Understanding the transformations of a historic building is a complex but necessary operation to plan future, more aware maintenance works that preserve the architectural quality. This study proposed to analyze the changes undergone by an edifice over time by virtue of the Vitruvian triad, namely the criteria formalised by Vitruvius to judge architecture: firmitas (construction system), utilitas (utility), and venustas (aesthetics). These criteria depend on the designer’s mindset but also the influence of historical, cultural, or local factors. The theme required a prior reflection on the mutations of the Vitruvian triad over time. Based upon these relationships, the analysis of the architectural heritage of Messina was started because it is emblematic due to historical events: buildings constructed after the earthquake of 1908, subject to war damage repairs, and then maintenance. Their firmitas, utilitas, and venustas changed for historical, cultural, social, and normative reasons. In this regard, the former Fascist House has significant features: the repeated changes in intended use that produced planimetric variations, technical-constructive modifications sometimes connected to formal choices, and to the abolition, albeit partial, of fascist symbols. The current appeal to experiment with digital technologies has led to examination of the opportunities of the BIM methodology, finding in the model historicisation a way to document and record the triad variations of an existing building in the virtual environment. The research topic proposes an operative approach for more incisive analysis and digitalisation of historical buildings, trying to make a contribution to Target 4 of Goal 11 of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development: to strengthen efforts to protect and safeguard cultural heritage.

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.

The UNESCO cultural heritage includes constructions that require maintenance actions as they are subject to natural degradation, neglect, vandalism, and fraudulent collecting. While re-evaluating the original function or identifying a new one, the restoration with materials/components that do not respect the historical-cultural and technical-constructive features must be avoided. Rather, it would be necessary to re-adopt the ancient practice of the spolium and favouring with methodological rigour the recovery, cataloguing and marketing of deconstructed materials, valuable for their characteristics and workmanship and therefore deserving to be relocated in works of equal value. Starting from the analysis of the web marketplaces dedicated to the recycling/reuse of "construction and demolition waste", we analysed potentialities and limits of a process able to transform valuable stone elements into resources, respecting the construction on which we intervene and the one from which components come, to guarantee the continuity of memory.