ETHICS: Endorse Technologies for Heritage Innovation

Book excerpt: This book outlines, within the Italian national framework, the current and potential paths oriented towards a new concept of Architectural Heritage, through actions referring to Innovation and Experimentation and Protection and Transformation of the Architectural Heritage. The development of the themes is articulated in two sessions dealing with the aspects related to the analysis and mapping of Architectural Heritage to face the context of the current Climate Crisis and the development of projects and experimentations oriented to the Green and Digital Transition. The evolution of the concept of Heritage, as conceived by the United Nations 2030 Agenda and in the Green Deal and New European Bauhaus, aimed at constructing an inclusive and universally recognised definition to support supranational objectives of sustainable human development, gives rise to innovative strategies, methodologies and technologies that—in a direction of mitigation, contrast and adaptation to climate change—allow for the safeguard, renewed management and a hope for valorisation of Heritage on a national scale. In this direction, the understanding of Architectural Heritage as a 'non-renewable resource' determines the need to activate design experimentation laboratories oriented towards regeneration, articulated and complex, which require, in order to respond to the challenges posed by our era, a sensitive and dialogic multidisciplinary vision of a holistic type. In fact, on the one hand, it is necessary to redefine the usability and management methods of built heritage through the adoption of digital, mobility, energy, ecological, social, green and blue infrastructures; on the other hand, it is necessary to introduce new qualitative and quantitative parameters and performance indicators, adequate to verify the validity of the implemented strategies in a perspective of adaptation to climate change, able to clarify contents, processes and tools to contrast future risks. The pursuit of these objectives refers to the innovation of training paths, professionalising procedures, administrative regulations, and public policies that involve citizens and the private partnership towards a different project qualification and empowerment of stakeholders, inhabitants, professionals, and clients. The Technological Project makes it possible to activate different interventions aimed at acting, in an integrated manner, on assets, context and communities, according to an approach that reinterprets them on a common score, as proposed by the European Next Generation programme in three priority aspects: digitalisation and innovation, environmental transition, increased resilience and social sustainability of national economies. In this scenario, the interventions aimed at outlining sustainable development actions will have to place these concepts at the centre in a harmonious vision that starts from the recognition and enhancement of the Architectural Heritage, recognising it as a fundamental asset of the territories.