in Beijing for diplomatic purposes in the 1970s, at a turning point in China’s state politics and foreign relations. After the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution ended in 1969, Chinese politics shifted from a single emphasis on revolution to a more pragmatic focus on development. A dynamic balance between the two factions, the leftists and the pragmatists, was achieved at the top level of state leadership under Chairman Mao’s mediation. At the same time, there was a significant breakthrough in China’s relations with the Western countries, culminating in Nixon’s visit to China in 1972. For this increase in foreign affairs, two batches of diplomatic buildings were built in Beijing from 1969 to 1976, before and after Nixon’s visit. Three architectural cases are studied, namely, the International Club (1972), the Diplomatic Residence Compounds of Jianguomenwai and Qijiayuan (1970s), and the Beijing Hotel East (1974). These cases reveal a complex interrelation between formal expression, knowledge transfer, and political interference. More specifically, the expression of “Chinese characteristics”, the absorption of Western modernism, the knowledge transfer of large-panel construction, and the interference of political struggles in architectural design were all entangled in these cases. The paper concludes that in the early 1970s, these diplomatic buildings embodied a strong intention to absorb modernism, marking a key moment in the historiography of modernism in China in the twentieth century.

This paper highlights a group of buildings built in Beijing for diplomatic purposes in the 1970s, at a turning point in China’s state politics and foreign relations. After the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution ended in 1969, Chinese politics shifted from a single emphasis on revolution to a more pragmatic focus on development. A dynamic balance between the two factions, the leftists and the pragmatists, was achieved at the top level of state leadership under Chairman Mao’s mediation. At the same time, there was a significant breakthrough in China’s relations with the Western countries, culminating in Nixon’s visit to China in 1972. For this increase in foreign affairs, two batches of diplomatic buildings were built in Beijing from 1969 to 1976, before and after Nixon’s visit. Three architectural cases are studied, namely, the International Club (1972), the Diplomatic Residence Compounds of Jianguomenwai and Qijiayuan (1970s), and the Beijing Hotel East (1974). These cases reveal a complex interrelation between formal expression, knowledge transfer, and political interference. More specifically, the expression of “Chinese characteristics”, the absorption of Western modernism, the knowledge transfer of large-panel construction, and the interference of political struggles in architectural design were all entangled in these cases. The paper concludes that in the early 1970s, these diplomatic buildings embodied a strong intention to absorb modernism, marking a key moment in the historiography of modernism in China in the twentieth century.

The paper is a summary of some studies that have focused on the documentation for the restoration and enhancement of the Fort San Lorenzo el Real del Chagres in Panama. The aim of the project is to develop an experimental methodology for the creation of descriptive atlases with an informative and reliable metric survey systems; a documentary corpus necessary for the understanding of the historical events which have affected this place, today declared UNESCO heritage, and for the definition of guidelines for restoration and enhancement. The monument is unique for both the special relationship with the surrounding context for defensive strategies terms, and for the deep connection with the events that have affected not only the colonization and development of Panama, but the entire Central America. From the first project of a "Castillo" to the creation of present's fortified fortress overlooking the outfall of the Chagres River, the paper is going to explain the major historical events that have influenced the image of the building, illustrating the documentation and the recovery project.

The paper is focused on the historical and archaeological analysis of a post-medieval cistern located in the municipality of Sesto Fiorentino, close to the city of Florence. The structure is well preserved but the intense transformations that has undergone the context in the last fifty years caused a “decontextualization” of the building within the landscape. The ancient landscape characterized by olive-groves and orchards with the sporadic presence of villas, during the last fifty years, became an industrial and residential area, with the consequent construction of numerous buildings that have profoundly transformed the landscape and the architecture. Today the few surviving ancient evidences may include some villas built during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and some artifacts of medieval period that is profoundly decontextualized. The object of study of this paper is a cistern located inside an industrial area whose first sources date back to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; an interesting element that represent an evidence of constructive culture and methods of the florentine society for the exploitation of natural resources.

