Contemporary Strategies of Urban Restoration in Complex Historical Environments

Abstract

We analyze the evolution of the ideas and concepts about architectural refurbishment. Departing from the ideas of Ruskin and Violet le Duc in the European 19 th Century and going through the organic approach after the modernist revolution at the beginning of the twentieth Century, we can see how the role of the context, considering the broadest meaning of the term -not only about architectural pre-existences, but also cultural, sociological, historical, etc.- is progressively gaining importance to become at the end a key factor in the contemporary most successful examples of architectural and urban restoration. After briefly defining the historical background, a series of contemporary European study cases will better illustrate this approach. Twentieth Century Swedish architect Asplund's project for Gotheborg Communal Palace, in Sweden, the restoration and extension of the Law Courts and the City Hall, is a key turning point in the way of dealing with this issue. We will see how in some contemporary remarkable examples like the work of the Catalan architect Enric Miralles, Asplund's ideas became the raw material and the basis for some new steps forward in the evolution of that concept, producing in his works a new creative balance between new and old, a fertil dialog between tradition, history and the present time cultural context and needs.