Premessa

Abstract

Although the use of old buildings has been always considered a guarantee of continuation in itself, we should underline that, in Italy, re-use has generally been considered as a secondary issue of the architectural restoration discipline.

In the field of historical architecture, if intended as a depository of finished and immutable values, the re-use has always been seen as a necessary but also traumatic operation, as it causes inevitable sacrifices in terms of materials and aesthetics. Consequently, in the field of restoration, this approach inhibited a wider reflection about the relationship between transformation – intended as the transmission of old architecture to the contemporary age -, and preservation – intended as a guarantee of the permanence of its tangible and intangible values.

But what happens if we look at architecture as an “open work”, therefore changeable in the semantic field, and at the conservation project as the place to manage these changes?

The present work, a re-elaborated version of the PhD thesis of the author, is an attempt to answer this question, through some reflections on the theme of the use of historical architecture and the role that the use may assume within a conservation project.