Restaurar la arquitectura, cambiar el uso, modificar el sentido

Many people attribute to Cassiodoro the institution of restoration practices as early as the sixth century a. C. In fact, the recommendations of the prefect of the Theodoric Emperor, contained in the Variae, urged to keep alive the stones of the past and to reuse this great heritage inherited from previous generations. It is interesting to read those words, obviously bearing in mind that they are born in a specific cultural climate, in light of our “stones”, which also come from a more recent past, to understand the cultural mechanisms that impel us to intervene in constructed not only physically but also symbolically. The largest reuse operations, in fact, not only pass from the material intervention, but are also supported by a process of cultural re-signification. Architecture works, urban environments and, nowadays, increasingly, landscape, are the object of processes of re-cognition and reconstruction of the meaning that comes from a profound change in sensibility. In our opinion, analyzing the intellectual and cultural fabric behind reuse operations opens up interesting research horizons for the present and for the future work of architects.