The life and career of Arturo Mezzedimi are the rare tale of an immigrant who conquered the main stage of his adoptive motherland. This paper reconstructs the trajectory of a young technical surveyor who became the semi-official architect of Ethiopia’s last emperor, Haile Selassie. From his apprenticeship in Asmara’s Italian bourgeois society to the construction of “Selassie’s gifts” to Eritrea, Mezzedimi reached the highest levels of achievement, building the Africa Hall and the United Nations headquarters in Africa, and shaping the modern face of Addis Ababa as the moral capital of a continent. The paper reassesses Mezzedimi as a cosmopolitan global expert with a gift for interpreting Haile Selassie’s ambitions to mix European modernity and resilient Ethiopian traditions. This process of cross-pollination led the Italian architect to interpret Ethiopian millennial history and future aspirations while acquiring a self-taught professionalism that allowed him to design and build more than 250 constructions at an impressive pace of hyper-production.

The adoption of the World Heritage Convention (WHC) in 1972 was the response to a world asking for peace after the destruction caused by the two world conflicts, particularly to cultural heritage (CH). UNESCO World Heritage Sites (WHS) act as enablers in establishing strong and effective relationships among countries, people, culture and history, while influencing and attracting these elements to promote a positive national image and fostering mutual understanding, which is the main objective of cultural diplomacy (CD). This holds true also for China and this institutes the need to investigate on how UNESCO World Heritage acts as a strategic asset in Chinese CD. This paper will provide an empirical framework addressing the position of WHS embedded in the Chinese CD. Discussion on the growing Chinese involvement of WHS in cultural projects fostering international relations and considerations on the potential impact and future development of this phenomenon with regards to China and the WHC are offered.

Historic Areas of Istanbul was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1985. Following its declaration as a world heritage site (WHS), the number of the site’s stakeholders increased on legal base. The State Party, Türkiye, has become promiser for providing up-to-date information concerning the site at regular intervals, i.e. state of conservation reports, to international stakeholders. By this way, all discussions that already existing in media and academia concerning the WHS and its well-known components, including the Golden Horn and Hagia Sophia, have moved from national scale to international level. This ‘supranational’ multi-stakeholder approach has put pressure on interventions from time to time. This paper aims to present the impacts and limitations of the Convention as an international regulation on decision-making process of national stakeholders in the context of urban historic centers. The process after being inscribed on the List will be assessed from the stakeholders’ perspective.

The Amalfi Coast represents a unicum in which the complexity is due to the coexistence of natural singularities and multiple traces resulting from the adaptation made by man to the harsh orography and to the scarcity of resources. Included in the World Heritage List in 1997, the area of the UNESCO perimeter is placed at the centre of the programmatic guidelines of the Management Plan which articulates the objectives around the themes of knowledge, protection, conservation, enhancement, and communication of (and for) coastal cultural heritage. Given these premises, the contribution aims to present a critical balance between the prospects for intervention and the operations concretely defined for the conservation of the cultural landscape of the Amalfi Coast, paying attention to the fate of the proto-industrial heritage (paper mills, ironworks, mills, and hydraulic works), largely abandoned and which requires targeted strategies for the recognition of specificities and the mitigation of intrinsic vulnerabilities.

The changes in the world scenario undergone since the 1970s, due to the rapid technological development and progressive impacts of social, cultural and climate change, require a re-reading of the processes derived from the 1972 UNESCO Convention. The evolution of technologies applied to Cultural Heritage has significantly improved, in terms of accuracy and reliability, but has not always been generated an awareness of the value meaning of the asset. The contribution addresses the issue with an analysis of the general anthropological transformations to verify what role the Cultural Heritage values will continue to play in technologically globalized world of the 21st century. This paper intends to introduce a series of urgent reflections in order to stimulate and increase the necessary interdisciplinary and intercultural debate between the various stakeholders on the theme of safeguarding. of Cultural Heritage as a driving force for civil progress.

