WHY WE PRESERVE HISTORICAL BUILDINGS?

Prof. Anna Anzani

Tutor: M. Guarisco
Collaborators: C. Fignon, A. Formizzi, M. Muner, A. Stella
02.03.18
Dwelling, as well as breathing,
interacting with people,
producing culture,
is one of the forms in which we
develop
our way of being in the world.

Physical places are the scenario

in which
the most significant human
relationships take place.

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DWELLING IS BEING EVERYWHERE AT HOME

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REUSE
The reuse of buildings has been initially developed as a method of
protecting historically significant buildings from demolition.
Nowaday, it offers not only a way to enhance the potential of
existing built heritage but also a sustainable alternative to our
ever-increasing throw-away society, given the imperative need to
stop the consumption of land and energy.
From an anthropological point of view, places that have memory
possess the quality of making us feel intimate with them.
 Places have memories. Memory is not
in our heads, it is inscribed in the world.
Restoration is a recovery of memory,
the cure of amnesia.

In our time we are experiencing a

psychic disorientation, a loss of
memory due to the excess of
construction, development, movement.
The continuous destruction of buildings
for creating new ones correspond to a
lobotomy, a loss of memories and
images.
(J. Hillman)
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 Memory is a complex experience

• Remind (mind) mental memory

• Record (cordis, heart) emotional memory

• Remember (membrorum, limbs) muscular memory

(L. Marchino, 2011)

 As well as our body, the host of individual memory,
can be the place of blocks and suffering,
in the same way our city, the host of collective memory,
can be the place of disorientation.
IDENTITY

There are places that

have meanings for entire
communities, conveying
fragments that give
meaning to present days
and build our identity.
 E
C
IDENTITY
O
Our identity is our
L
feeling of being

O
continuous in time
and separate (but

G
connected) with
other people.
I
A
Using the space where we live is
a process which develops in
time.

Not only in our time, but also in

the time of other people, even
with other people who lived in the
past, whose time and memory
certainly play an important role in
our perception and recognition
of a place.
IDENTITY

History is also violence, and often the space of big

cities has been hit and fully bears the signs of
wounds.

This vulnerability and this memory are similar to

those of the human body, and they undoubtedly
make us feel the city so close, so moving.

Our identities are at stake when the "form of the

city" changes, and we can certainly imagine what
the most brutal disruption have represented to their
victims.

(Marc Augè)
 VIETNAM MEMORIAL
WASHINGTON

A wall that sinks into the earth,

not heroic but tragic.

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Ground Zero di New York
The void as an icon of
destruction
(E. Morezzi) 15
THE HIROSHIMA DOME

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The ancient center of Warsaw

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RECONSTRUCTION OF
THE MOSTAR BRIDGE

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 MEMORY
Space liveability is based not only on
rational and functional aspects, but
also on values that allow us to feel a
sense of belonging with places and to
recognize them, including them into
our internal maps.
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 The intervention on
existing buildings
requires to apply
a "design"
dimension of
memory
and at the same time
to propose innovative
models: this is
required by our
biological nature,
strongly connected to
our incessant
evolutionary process.
 The project on existing assets
should capture
the revolutionary force of the past
(P. Pasolini)
listening to what the built architecture is
able to transmit,
especially in terms of latent
potentialities
to be developed in an innovative and
sustainable way.
Reuse project:
an equilibrium
between past and
future

Picture by R. Pane

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 TRANSDISCIPLINARITY

Starting from the human dimension, especially

relational, which is typical of a design approach, a
dialogue between interior design and restoration will be
proposed, enhancing the cultural attitude of restoration,
often overshadowed by technical attitudes.
I believe that a cross fertilization between design and
restoration can allow to promote beauty, identity and
memory both as public goods and as essential
dimensions of collective and individual well-being
A transdisciplinary approach can help understanding
the complexity of contemporary society: we need to
give value not only to a functional but also to an
experiential use of spaces.
A cross-fertilization process with other disciplines, like
psychology and interior design, can help architectural
restoration gaining significant inspiration from the
memory layered in complex historical spaces,
implementing innovation with individual and
community well-being and "happiness".
 BORDERS

In the borders, interests

and worlds that normally
are artificially considered
separate can be
integrated.

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 RESTORATION
AND BEAUTY

DESIGN AND PSICHOLOGY

MEMORY AND ECOLOGY

BODY
identity and
community
 BEAUTY

The aesthetic experience should constitute

not an exception
but a normal attribute of our daily existence.
The aesthetic enjoyment of environmental
values must be the foundation of the "right
to the city".
(R. Pane)

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BELLEZZA
 Psychological values

"We don’t want to preserve past

dimensions and images because we find
them beautiful, or maybe interesting and
curious, but because they are part of our
memory and therefore of our precious
psychological heritage".

(R. Pane)
BOLLINGEN TOWER, G. Jung

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 THE INVISIBLE CITY

The unconscious cannot be

touched with hands, yet it
inhabits every construction and
city, which each of us dreams,
remembers, desires, imagines.

(M. Pignatelli).
 THE SOUL OF
PLACES
2004

Hillman argues that places

have a soul, they are
populated with different
deities, that take on the
thoughts and traditions of
people who have lived
there for centuries or
millennia. The soul of
places breathes together
with the soul of the world
and our soul.
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The intimate quality of a place is due both to the perception
of climate and geography, and to IMAGINATION:
therefore, staying in a place for a long time is necessary
so that the imagination can respond.
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Imagination, narration, oneiric thinking and artistic
production are rooted in the same terrain, they are
different manifestations of CREATIVITY

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