Architectural archives, a resource for knowledge and collective memory

Abstract

It is difficult to fix coordinates to define architectural archives, related as they are to a discipline that has many declensions and often overlaps with others. Characterized by a multiplicity of types of documentation, from the point of view of production and organization they vary greatly in the range defined by the two poles of personal and corporate archives. Subjected to a strong evolutionary process, marked by the increasingly exclusive presence of digital technology, they constitute a field of continuous learning for archivists and researchers, with the aim of fully exploiting their information potential. Historical research, however, is only one of the fields in which architectural archives can play a primary role. Focusing on the human environment, built and natural, they are vital in the construction and development of collective memory, as much as in the management and protection of the works that make up the common heritage of citizens.