The projects commissioned to Guarino Guarini by the Order of Regular Theatine Clerics left a mark of his extraordinary ability to blend rationality and lucid imagination of geometric shapes in which the close relationship between art and science stands out. Most of realized buildings have been demolished or destroyed because of catastrophic events. Therefore, the problem of knowledge of such manufactured products arises increasing and integrating the available data with those newly acquired in emergency situations. This paper proposes a digital platform aimed to analyze and catalogue Guarini’s heritage; the data sheets can be shared and easily implemented. A special section is dedicated to buildings no longer existing. The aim of this project project is to allow the faithfuls, visitors and the Fathers of the Order themselves to be able to "review" and "relive" the Theatine lost architecture.

The paper, taking the Museum of Casa Romei in Ferrara - an UNESCO heritage city - as a case study, explores some new technologies, ranging from surveying to digital communication and investigates their potentialities in improving the sustainability of cultural heritage. The work pursues the dual value of analyzing new tools and providing research products useful for the enhancement of the specific site, favoring the dissemination of consolidated tourist flows from the major monuments of Ferrara to the more peripheral historical urban fabric. Through the theme of analysis, documentation and archiving of architecture and its context, the research - addressing specific themes of integrated and multi-scale survey, 3D processing, 2D drawing, interactive data storage - examines the use of digital technologies for multi-level dissemination of the cultural assets and their possibilities as tools for accessibility and inclusivity.

A shocking event such as the one experienced by the population of central Italy in 2016 highlights two problems that afflict the national heritage: the fragility of historic villages and the conservation of the historical-artistic heritage of these cultural centres. This paper intends to propose an applicative method to address the problem of the documentation and conservation of the material and intangible characteristics of the historic centre of Amatrice following an earthquake that de facto cancelled almost all the material components and therefore prevents a campaign of traditional data acquisition. The applied methodology is based on the complementarity between the analysis of unpublished historical photographic material and the digital reconstruction of each building in the city through the aid of Google Street, creating an integration between digital restitution tools, social media as iconographic sources and the contextual architectural reading of the few building fragments still in situ.

The inscription of a cultural asset on the World Heritage List entails increasing tourist flow as the first and direct effect. The advantages and criticalities of these processes have been investigated for some decades. On the contrary, what and how the UNESCO aegis acts regarding concrete interventions on cultural heritage are less studied. There is no specific reference in the Convention, and the methods and the interventions are under the responsibility of the individual countries. However, understanding “what restoration” is essential for the survival of heritage authenticity and for the inclusion and maintenance of the inscription in the List. Without claiming to be exhaustive, the paper wants to try to outline some initial considerations on the “UNESCO effect” in the practice of conservation of built heritage. Through the analysis of the conservation state of some sites in Emerging Countries (Armenia, Egypt, Georgia, Vietnam) after the realization of works, the contribution reflects on the implications of a “World Heritage site”.

Fifty years after the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage adopted by UNESCO in 1972, the objective of protecting and safeguarding the heritage inherited from the past persists unchanged. What has evolved is not only its concept, which progressively included increasingly diversified tangible and intangible assets, broadening its extension and enhancing its richness, but also the processes aimed at their safe-guarding. Within this scenario, a key role is played by Competence Centres for their strategic function capable of responding to the European Union approach with reference to the pact system enucleated by the 1972 UNESCO Convention for heritage protection. Focusing on the first phases of the 4CH Project (Grant Agreement 101004468), this paper aims to outline the ongoing experience in setting up a Competence Centre for the Conservation of Cultural Heritage, strongly centred on the promotion and enhancement of innovative technologies for heritage safeguarding.

The sustainability of the redevelopment, recovery and conservation of the historical heritage built before 1945 is guar- anteed by voluntary certification protocols that consider the entire life cycle of the building. The analysis showed that the certification has, to date, extended to a limited number of residential buildings built before the Second World War, while those built after the war have been neglected. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to highlight the criticalities of the current certification systems, with reference to some thematic areas of the GBC Historic Building protocol, and to identify appropriate corrective measures for energy redevelopment with reference to Mario Ridolfi's “INCIS Houses”, an example of Messina modernism, that need to be preserved. The goal is to attract the interest of the scientific community, experts and public opinion to the enhancement and conscious care of the post-1945 residential heritage of the author through eco-sustainable interventions that respect cultural and architectural identity.

