Abstract:

The paper describes a study on the topic of the relationship between research and project in the reuse of historical buildings. It was developed at the Politecnico di Milano during the Preservation and Reuse Design Course (Continuing Education).
The increasing attention to the architectural heritage conservation requires rethinking the existing theoretical principles, setting up the operational tools and interpreting formal results.

Dealing with the built environment necessarily implies a multidisciplinary knowledge. On the one hand, pre-existences imply design constraints, on the other hand, they create opportunities to seize new relationships between historical buildings and new constructions.
The paper presents an innovative approach to historical architecture, starting from the desire to intercept different disciplinary spheres. It is believed that contributions offered by various fields could provide new architectural suggestions to valorise the historical traces and to add a contemporary sign to the existing construction. What is even more relevant, is that this approach could represent an important didactic aspect in the field of conservation and restoration teaching, opening at the possibility to explore educational experiences based on these multidisciplinary theorical principles.

The proposed methodological approach aims to apply the topic of the hermeneutic circle to grasp the real dimension of the built heritage, its interpretation and the reuse design linked to it.

The paper is developed as follows:
• The first part introduces the research through some analysis of project experiences, highlighting the importance of the transformations of the historical built assets and its inspiring theoretical approaches.
• The second part develops a reflection on the designing process itself as an interpretative act based on the need for a suspension of prejudice and for a multidisciplinary approach.

The innovative purpose here is to highlight some crucial topics related to the development of the architectural project which should be further integrated into the educational experiences, in order to instil them into the thinking process of young architects: philosophy of the built heritage, psychology of memory, anthropology of living, history of events are vital components of this process that too often remain hidden into practice.
• The third part will stress how the described process should not be limited to a single reflection moment, while it should represent one part of a never-ending circular system, here named “thinking and rethinking process”. This process sustains the continuous cross-reference between research and architectural composition, showing its importance and its usefulness for the educational processes, since their very first steps.
• The fourth and last part briefly illustrates the main meta-project and scenarios outcomes, taken from didactics and research, in order to prove how this process of "thinking and rethinking architecture" leads to a fully conscious approach for a "project of the built heritage”.

Keywords:

Historical buildings, theoretical principles, multidisciplinary knowledge, methodological approach, philosophy, psychology, anthropology.