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Contemporary restoration approaches

Bibliography

Prof. Giovanni Carbonara

- Che cosa è il restauro? Nove studiosi a confronto.
- Teoria e metodi del restauro
- La reintegrazione dell’immagine
Prof. Paolo Marconi
- Che cosa è il restauro? Nove studiosi a confronto.
- Dal piccolo al grande restauro.
- Il recupero della bellezza
- Manuale del recupero del Comune di Roma
Prof. Amedeo Bellini
- Che cosa è il restauro? Nove studiosi a confronto.
- Teoria del restauro e conservazione architettonica.

Introduction

It’s important to remember tree concepts.

MAINTENANCE: is a repetitive intervention to keep a building efficient.

PRESERVATION: is about keeping how a building is in the present.

RESTORATION: bringing the building back to a condition that we consider valuable.

Viollet Le Duc developed restoration and John Ruskin developed conservation. A middle position was
taken by Camillo Boito. There are mainly tree schools, preservation (School of Milan), in between
position (school of Rome), restoration (prof. Marconi).

Prof. Marconi

Restoration means work on an architecture or an urban setting, with we consider that deserve to be
transmitted to our heirs, in order to preserve it for a long time. The planner’s aim is that the object can
be transmitted in the best conditions, also in order to transmit the meanings which it contains and he
wants to preserve.

So the planner ha sto chose what to preserve based on his interpretation on what deserve to be
transmitted. We also don’t need to transmit everything but only the meanings that i consider important.

The restorers choice and interpretation is “absolute”. The planner decides what are the historical
meanings of the existing buildings which deserve to be preserved, and the restoration is aimed to realize
his interpretation. A great importance is seen into the improvement of the conditions. This is clearly the
field of restoration, where I can address changes.

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In his books he proposed two examples. The first one what to do when I have a modest building that
over time was transformed into a villa. What should I restore? It’s easy: the changes set an improvement
that made the building better, so we have to restore this specific moment. If I have a church that was
transformed into a gym I can recognize this as a worsening of the monumento so I will restore the old
era of the church. He proposed some more extreme examples: it often happens that in historical towns
we have small buildings that overtime they were increased in high. In that case we have achieve the best
conditions so we see those addiction as a cause of problems: we have to remove those added floors.

In order to assure the best condition we need to do maintenance but not preservation. For instance a
ruin is in a critical state of conservation. If I want to preserve them is usually proposed a thin layer of
mortar, but the situation is not permanently solved. Marconi said that those layers will be damaged and
the decay precess will continue. So preservation is not the correct strategy for Marconi. He proposed to
replace the upper weak layer of bricks, rebuilding the missing part to repair the ruin.

He studied possible strategies to assure best conditions and he noticed that ancient buildings made
with bricks are still surviving. He asked himself how those cheap material could survive so perfectly. So
he identified the answer in the continuous maintenance that in the past was done on buildings using the
same materials and construction techniques, thanks to very specialized workers. When they saw a
damage they repaired it with the same materials and techniques. It appende that witch the introduction
of technology the knowledge of those arti went lost. Today is really difficult to find a worker able to do a
masonry volt. For this reason Marconi tried to discover the ancient rules; he did many surveys on
building of the past to understand how they were built. Then he used this knowledge to repair ancient
building in the same way that arti did. He identified two restoration:

- little restoration, is mainly focused on the maintenance and the cyclical replacement of the so called
surfaces of sacrifice, such as plasters. I sacrifice its preservation to build a new, more performing,
plaster made by the materials of the past. The same thing was done in the inside parts. In Venaria
Reale Palace was done this kind of intervention. In this Palace all the plasters where swapped with new
ones. There was some intervention of the last years but it was all took back to the original shape of the
building.

- great restoration, is about the replacement of architectural types. If necessary some parts can be
replaced and new parts can be reintegrated. Is compulsory to have knowledge about the materials
and the ancient building techniques.

For example in the Church of Invalides there was some cracked pieces of a column. For us the correct
solution would be to place some metaled chain, but there was done something different. A metal chain
would have been a clearly visible element, disturbing the facade, so they replaced the cracked pieces
with new ones. In the Girona Cathedral the same thing was done. In Venaria Reale was repaired a big
hole in the volt by rebuilding it. In Desdra a whole building was rebuilt, it was the Frauenkirche. But with
additions ad possible and how to do them? For Marconi if someone is worried about recognizability he
say that this is a false problem. For him experts are always able to recognize the authentic and the new.
Moreover if I need this building I only need this building.

The final intervention is done directly by Marconi, the reuse project of the Broletto in Brescia (1987). The
problem was that the staircase was missing, so the internal distribution was difficult. He proposed to
rebuild the loss staircase using the traditional material, lamellar wood, with a geometry inspired by a
staircase in Mantova. In the facade he recognized that there were some signs of closed windows. He
decided to remove the recent openings and restablish the old windows.

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Giovanni Carbonara

Giovanni Carbonara is a professor in Rome. Restoration is each work aimed to preserve and transmit to
the future the objects with historical, artistic and environmental interest, making more clear the
interpretation/reading and without remove the traces of their passage over centuries. This is a middle
half position. So the restoration which is base on bringing back the building to the best representation of
it is present here, but we should work in a preservative field, because we shouldn't remote the traces of
the passage of different époques.