The monumental complex consisting of the cathedral, tower and main square of Modena (Northern Italy) has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1997. The visible tilting of the Ghirlandina tower has always generated concerns for its preservation, even more after the recent seismic events. This paper highlights the role of structural monitoring for the conservation of the site, with particular reference to the data acquired during the recent Emilia earthquakes. Unexpectedly, the inclination of this leaning tower decreased after the major seismic event. Some considerations are presented regarding the difficulty of modelling this kind of effects on buildings with complex historical stratifications and the application of the observational method, derived from geotechnical engineering, is proposed. The importance of structural monitoring is once again recalled, in order to preserve world heritage and comply with the principle of minimum intervention.

Located in modern-day eastern Türkiye, Ani was the ancient capital of the prosperous Armenian Bagratid period in the Middle Ages renowned as the “City of 1,001 Churches”. Unfortunately, due to a series of massive earthquakes, shifting trade routes and periodic conflict, Ani’s great buildings were abandoned before the 17th century, leaving the expansive ruins of the city unattended and exposed to the elements. World Monuments Fund (WMF) has maintained a presence at the site in Kars Province, Türkiye since its inclusion on the 1996 World Monuments Watch, which raised international awareness of the need for protection of this significant built fabric. The decades-long project has integrated professionals from Türkiye, Armenia, Iran, Russia and the United States, making the preservation of Ani a truly international endeavor and establishing a model for project-focused international collaboration. This paper sets forth some of the key considerations and components in the establishment of a collaborative preservation that facilitates regional coordination, international cooperation, and global cultural exchange.

This paper sets the objective to verify, eight years after the recognition of the exceptional universal value of the UNESCO site Vineyard Landscape of Piedmont: Langhe-Roero and Monferrato, which strategies have been adopted to save the memory value and resource role of the ciabòt, typology of rural architecture characterizing the landscape framework of the area. Which guidelines does the Piedmont Landscape Plan provide? Do censuses and variants to urban plans represent effective tools? Through an examination of the Site, the research has investigated the outcome of the protection actions undertaken - through the updating of planning tools and the declarations of notable cultural interest, consequent to the approval of the 2017 Regional Landscape Plan - and has discussed conservation and management issues related to this fragile heritage, with a perspective on culturally sustainable development.

By the end of the 1990s in France, the first labels have been created to distinguish the singularity of 20th-century architecture. However, a large part of its building stock suffers from energy deficiencies, and most of them need major retrofitting to align with today’s habitability standards. If current technologies offer a wide array of devices that meet performance demands, their implementation does not always comply with heritage protection goals. As part of a transdisciplinary research project, our team studies the acceptability and feasibility of the renovation of various buildings of the 20th-century, using “the ventilated double-skin”. The goal is to set renovation protocols that incorporate architectural and cultural evaluation in the technical analysis of energy and comfort needs. In this paper, we present our methodology and first results and aim to highlight the importance of complementary approaches to help inform sustainable interventions on this unique heritage.

The 1972 Convention Text mentioned the need to pursue collective assistance for the safeguard of cultural and natural heritage considered of Outstanding Universal Value. As of 2021, 52 properties are inscribed as World Heritage in Dan- ger. The most recent such nomination in Europe is the cultural site of Roșia Montană Mining Landscape (Romania), listed as World Heritage in July 2021. The paper will pose a reflection over the simultaneous status of Roșia Montană as World Heritage mining cultural landscape and as a productive system still in use, tackling the social and environmental issues that derive from the analyzed context. Furthermore, it will be investigated the conceptual transformation of the cultural landscape in relation to the mining legacies and their methodological approach within the patrimonial acknowledgement, stressing the role that the UNESCO label can play while negotiating at local and regional level such aspects of the multi-scale territorial legacies.

