A “Comprehensive Sustainability”. New design paradigms and methods for maintaining, conserving and managing monuments and traditional architecture

Stefano F. Musso1, Giovanna Franco2

1 DSA- Department of Sciences for Architecture - Polytechnic School, University of Genoa, Stradone di S. Agostino 37, etienne@arch.unige.it, francog@arch.unige.it

ABSTRACT

The changes in present world oblige the scientific and cultural community working on our Cultural Goods and Landscape Heritage to face the every day more urgent challenges of “sustainability” of the future life on the Planet.

It is not just a simple matter for economic or social sciences, researches and political debates, neither a purely investigation on suitable technical answers to questions concerning ecological footprint, energy efficiency, environmental behaviour of industrial products or building techniques. It is a crucial question for every human activity and behaviour, before or more than a simple or complex technical problem. Authors intend to face the problem of “sustainability for Restoration” at the level of the whole process of conservation, maintenance and management of historical architecture. The paper illustrates the background, the needs and the intermediate results of a long work the authors are coordinating and developing now for more than three years in this field on the “Albergo dei Poveri” of Genoa. The ongoing research activities try to organize a “new system” for storing and managing the different data of knowledge that we every day acquire surveying and studying the complex, and to support the decision making process for its future design and planning phases. This research, supporting the needs of the technical offices of the Athenaeum in maintaining, preserving, managing it and in programming and designing its future adaptation to new uses is focused to make the results culturally, economically, socially, technically and energetically “truly sustainable”.

Parole chiave/Key-words: smart management, planned conservation, sustainability and heritage