Learning to Reuse Modernity

the Educational Challenge

Abstract

Three decades after the founding of DOCOMOMO [1], education remains an essential issue when thinking about the future of modern heritage, but today there is a need for critical reflection on the conceptual and methodological changes we need to face in the current context of complexity.

Modern architecture is now going through a paradigmatic moment, not only because of its inevitable degradation, but because of the impact of new scenarios that compel us to rethink its conservation and reuse considering both its special constructive condition and its specific functionality, as well as as its role in collective memory, as a recent inheritance. The teaching of architectural design must resolve these critical issues as a strategic objective that anticipates a more appropriate professional practice.

The conservation and reuse of modern buildings is still outside most schools of architecture. Thus, this text presents three diverse and complementary didactic experiences developed in Europe and South America: Conscious Project to update collective housing districts (Politecnico di Milano, Italy), experimental re-design to integrate modern individual houses in contemporary life (Universidade de Belgrano, Argentina) and participatory project to open a modern school to the community (University of Coimbra, Portugal). These case studies highlight the importance of confronting students with history and memory, and their importance for the reuse of apparently common buildings and not only for modern emblematic monuments.

[1] DOCOMOMO, Documentation and Conservation of the Modern Movement, is a non-profit association created in 1988 in the Netherlands with the aim of creating a space for exchanging ideas about the conservation, history and education of Modern Architecture. It is currently based in Lisbon, under the chairmanship of Professor Ana Tostões.