At a time when the ecological transition requires usto reinvent a more responsible and conservative approach to architecturaldesign, when energy efficiency paradoxically demands increasingly invasiveinterventions in existing buildings, and when demolition and reconstruction arestill the dominant practices, designing within the existing built environmentis emerging as a new paradigm. Although now imperative, it has been exploredand tested for some twenty years in the challenging conservation oftwentieth-century architecture, going beyond the consensual ‘reuse’ that hasbecome trivial.

The analysis of a series of approaches toconservation, preservation and restoration, in terms of the project approachand its theoretical issues, as well as the most pragmatic constructionrequirements, will shed light on these new contemporary practices in 2025 atthe European level. It will also open up a discussion, beyond all certainties,on virtuous strategies for intervening in existing buildings and benevolentpractices, with a necessarily limited choice of options, but in a heritage witha strong qualitative identity, whether recognised or not.

A number of questions arise. What similarities anddifferences can be observed in monumental heritage restoration campaigns indifferent European countries and in relation to a more widespread heritage?What methods are being tested in a process that we consider to be exemplary?How effective are the tools –digital or other– used in the restoration project,from diagnosis to construction? How can project strategies in architecture ofestablished quality inform processes where it is systematically sacrificed toenergy and/or economic requirements?

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Scientific committee

Eugen Brühwiler (EPFL Honorary Professor)

Bénédicte Gandini (Fondation Le Corbusier)

Franz Graf (USI-ARC Professor, Docomomo Switzerland)

Richard Klein (ENSAPL Professor,Docomomo France)

Giulia Marino (UCLouvain Professor, Docomomo Switzerland)

Martina Voser (ETHZ Professor)

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Organising Committee

USI-ARC Franz Graf and Carlo Nozza

UCLouvain-LAB Giulia Marino and Emma Simonin

Docomomo Switzerland

21–22 May 2025

Accademia di Architettura

Mendrisio Campus

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