Since the establishment of the World Heritage List, the notion of heritage has deeply changed, and the attention has shifted from the materiality of monuments, as bearers of intrinsic values, to a wider recognition of cultural heritage as a process that increasingly involves the territorial context. In the last twenty years, heritage studies have recognized that the setting of a heritage property plays a key active role in the perpetration and transmission of the heritage values, but this is only partially embraced by UNESCO practical preservation tools. This contribution critically investigates the role of UNESCO buffer zones and their implementation, highlighting how this undefined and often misused tool is dramatically conflictual with the more recent compulsory management plans, theoretically fostering the inclusion of local dynamics in valorisation policies. Design and spatial transformations, that are fundamental components of a living cultural environment, are not envisaged in the development of strategic interconnections between heritage sites and their surroundings; conversely, they are seen as threats to the heritage integrity and authenticity. This conflict between conservation and transformation, reflected in local policies through a rigid mechanism of constraints, often affects the physical state of heritage-related places, resulting in conditions of marginalisation, lack of spatial care, isolation of heritage sites. Paradoxically, the buffer zone, a tool established to protect heritage fragility, becomes a fragilizing element itself. The role of architectural design is furtherly investigated in this framework, in a tentative to encompass the idea of architecture as a practice of care of heritage-related territorial fragility.
Graduated in Architecture, she has a university and post-graduate education oriented to design for heritage valorization, in a multiscale vision that ranges from the strategic territorial system to the museum set-up design. While working as an architecture professional, she has been collaborating to teaching activities at Politecnico di Milano as well as private academic organisations. Her current PhD research at Politecnico di Milano investigates the role of architectural design in the relation between UNESCO enlisted sites and their context.