The workshop on Modern architecture and new conservation problems

Architecture from the period of the 3rd and 4th decade of the 1900’s creates entirely new difficulties in comparison with ancient architecture. A major change is due to the organization of the construction site, which in modern architecture leads to a significant acceleration of the execution phase. This is due to new materials being used in structures, such as concrete and steel, the mechanization of the construction site by means of machines such as cranes, the ease of producing mortar with concrete batching plants, as well as the ease and rapid supply of materials necessary to run the site. All this has led to more rapid construction, not only of individual buildings, but of entire towns and even to founding of new cities. This not only marked the abandonment of the traditional construction site, but the industry also totally changed the way we produce materials for facades, floors, and finishings. Large fixtures were realized through the use of metal beams and the ease of creating large areas of glass, reaching a previously unthinkable scale. It led to the rupture of the close relationship between artisan, workshop and artefact, an ancient tradition that had hitherto continued for thousands of years, which linked each item created, from a single cut stone to an entire stone facing, to specific terms and executive capabilities. The quality of materials no longer expressed the personal skill of a craftsman, or the quality of a particular traditional craft, but a better or less well organized industrial company. This different criterion and the faster productive capability connected to it, greatly increased the variety of products on the market. It also marked a movement to produce new and more enticing products for the construction industry or other market players. Out of production materials were very often not even retained by the same company which had designed them.