Everyday Residential Heritage and Circularity: Potential and Limitations of Docomomo Full Documentation Fiches

This contribution investigates how Docomomo Full Documentation Fiches could be adapted to everyday residential heritage and encourage circular renovations in marginalised territories (peripheral and socioeconomically fragile areas). Existing buildings represent resources for cities but often constitute a degraded, obsolete, and energy-intensive asset. Before renovations, a significant step in shifting to a circular economy is collecting quality data about buildings. Documentation becomes a tool to interpret not only masterpieces but also everyday architectures and to introduce circularity in their analysis. Docomomo has documented masterpieces using the Full Documentation Fiches (FDFs); these tools contain some specifications that exclusively address masterpieces and lack specifications about buildings’ context in terms of circularity of local materials and stakeholders. This research aims to provide a template to holistically document everyday residential heritage by: (1) adapting specifications from the original FDF template; (2) evaluating the architecture; and (3) mapping local materials and stakeholders to be involved in renovations. First, the study selects in the marginalised inland Marche region (IT) three 1950-1976 housing projects not of renowned authorship but conveying a modern optimism. Second, the original FDF template is adapted to everyday heritage; an adaptation table identifies specifications not applicable to non-masterpieces and integrates specifications that address everyday housing and circularity. Finally, the adapted template is tested on the selected buildings by collecting information through additional tools (e.g., archival material). The results are three adapted FDFs for the selected buildings which testify that Docomomo FDFs can be applied beyond masterpieces and widen knowledge about buildings’ context. Adapting the FDF template represents an effective method to update the specifications with coherent justification. The adapted template could be digitalised and extended to other building typologies. The study envisions the adaptation of Docomomo’s tools as an initial step to guide holistic documentation that suits circular approaches for everyday heritage.