Innovative experiences in teaching conservation. Involving communities’ interests on preservation topics by fast investigations and social media dissemination

Abstract

Since 2019, the authors carried out a didactical experience trough the Preservation Studio workshop in the historical center of Vimercate, a town in the north east area of Milan, implementing a convention agreement between the Mu-nicipality and the Atheneum. The convention was arranged in order to set the relationship between the three academic courses of the Politecnico di Milano and the administration of Vimercate, supporting the teaching staff by providing ac-cessibility to various services and some public properties located in the city-cen-ter. Thanks to this kind of agreement, the courses could be supported in their activities by document centers, public associations and the members of the local community, while the teaching staff offered a constant sharing of the main activ-ities by social media and periodical disseminations through public lectures. After maturing several years of didactical workshops on the main buildings of the his-torical center of Vimercate, this paper shows the results collected with the stu-dios: the active class strategies, the on-site survey campaigns, the evolution of the results observed by year after year inspections, ND testing activities and local community involvement. The impact coming from the researches developed by the preservation classes and specific in depth studies realized by graduation thesis showed an increasing participation of the community to the topics connected to the city center: from conservation policies to future uses, historical buildings reached the attention of the people through the development of a new sensibility and perception of new values associated to the local architectural heritage.