Istruzioni per l'USO

Abstract

The reasons for the marginality of the theme of use in the debate on restoration are profound and complex: we can think of the distance sometimes created between the culture of restoration and areas which are considered more 'utilitarian' or which refer to architectural design. More in general, we think of visions that have "aestheticized" or "historicized" ancient architecture, and which have limited the theme of the re-use of buildings to a negligible or maybe even autonomous question that is however not completely irrelevant for the purposes of restoration, so much so that reuse is considered the 'means' to achieve the 'aim' of conservation. This marginality, on the other hand, is easily documented through the examination of bibliographic production in the field of architectural restoration: it is significant that no reference to the theme of re-use is present in the early publications aimed at summarizing the history of restoration theories elaborated after World War II.

Architecture, especially that of the past, has always been conceived as a product of human activity that challenges the passage of time and the changes that occur around it. In recent decades, contemporary culture has instead introduced a conception of reality in which continuous change is a condition of the existence of objects, structures and human beings: things “are” not  but "become". This assumption also encourages us to consider architecture as a set of relationships formed over time, according to the socio-cultural changes of different societies. Consequently, even the aims of interventions on existing structures should abandon a static concept of architecture, orienting a disciplinary status towards a process, whereby one can converge methods, knowledge and technological skills in view of a continuous interdisciplinary exchange.

Moreover, in this part of the work, the author tries to clarify the term ‘use’, from several points of view, given that the territory of terminological disquisitions is traditionally very popular in restoration, even though it has never really produced useful results. According to the author, focusing research on the declinations of the term ‘use’, is more relevant. For this reason the structure of the present work is organized in three main sections, disUSE, reUSE and abUSE, which could more directly represent the implications and problems connected to the theme of USE.