The Modern Movement has demonstrated its long-term legitimacy as a lasting concept endowed with longevity. Relating technology, spatial form and social commitment to one another, through an optimistic faith in progress, modern architects sought to attain new heights of functionality and flexibility in use. The current challenge is to find ways to deal with the conservation of this recent legacy in the continuously changing context of current times, including physical, economic, functional, and fast-moving socio-cultural and political values. To address these questions, ‘Modern built heritage conservation policies’ explores the restoration and renovation processes undertaken in some paradigmatic case studies: the Tugendhat House (Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich, Brno, Czech Republic, 1929–1930), the Crown Hall (Mies van der Rohe, Chicago, USA, 1950–1956), the National Museum of Western Art (Le Corbusier, Tokyo, Japan, 1959) and the Gulbenkian Foundation (Alberto Pessoa, Pedro Cid e Ruy d’Athouguia, Lisbon, Portugal, 1959–1969).
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