The paper deals with a Document prepared by an expert group, chaired by the author, established by the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) under the mandate of the European Commission. The action took place in the framework of the flagship EU Initiative of the European Year of Cultural Heritage 2018: “Cherishing heritage: developing quality standards for EU-funded projects that have the potential to impact on cultural heritage”. The main objective of the “Document on quality principles for EU-funded interventions on cultural heritage”, is to provide guidance for all stakeholders directly or indirectly engaged in EU-funded heritage conservation and management (European institutions, managing authorities, international organisations, civil society and local communities, private sector, and experts).

Heritage is generally understood as the legacy from the ancestors to the descendants over time. But when this heritage is part of a colonial city, Kinshasa (Leopoldville), that is the result of the work of Western architects, the question of the story that would carry its heritage becomes crucial. The article first shows, through a few selected case studies - the BCB Bank (1949), the Sabena Towers (1952) and the Saint Antoine Church (1961)- that the modernism that characterizes downtown Kinshasa, carries the DNA of local identity cleverly expressed by the tropical architecture. The aim of this paper is to examine part of this African modern heritage that has to be studied, classified and protected, the sustaina- bility already embedded in that architectural language and its application in the design process analyzing quintessential artifacts in order to adequately tackle the further sustainable steps without losing the fundamental teachings of this next World Heritage.

This paper outlines the contribution of the ICOMOS International Scientific Committee on Cultural Tourism (ICTC) to tourism management throughout the history of the UNESCO Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Natural and Cultural Heritage (1972) and traces the evolution of international standard-setting texts on tourism brought forward by ICOMOS. It presents the draft International Charter for Cultural Heritage Tourism - Reinforcing cultural heritage protection and community resilience through responsible and sustainable tourism management (2021). Its new principles are formulated to address challenges of our time, instigate change, improve practice, guide future cultural tourism development and support adaptive and responsive visitor management supporting a more resilient future.

This paper discusses how to widen the boundaries of an existing World Heritage Site to include the heritage of the 20th century. The work by Giancarlo De Carlo in Urbino is a perfect case study since modern architecture enriches the set of values where the statement of OUV was based. Urbino undertook a process of urban rebirth in the second half of the 20th century, according to De Carlo's master plan, which promoted a harmonic continuity between modern architecture and the preservation of the historic city. As a result, the Historic Centre of Urbino was enlisted in 1988 as an outstanding example of Renaissance capital. Although the statement of OUV did not mention De Carlo's work, the site's management plan (2012-14) suggests widening the buffer zone to include modern buildings. The authors wonder how to promote such updating of the WHS towards the recent past, something that seems not to have precedent examples in the WHL.

In this paper we want to describe current as well as heritage classifications and their effectiveness as tools to protect and preserve heritage sites in the official documents that have being written in those years. We want to emphasize that there is no inherent difference between the heritage values concealed in movable, immovable and intangible heritage assets. We are dealing with the same values differently expressed, interwoven with values of other sectors within development in one and the same spatial concept. Moreover, all heritage exists “somewhere”. Festivities, narratives, habits and customs are undertaken “somewhere” by a local population and locations that are meaningful for it. Local population makes no difference between the perception of landscape, town or village, or of movable heritage items in their churches, mosques, temples and museums, or of festivals, customs, habits and tales which live on in. They perceive this as a single synthetic whole, not segmented into analytic, rational categories of “immovable”, “movable” and “intangible”. This leads us to the insight that the interpretation and implementation of heritage values needs to take place across all heritage sectors together in an integral heritage approach, in which the responsables make take a common approach and forge the necessary synergies.

Criterion (ii) of the 10 World Heritage Criteria describes heritage as the result of "interchange" between different cultures. The definition of criterion (ii) was modified from "influence" to " interchange" by the 1996 Operational Guide- lines. It is understandable that the view of World Heritage on cultural heritage has also changed from "one direction" cultural impact to "cultural interaction". Half a century after the adoption of the World Heritage Convention, it is necessary to review whether this criterion is properly applied to cultural heritage. But, for a considerable number of listed sites, there is a gap in the recognition and interpretation of the value of criterion (ii) and the site. This paper recognizes the basic notion of "exchange of human values”, which has not been studied before and uses the evolutionary chronology of criterion (ii) to interpret the intent of the change. The interpretation identifies the problem and discusses future considerations for criterion (ii).

