STRATEGIES FOR ARCHITECTURAL HERITAGE RECOVERY

In application of the Dublin descriptors,

1.         demonstrate knowledge and understanding through: the reading of selected case studies in the panorama of exemplary recovery projects, based on a methodology that allows to associate conservation/ technological innovation/ increase in value;

2.  strengthen the ability to transfer methodologies to other architectural artifacts, in similar contexts;

3.         demonstrate ability to apply knowledge, and skills: in solving unfamiliar problems, placed in interdisciplinary contexts related to their field of study; to continue to study and face independently new scenarios that will arise in the course of professional life;

4.         acquire the ability to integrate knowledge and manage the complexity of case studies, to evaluate technological and spatial solutions and compatibility to reuse;

5.         be able to communicate in a clear, concise and unambiguous manner the conclusions and assessments, as well as the knowledge, assumptions and rationale underlying them, to specialist and non-specialist interlocutors.

The cycle of theoretical lessons and expert seminars will alternate with a year's work consisting of:

- an exercise in two parts: the first is the critical and motivated presentation of an architectural artefact or a public space to be recovered for the purposes of fruition and valorisation consistent with the themes of art and culture; the second is the presentation of the recovery and reuse program for the valorization of the identified case. The papers will be presented in the classroom (for attending students) or during the exam (for non-attending students).

- a second exercise in which, starting from reading the text in the bibliography «Antonio Leonardi e Claudia Cantale (a cura di), La gentilezza e la rabbia. 105 lettere di Giancarlo De Carlo sul recupero del Monastero di San Nicolò l’Arena a Catania, Editoriale Agorà, Catania, 2017», each student will present 5 slides in which they will have connected some texts from the book to images taken in the spaces of the Monastery which they will use as a basis to develop a critical and personal reasoning with respect to the theme of the processes and models of architectural recovery. The slides will be presented in the classroom (for attending students) or during the exam (for non-attending students).

The Building Recovery is a topic widely debated within the disciplines of Architecture Technology, which has outlined a theoretical corpus, methodological and normative that today constitutes a necessary cultural baggage in order to face delicate projects on the existing architectural heritage, that oscillate between participations to value now conservative, now transformative. It is a process that involves the elaboration of a project that, overcoming the apparent conceptual aporia between conservation and transformation, is aimed at the recovery of memory and the maintenance of historical identity.

Significant is the historical transition from the concept of restoration to that of recovery: while the restoration moves from an attitude aimed only at cultural values, with a view to absolute conservation, in the recovery the gaze is turned towards the existing -the minute fabric- and its preservation, but with greater attention to its transformative vocations useful to counter the phenomena of "obsolescence" and "degradation", the needs of the user, the market value.

The recovery is a scalar project, from the building to the city, where the urban context imposes reflections on strategic choices and on technical and compositional solutions. The need to limit the transformations requires the recovery project to report the actions not only to parameters related to the uniqueness of the asset, but also to integrate the new evolutionary scenarios to the pre-existing, through: performance control, potential integrability, compatibility to reuse, durability. In the design process the choices revolve around a preparatory phase of knowledge of the building, which is comparable to an informative matrix resulting from the combination of historical, technical, economic, regulatory, social, political and cultural information.

The course will cover the approaches and strategies of recovery from the post-war period to today, the relationship of architectural heritage with the factor "time" and "innovation"; the concepts of: "resource" and value", of "material and intangible goods".

A. Theories and History of Building Recovery (3 credits)

Valerio Di Battista, Ambiente Costruito. Un secondo paradigma, Alinea, Firenze, 2006, pp.240.

B. Methods and strategies for intervention on existing assets. (2 CP)

Paolo Gasparoli, Cinzia Talamo, Manutenzione e Recupero. Criteri, metodi e strategie per l’intervento sul costruito, Alinea, Firenze, 2006.(pp. 19-38 ; 65-71 ; 75-82 ; 103-125 ; 129-140 ; 153-178 ; 183-190 ; 211-212 ; 237-248).

C. Monographic essay (1 CFU)

Antonio Leonardi e Claudia Cantale (a cura di), La gentilezza e la rabbia. 105 lettere di Giancarlo De Carlo sul recupero del Monastero di San Nicolò l’Arena a Catania, Editoriale Agorà, Catania, 2017.