Beyond the principles of selecting and listing, the documenting process as a whole is central to Docomomo's guidelines for the understanding of our modern heritage. The current issue of the Journal develops a significant standpoint within this process. The truism is that the act of documenting represents more than an investigation practice in itself. It allows the built artifact to gather the sum of information required to reach the status of monument. This double-sided postulation has been at the heart of the debate since Docomomo started to be active and gain recognition as a proponent of novel approaches in the field of modern heritage. By re-establishing the association between documentation and the modern monument, Docomomo has prompted a new assessment of Le Goff's seminal understanding of the document-monument-memory trilogy. The seven years that separate the first publication of the Docomomo Registers (Rotterdam: 0 l 0 Publishers, 2000) from the selection included in this issue demonstrate the establishment of a common ground widely shared by individuals and institutions alike. At stake here is more than the simple increase of the number of chapters and consequently of the items to be documented. This new vision has fostered new fertile practices that are gradually changing the strategy of conservation, from the appreciation of modern buildings as frozen icons towards a participatory process of adaptive transformations and the redefinition of the legacy of modernity in globalized societies. The reformulation of a comprehensive cult of modern monuments is as yet but a slogan; it should become a banner for the recognition of modern cultural identities worldwide, rising above the conditions of political oppression and economic fragility that sometimes still prevail.
Published:
2022-11-10
