Restauro e sostenibilità: termini contrapposti o convergenza di intenti?

The problem of resource depletion has been affecting all societies throughout the centuries. Wood in the Middle Ages was a resource used both for energy production and as a widespread building material. For centuries the pace of development proceeded accordingly with that of the natural replenishment rate of the used resources. The 20th century witnessed a sudden development with consequent consumption of resources that deeply transformed the land and its patterns of use. The main goal has been to increase mass production but not as much emphasis has been placed on the consumption of nonrenewable resources, so the last half-century has shown significant climate change with consequent localized disasters in specific parts of the globe that have highlighted the unsustainability of this growth model. The comparison of data collected around the world has made the rethinking of society and its patterns of development impractical, forcing the adoption of measures that can re-establish a balance in an ecological direction. In recent times, the Member States of the United Nations have adopted 17 Sustainable Development Goals in an attempt to implement an ecological transition. Restoration of historic buildings assumes resource conservation and poses fewer problems than new construction. To further reduce the ecological footprint of actions related to this area, efforts have been made to create a system for evaluating requirements both in terms of ecology and in terms of preserving the historic value of buildings. The Green Building Council has drafted the GBC Historic Building® protocol, which converges the principles of architectural restoration with those of environmental sustainability, relating both the requirements related to historic value and those more properly "ecological" to each other, without detracting from the wealth of information inferable from the context. The protocol, while being an outstanding state-of-the-art tool, nevertheless shows some rigidities that make it perfectible.