1. Funding Conservation Works
Innovative Strategies for Programs and Techniques
Stefano Della Torre
Seminario informativo sul settore del restauro in Italia
Leipzig, 22 November 2012

2. Outline
• Restoration as a supply chain
• Reduction of public spending
• New financial strategies
• Competitive funding procedures
• Programming restoration: use value, long-term vision, externalities of
technologies
• Taking profit of new technologies in the frame of “creativity” as an
engine for regional development
Prof. Stefano Della Torre

3. Restoration as a supply chain
• In Italy conservation works go under
strict regulations enforced by State
offices (Soprintendenze)
• In general they aim at material
authenticity, therefore requiring
specialized professionals and side
activities (survey, diagnostics…)
• They used to have an important
turnover
Prof. Stefano Della Torre

4. Restoration as a supply chain
• During 2005/2007 in Italy the turnover of the sector was about €
2.000.000.000,00 per year, involving works for private owners,
esteemed as 20-25% of the whole amount .
• This amount is the basis for computing the product made by
professionals (architects, engineers, surveyors…), which counts for
about 15%, not included in previously given amounts.
• Roughly speaking, these figures entail 22000 jobs in building sector,
3.000 jobs in technical professions.
• Scientific diagnostics counts for a little and very variable rate, from 0,5
to 5 % of the amount of the works. This means a number of jobs for
conservation scientists which can vary from 50 to 500.
Prof. Stefano Della Torre

5. Restoration as a supply chain
• This budget has to be appreciated also for
its “quality”: it means return on investments,
less waste, higher skills hired…
• We can assume that the percentage of
investment in scientific investigations is an
indicator of quality in restoration process.
The number of jobs for scientists (i.e. high
intellectual capital) could increase by 10
times just by requiring more diagnostics and
scientific support, that is easy when fixing
criteria for financing projects.
• These issues become more and more
relevant in front of a reduction of public
spending
Prof. Stefano Della Torre

6. Reduction of public spending
• Most historic rehabilitation initiatives in Italy have been funded by
public resources (often matching grants from EU or from private
grant-making foundations)
• The reduction of the budgets of public bodies (Municipalities…)
implies that it will be more and more difficult to finance public works in
general, and also works on historic properties
A twofold strategy is ongoing:
• Reinforce the reasons why to spend (public) money for conservation;
• Set up new strategies to make the process more efficient (preventive
conservation, ICT…)
Prof. Stefano Della Torre

7. Reduction of public spending
• The sector can be shrunk, but if
you get rid of maintenance and
preventive conservation, you
will soon or later pay much
more (and Italy is a seismic
country!)
Mantua, S. Barbara’s belltower under quake
Prof. Stefano Della Torre

8. Reduction of public spending
• The sector can be shrunk, but if
you get rid of maintenance and
preventive conservation, you
will soon or later pay much
more (and Italy is a seismic
country!)
L’Aquila, Basilica di Collemaggio
L’Aquila, Chiesa delle Anime Sante
Prof. Stefano Della Torre

9. New financial strategies
• In Italian tradition culture and antiques are conceived inside the public
sphere
• Scarcity of resources forced to open to various forms of partnership
with private players: sponsors, entrepreneurs, renters…
Among the practices which are getting customary:
• Technical sponsorship: the sponsors do not give money, but they
provide the works done
• Project financing: the property is given to a private user (for a time to
be decided) in order to have conservation works done
• In both cases, the enterprise which aims at doing the work has to
match new requirements and to find its competitive advantage in new
kinds of alliances and financial networking
Prof. Stefano Della Torre

10. Sponsored works:
Milan, Spanish Walls
Technical sponsorship: TMC
provided the development of the
restoration project by a team of
architects and the works carried out
by Gasparoli srl, under the
supervision of the Soprintendenza
and Milan Municipality
Prof. Stefano Della Torre

11. Project financing
Monza, Villa Reale: Currently in Italy perhaps the biggest and most
controversial restoration carried on through a project financing deal
Prof. Stefano Della Torre

12. Competitive funding procedures
• The scarcity of resources forces to set up competitive procedures in
order to decide which interventions are the best
• Then the problem turns into choosing criteria: the best for which
purpose?
Prof. Stefano Della Torre

13. Wide-area projects 13
• Restorations are funded under the condition that they have been
arranged in the frame of wide-area projects
• The aim is to set up sustainable management plans, taking into
account the economic performances of restored sites, seen as
belonging to nets and territorial systems.
• This trend works for integrated conservation paradigms, as well as
for a long-term vision in conservation.
• By this way managerial culture came into preservation practice
• These comprehensive projects often implement a “triple helix” model,
or refer to the idea of creative clusters
Prof. Stefano Della Torre

14. Wide area projects: the criteria
An example: “Distretti culturali” in Lombardy Region.
The main features are:
• there are grants and rules,
• restorations (what people are supposed to want) funded as they are
carefully planned taking into account quality (including qualification of
the technicians and the contractors)
• planned conservation after works,
• management system,
• exploitation of networking as a tool to enhance human and territorial
capital
The criteria selected the interventions able to create value because of:
- Use value of the building in the future local system;
- Long-term vision (management plan, planned conservation)
- Externalities of implemented technologies
Prof. Stefano Della Torre

