abUSO

Abstract

Considering architecture as an ‘open work’, always and in any case interpretable, can lead to the risk of encroaching into the territory of abuse: in the misunderstanding of the ancient building’s meaning by the users, or in the self-referential nature of the project. This part of the work concerns the attempt to outline an approach to translate the reflections provided by semiotic analysis into criteria which are useful for highlighting the critical aspects of an intervention and guiding the transformation process.

In this perspective, the boundaries within which the intervention can be implemented are, on the one hand, the protection of the authenticity of the material, which guarantees the transmission of the good and; on the other hand, the possibility that the architecture can be re-read and re-interpreted through new meanings.

The intervention on pre-existing buildings also requires a balance between the needs of users and those of preservation of the materiality of the building, constituting the central node of the question of the new use.

The main difficulty in defining an instrument which is useful for an assessment of the quality of the use of a historic building is the overall control of transformations and transversal effects on different fronts, as the peculiarities of existing buildings make the use of models based on new design processes essential.

In this part of the work, in conclusion, the author proposes the elaboration of a verification grid in which the different levels of semiotic analysis are compared with the aim of obtaining indications that, although susceptible to interpretation, can guide the conservation processes.