CIPA 2005 XX International Symposium, 26 September - 01 October. 2005. Torino. Italy 
solutions. The agreement between project solutions and user’s 
requirements may avoid wastes in resources with non asked 
performances. That is particularly important in situations with 
strong budget constraint. 
Community participation leads to better results in project 
delivery because of a better chance of knowing beneficiary 
preference; it leads to easier acceptance of project results by 
beneficiaries and to better economy of projects because of 
participation directly reducing costs and enhanced willingness 
to pay. 
Fig. 4. Casbah in the qsar of Tamnougalt 
Only local communities - both as individual citizens and in 
groups and associations - can perform those everyday, minute 
and innumerable acts of maintenance which, taken as a whole, 
make vernacular heritage survive. Many of those acts are 
performed by women. They have a close relationship with the 
context in which they live so they can have a key role in 
actions of protection, maintenance and valorisation. 
At the same time, awareness-building devices addressed to 
groups of professionals have be investigated, to promote 
knowledge and safeguard of vernacular heritage from 
decision-makers, civil servants, urban planners, architects, 
entrepreneurs, developers, etc. 
4. CONCLUSIONS 
Much has been done, at the European Community and 
national levels, and a significant part of the monumental 
heritage has been restored, renovated, and made accessible to 
the broader public. Not the same can be said about this 
‘minor’ heritage, i.e., urban fabrics, vernacular buildings and 
settlements, not labelled as worthy of attention and special 
protection measures - nor socially considered as status- 
promoting in many European, and also Mediterranean, 
country. In many places, on the contrary, a ‘tourist-oriented’ 
fake vernacular has developed, often condemning to decay 
and abandonment existing vernacular buildings and 
settlements. 
Now time has come to fully recognise also this part of our 
architectural heritage as a determining factor in the quality of 
life and as a vehicle of cultural identity, not opposed to 
modernisation and the rising of the living conditions. 
To enhance conservation and preservation of this ‘living’ 
heritage is necessary to think about actions integrating human 
development and conservation within a comprehensive 
strategy. It means to build capacity at the local level and 
among site management authorities. 
Activities must meet and ensure conditions for local 
appropriation by involving the widest possible range of local 
interested parties more closely, to stimulate the appropriation 
by the inhabitants of their own environment of life, to 
promote self-reliance towards the interventions of architecture 
rehabilitation, to reinvigorate its perception as a fundamental 
vehicle of cultural identity and custodian of collective 
memory, to hint at its characteristics of economic 
sustainability and its potentialities as generator of 
employment and quality of life. 
Fig. 5. Tamnougalt. The future? 
REFERENCES 
B. Feilden. J. Jokilehto, 2003. Manual para el manejo de los 
sitios del Patrimonio Cultural Mundial, ICCROM, Rome. 
P. Oliver , 1997. Encyclopaedia of Vernacular Architecture of 
the World, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. 
P. Oliver, 2003. Dwellings. The Vernacular House 
Worldwide, London, Phaidon Press. 
T. Mete, 1990. Vernacular architecture: paradigms of 
environmental response, Brookfield, Avebury. 
V. I. Atroshenko, M. Grundy, 1991. Mediterranean 
Vernacular, Rizzoli, New York.