Since Casabella-Costruzioni first published the Brazilian Ministry of Education building in 1939, Italian magazines have repeatedly documented modern architecture in Latin America. Looking closely at articles published in Domus, Casabella-Continuità and Architettura: Cronache e Storia along the mid-decades of the twentieth century, the paper rehearses the circumstances of this editorial concern, and argues the existence of tendentious narratives that perform an “Italianization” of Latin American architecture. On the one hand, one such arbitrary construction brings into the spotlight subterranean impulses of postwar Italian architecture, which range from the vindication of a leading role in the international scene to the need for reconciling unfamiliar instances of modernity with deep-rooted vernacularism. On the other hand, the orientations of the Italian journals also betray something far more programmatic: the priority of the political–ideological credos of the magazines” directors over the proper overview of Latin American architecture. Unravelling this tendentious narrative, the paper will seek to unmask an act of instrumentalization that has gone largely unnoticed until today. And at the same time, it will recast Italy’s encounter with the Southern hemisphere in ways that read more as a window on postwar Italian architecture than on its Latin American counterpart.

The paper analyzes the evolution of the organization of timber roofing carpentry in Greece and in the colonies of Sicily and Magna Graecia in a chronological scope between the archaic and classical periods. A substantial continuity, lacking evident innovations, characterizes the organization of the carpentry of the roofs constituted, in general, by a horizontal member on which rest on props – king and queen posts – coinciding with the purlins, useful for receiving the secondary framework and the roof covering. The lack of evident indicators, in a cognitive framework that is however extremely fragmented, and a constructive culture on timber that does not seem to excel for technological advancement raises many doubts about a possible pioneering use, even in constructions with high distance between supports, of carpentry organized as a truss system, with no pushing component on the wall.

Gio Ponti has proposed in his writings a significant reflection on the relationship between architecture, time and construction materials, where architecture does not presuppose immutability and does not associate time with decay. Ponti’s statements introduce us to an apparent contradiction with respect to the famous assimilation of his architecture to crystals. Indeed, Ponti is aware of a paradox of modern architecture: it requires time to be alive, but it is constantly forced to oppose it because it seems unable to age. The paper discusses the two alternatives that Ponti proposes (technical architecture and natural architecture) and discusses his ideas in the cultural context at the time on restoration, durability, care and new modern materials. Finally, a contribution is proposed here to a conservation perspective in which the aging of the Modern could be a matter of cultural appropriation.

The archaeoseismological study of a number of contexts affected by historical earthquakes provides a more complete understanding of the seismic impacts had on architecture as well as restoration techniques used in the aftermath of these events. The PROTECT project is part of this line of research, funded by the Horizon 2020 research and innovation program of the European Union, and aims to apply, on an experimental basis, methods of archaeoseismological analysis to a portion of the historic center of Siena (Tuscany), in order to acquire further knowledge on the context of study from the point of view of seismic prevention. In this paper only the first steps of the project, begun in December 2021 and focused on the study of the Terzo di Città, are presented. The contribution focuses in particular on the proposal of a theoretical framework for the creation of a database designed to answer precise chrono-typological queries.

The secondary sector has played a decisive role in shaping the entity and speed of social and spatial transformations in the Alpine region. Observing the Alps through the lens of production spaces and their related infrastructures allows us to better understand the relationship between human activities and the unique features of mountain territories. The Alps’ central geographical position in Europe, their geomorphological features, and the presence of several natural resources are some of the reasons why the Alps may be considered a unique technical and innovative laboratory. People have constantly called upon to innovate their techniques to control and extract natural resources more effectively so as to make these territories habitable all year round, or simply to cross them safely and ever more quickly. This paper seeks to contribute to a deeper understanding of Alpine spatial awareness and to provide insight into the hypothetical renewal of the economic and settlement systems that could reveal a new habitability of the Alpine region.