For him preservation is about the intervention of preservation and safeguard, with have to be realized in
order to avoid restoration. Restoration can include some changes, strictly controlled with technical-
scientific and historic-critical criteria.

So what do we restore? Restoration regards existing buildings to which we have assigned a peculiar
value, whether it is historical, artistic, aesthetic. Restoration is something more than preservation: it can
carefully function also as re-proposition, re-integration, re-interpretation of these buildings, including the
formal-aesthetical aspects of the results. It’s compulsory a preliminary act of comprehension of the
peculiar values of the building. For Carbonara preservation is essential but not enough.

For Carbonara the interpretation is a hypotesis, and they are not absolute like in Marconi. Are we sure
that your interpretation is the best one? For Carbonara, interpretations are not definitive and they
depend on who does them.

The design coherent to Carbonara theory requires:

- recognizability,
- minimum intervention,
- respect for the authenticity of material permanences because they are unique and unrepeatable
- reversibility, because our interpretation in the future may be wrong. This is the key of this critical
restoration.

First of all we have to preserve and then we can add something to better identify the value that we found
more important with our interpretation.

In Statue of Domiziano-Nerva were preserved the parts that were still surviving, but to better understand
the quality of the sculture it was added an element that put in the correct position the surviving
elements. This new element is recognizable, and provides an added value to the statue.

In the Church of Santa Chiara in Rimini Carbonara said two things:

- if this the result of a demolition and reconstruction this is wrong;
- if it was demolished by accident the approach is not wrong because it was suggested the volume with
a recognizable modern language, but from nacho architectural point of view it may be made better.

In Casa Silvestri in Milano Carbonara said that we don’t have to lose unity to have something that we
can’t understand.

In Bologna, the San Filippo Neri oratorio was damaged during the second World War. Cervellati,
followed an approach closed to Carbonara’s one. It wasn’t remove anything, also the worst things were
maintained because every interpretation is temporary. It was added a lot of things to better understand
the reading of the church. It was used wood because it is recognizable and easily removable.

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In Rome, Crypta Balbi, were used steel bars to support the ancient element, in a recognizable and
reversible way.

Emanuele Fidone in the Basilica Paleocristiana of Siracusa kept everything as it was, but adding
something to suggest the reading of the complex historical evolution. It was recognizable and reversible
letting people to read the two main phases of its history. He changed the door because at the beginning
the church had a sort of pronao. So he proposed to insert this door that don’t let ou immediately the old
church. In this case it wasn’t needed, but for the interpretation it was necessary. So is not always possible
to do preservation and restoration at the same time.

In critical-preservative restoration:

- the main purpose is the preservation of the building, aimed to avoid the day of materials which
constitute the buildings;

- critical, the final result of all the operation is:

- removal of decay;
- adaptation to juridical
- ….

All the problems must be resolved together and not one by one, helping the read of historical values.

Amedeo Bellini

Amedeo Bellini is one of the main figure of School fo Milan and he developed the first applications of
John Ruskin theory.

What do we restore? Buildings may be many things: object of art, historical monuments. But they are
mainly material documents, material books. The value is located in the material. In roman buildings we
know many things thanks to architecture, and the study of them. The same can be said for the cultures.
Once we now those informations we can make our interpretations. I may study this potentiality in many
different ways that leads to my interpretation. For Bellini is wrong to change te building following my
interpretation. The building is a book that we have to preserve independently by all the infinite
interpretation. Artistic interpretations are relative, but all the interpretation are relative.

So for Bellini we have to do only one thing: preservation. But this means that we can’t do anything?

The integral preservation is not possible. Sometime some buildings are slowly consumed; it is technically
possible to preserve some decay parts; the preservation is not compatible with other vital needs or
juridical requirements.

Bellini suggests the knowledge as the careful preliminary studies of the buildings. A wider knowledge
allow to gather further meanings from the buildings, valorizing and making more evident their
potentialities as “material documents”. A deep knowledge of the building allow to better post out a
weel-aware preservation plan, reducing as much as possible removals and damages.

Moreover every part of this building can be used to have more informations from the past.

The intervention that have t be done are:

- removal of the causes of the decay;
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- minimum works fro adapting the buildings to the needs to contemporary fruition;
- to preserve the authenticity of the ancient materials.
Removals are ok only if they are strictly needed and we can add something to reestablish a new use in
the present. It is no allowed to remake lost parts, new interventions became further stratifications and the
addiction must be contemporary and recognizable.

In Palazzo Pallavicino in Cremona was made a complete preservation approach. It needed a new use
aimed to preservation. Everything was kept as it was, beocuse the role of the architect is to preserve the
potentiality of knowledge. This was a very difficult process because it was needed to map every different
material.

In this kind of intervention everything must ben made with quality because it is a symbol of our époque.

EXERCISE

1. The Castle, the trace

2. Corridor Piccolo, the broken link

3. Ramparts San Giovanni, the square

4. City Gate Imperiale, the accessibility

1. Chose one area

2. Chose a restoration and conservation contemporary theorist

3. Identify the type of approach: conservation or restoration

4. Identify the limits and the potentialities of each approach

5. Design an idea according to approach chosen through sketches