Architectural Restoration: a comparison between Japan and Italy
The restoration of architecture in a nation is a project strictly connected to its culture, its society, as well as to the weather conditions and to its political and economic background. The contemporary culture, in particular, has developed an awareness of the fact that the main pur-pose of the conservation of monuments and landscape is not only protecting the matter of social well but also its intrinsic values, strongly connected to the sense of belonging to the place. The necessity of searching these values comes from the need of knowledge of the different cultural references that permit to man to direct his choices as concerns conservation and safeguard compared to popular areas of interest apparently of less importance but vivid from the cultural and social point of view. And this is the birth of the relationship between values and needs connected to the demand of transformation of urban and housing contexts. On these as-sumptions the book Twelve houses restored in Japan and Italy focuses on restoration projects of historical urban contexts, where the theme of living produced changes, influenced different intervention methods and functional choices without changing the sign of history. The book wants to introduce restoration projects comparing different cultural realities and architectonical methods that characterized the present situation in Italy and Japan. The experiences described in the book notice an interesting sharing among the different methods of restoration.