Make the history of recent architecture

Abstract

The paper presents a critical and propositive reflection about history of architecture. It points out the need for a critical history of recent architecture, questioning the limits of chronological record and mass- media information. Assuming that buildings, as well as other material productions, are subject to very quick consumption and renovation, it defends the construction of a historical approach of these recent architectural objects, in order to avoid or minimize the disappearance of documental sources, written or oral, related to them. It indicates some criteria and procedures that make feasible the realization of this project and proposes that the historian of this architecture of the recent past should also have a propositive role on the interventions on these objects. The professional and qualified look at their architectural assets, different from chronicles and doctrinary postures, shall bring renewing clarification and points of views on these modern buildings, material presences of a "recent past".