Credentials for an International Digital Register of 20th Century Construction Techniques—Prototype for Façade Systems

The architectural heritage of the 20th century has proved to be highly vulnerable to the test of time, with slight variations in different geographical contexts. The lack of value recognition, restrictions imposition, and resulting protection has led to the loss of memory of material and immaterial values. Restoring dignity has been the primary goal of those who have given substance and vitality to the theme of Modern Restoration, inheriting from the past the method that requires, in order to catalogue each work, the essential stages of knowledge and documentation, preliminary to conservation and enhancement. It is precisely in this scenario, after analysing the experiences of institutions, bodies and associations in the field of filing and cataloguing, that the needs brought about by the digital transition were taken on board; the aim is to define, within the PRIN 2022 DIMHENSION project, an innovative operative protocol that is economically, socially and technically sustainable, aimed at the computerised management of 20th century architectural heritage. The steps are the identification of the global description of the history of the building, translation of the entire body of data into information assets (H-BIR), and the possibility of consultation using parametric models (H-BIM). A Digital Register has therefore been designed, initially for an international sample of late 20th century façade systems, which goes well beyond their dynamic documentation, creating the conditions for a platform for consulting the complex of information, structured in an H-BIR archive interfaced with an H-BIM object library.