Abstract :
[en] The recent UNESCO Recommendations on the historic hurban landscape insist on the opportunity to "shift from an emphasis on architectural monuments primarly" towards "a landscape approach" including "the broader urban context and its geographical setting", to understand historic urban landscape "as the result of a historic layerling, and to create new tools to adress this vision". Along this line of thought of thought, the proposed approach expands the traditional contents of architectural guides, providing keys to reconsider and evaluate the listed works' contribution to the evolution of their immediate surrounding, to the urban structure as a whole, up to the territorial scale. Moving from a design-oriented perspective and using the methods of urban morphology, the work consists mainly of set of original schemes, maps and drawings of Liège and its neighborhoods, as means to reveal the urban structure, its layerling over time, and the role of architectural heritage in clarifuing, enhancing, or even degrading the coherence of the urban artifact. Halfway between popular and scholarly literature, the forthcoming guides aim to become at both times "handbooks for city decoding" and blueprints for urban design. Providing tools lo read, comprehehen, and appreciate the part played by built heritage in a city's evolution and in the shaping of our daily environment helps to understand urban environments as a process bearing the overlapping influences of many experiments, partially implemented plans, competing visions and contradictory ideas. As a result, both the ordinary and specialized audience can possibly raise their awareness and perception of modernist architecture's legacy, but also learn how certain qualities were achieved and how certain local issues came about, acquiring relevant critical keys to take part as stakeholders or designers in the debate over the future city.
