Conservation of Architectural Heritage: Developing Sustainable Practices

Maria Luisa Germanà is a full professor of Technological Design of Architecture. She is an architect, and she earned her Ph.D. in Building and Environmental Refurbishment in 1992. With more than 20 years of academic experience, she has held several institutional roles in her university and in the national scientific society of architectural technology (SITdA). Professor Maria Luisa Germanà has more than 140 published books, chapters and articles, and she has been invited as a member of peer-review board of national and international journals and of scientific council of book series.

She has been a principal investigator of international and national research projects.

She has gained an extensive teaching experience, tutoring more than 100 bachelor’s and master’s degrees and Ph.D. students.

Her main themes of research (Architectural Heritage; Environmental Design; Rural and Vernacular Architecture; Ecological Building Materials; Refurbishment, Management and Maintenance of the Built Environment) are different facets of a holistic scientific interest, focused on the sustainability of the processes of formation, transformation and management of the most varied examples of built environment and based on the systemic and process-based approach supported by the technological disciplines.

Lately, she has joined ICOMOS, and she has been admitted as an expert member of International Committee on Archaeological Heritage Management (ICOMOS ICAHM) and of the International Scientific Committee on Earthen Architectural Heritage (ICOMOS ISCEAH).

Dr. Natsuko Akagawa is tenured at the University of Queensland. She is a longstanding expert member for International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), an expert member of International Committee for Vernacular Architecture (ICOMOS), an expert member and a former vice president of International Scientific Committees for Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICOMOS) and a member of the International Council of Museums (ICOM). She is regularly invited as a keynote speaker and has been a member of editorial and peer-review boards for numerous high-impact international journals. She is also the series general editor for Routledge Research on Museums and Heritage in Asia (Routledge).

Dr. Akagawa is the author of Heritage conservation in Japan’s cultural diplomacy: Heritage, national identity and national interest (Routledge 2014), the seminal work theorizing Heritage and Cultural Diplomacy, and the co-editor of Safeguarding Intangible Heritage (Routledge 2019) and Intangible Heritage (Routledge 2009), all internationally influential studies on Intangible Heritage. She has also worked on a number of projects with heritage conservation practitioners as a principal investigator and with academics in developing policy documents.

Antonella Versaci is a researcher and an assistant professor at the Faculty of Engineering and Architecture, University “Kore” of Enna, where she is responsible for the “Laboratory of Restoration of Architectural and Cultural Heritage” and teaches “architectural restoration” and “laboratory of architectural restoration” within the Master of Architecture.

She is also an associate researcher at the Institut Parisien de Recherche Architecture Urbanistique Société (IPRAUS), a research laboratory of the ENSAPB―National Superior School of Architecture of Paris-Belleville (UMR 3329 Ausser).

Her research applies to the issues of safeguarding and conservation of historic buildings and landscape, with particular attention to cultural heritage spread across the territory and to the protection of historic centers, as well as to their survey, diagnosis, classification and valorization.

In 1996, she earned a master’s degree in Building Engineering at the University of Messina and, the following year, obtained a scholarship for postgraduate specialization courses abroad.

She then attended in Paris two courses of specialization in urban preservation, strategic planning and management earning both degrees. In 2005, she received a Ph.D. degree cum laude in “Architecture” from the University of Paris VIII, with a dissertation on the legislation on historic centers in France.

From June 2004 to September 2008, she was a UNESCO international staff member, responsible for numerous cultural projects in Southeastern Europe, including those related to the creation of a School of Restoration in Tirana (Albania) and to a Center for Digitization of Heritage Cultural in Skopje (FYROM).

She is the author of over 90 refereed publications.

Dr. Nicola Cavalagli currently holds an assistant professor position at the University of Perugia in Italy. He is a lecturer of the course of Mechanics of Historic Constructions and of the Laboratory of Architectural Restoration since 2015. His research interests are mainly focused on the analysis of historical constructions, with special attention to the homogenization techniques of masonry material and the analysis of masonry arches, vaults and domes, considering geometrical uncertainties effects. Recent studies have been devoted to the development of Structural Health Monitoring Strategies applied to heritage constructions for their preventive conservation. His research interest includes also civil and architectural engineering in general, finite element modeling and computational mechanics.