15. A turnover
“Distretti Culturali” project is ongoing and currently it makes a number of
people work in different positions
Most of them are improving their skills.
The challenge for everybody is also to change mind about the link
Economy-Culture.
We are going beyond the vision that the problem is just to collect money
to pay conservation costs.
We are going beyond the vision that Heritage makes money directly
(hard to endorse).
We are exploring the thesis that Heritage preservation activities can
empower a region as well as its economy, provided they are carried
on aiming at opening minds
It’s a turnover: from an economic empowerment of Culture to a
cultural empowerment of Economy.
In other words, Heritage may create the “learning environment” where
innovation can be developed .
Prof. Stefano Della Torre

16. The case of the Florence Restoration district
Florence is perhaps the
most famous Art city in
the world; this means a
local economy boosted
by tourism, but rich also
in educational and
restoration activities
Prof. Stefano Della Torre

17. Florentine Cultural Cluster was a favorable
milieu for R&D in Laser Industry
Laser Medecine had the chance to
develop everywhere, why just under
the shadow of Brunelleschi’s
dome?
The answer is that Florentine
preservation cluster has been
crucial in giving opportunities to
research on Laser techniques,
aiding development in all the fields,
not only restoration.
Brunelleschi now is used a brand
for the laser conference, but during
the R&D period a lot of research
grants earned as a support to
Heritage field supported scientific
research as a whole
Prof. Stefano Della Torre

18. Historic Preservation as an infrastructure for
development
Historic preservation can be seen as an infrastructure for social and
economic development according to the models of Knowledge
Economy
Source: Lazzeretti, Capone, Cinti 2010: Technological innovation in creative clusters. The case of laser
in conservation of artworks in Florence, IERMB Working Paper in Economics, nº10.02, April 2010
Prof. Stefano Della Torre

19. Learning from traditional practices and
crafts
• Traditional crafts are crucial to preventive conservation where they
are still alive
• Where tradition has broken down, there are risks and opportunities
• Opportunities: learning “green” solutions from the world before
industrialization
• Risks: crafts which still look traditional changed their soul, so that
now they may carry on “invented traditions” which are far from being
sustainable.
Prof. Stefano Della Torre

20. Learning from traditional practices and
crafts – Example 1
Historic natural
ventilation system in the
Hofburg and inspired
project in Schönbrunn
Castle (Käferhaus 2007)
Prof. Stefano Della Torre

21. Learning from traditional practices and
crafts – Example 2
Stone slabs roofs in Aosta Valley. Remaking traditional roofs with stone
slabs is enforced by local regulations and supported by incentives, as
stone roofs are typical of Alpine landscape
But two different techniques are used
Prof. Stefano Della Torre

22. The ancient technique
Small local slabs, not regular in shape, coming from local quarries.
Reuse of slabs is possible, the service life of a slab may be even two
centuries
The roof cannot be insulated.
Annual maintenance is required.
Prof. Stefano Della Torre

23. The “drop-shape” technique
Huge slabs coming from abroad (by railway).
No salvage of old slabs.
Slabs nailed on wooden planking (insulation).
Seldom maintenance (remake).
Prof. Stefano Della Torre

24. Regulations
Regulation (R.L. 13/2007) give a plus for
- Full substitution of the roof (less money if the owner changes only a
part of the materials)
- Stone quality, evaluated by means of laboratory tests
The actual behaviour of stones is
different, and it is worthy to
remark that local stones behave
better than they are assessed by
Lab tests.
Prof. Stefano Della Torre

25. Can materials for traditional building in Italy
come from Nepal?
“Drop-shape” dates
back just to 1950s, as
stones useful for this
kind of work can not be
mined locally.
In the matter of fact
they come from Spain,
Greece, Norway and
Nepal.
Aosta railway station
now has an area
devoted to such a
globalized movement
of stone slabs.
Prof. Stefano Della Torre

26. Prevention, Tradition, Innovation:
Learning and Unlearning
Somebody should question about the carbon footprint of
Aosta regulations, born by “culturally correct” concerns for
landscape and workmanship, but now turned into a
dissipation factor. They are misleading as they encourage
the abandon of maintenance and the waste of materials.
An advanced work of criticism is needed to unlearn what
has been vitiated by industrial and commercial attitudes,
to discover again the sense of authentic tradition, and to
revive old know-how.
By this way it will be possible to match “green” requirements
concerning embodied energy.
Prof. Stefano Della Torre

27. What is needed to work in restoration field
in Italy in the years to come?
• Qualification (expertise, ability, management…)
• Openness to high technologies (restoration techniques, ICT…)
• Openness to green technologies
• Openness to “new” financial processes (technical sponsorships,
project financing…)
• Networking (with enterprises, research centres, universities…)
• Attitude to communicate (open building sites, educational activities…)
• Readiness to “new” activities (preventive conservation, data filing…)
Prof. Stefano Della Torre