Carlo Scarpa. Il rinnovamento del patrimonio attraverso l'architettura

The conviction that the Architectural Heritage is more than a material resource, a tourist product, a local identity and more than a historiographic element... that it constitutes the physical reflection of values that characterize our cultural heritage, the gaze of the man into the world and, thus, part of ourselves, and its tutelage and protection are, nowadays, a collective requirement, constitute the basis of the aspirations of the present investigation. Taking this premise as the starting point, the work of Carlo Scarpa is recognized as a model of heritage renewal through architecture, as a sequence of project interventions that have been able to relocate the “existing” into the society, in a comprehensive element that includes the creativity of an architectural work inside. His characteristic integration between heritage values of the existing architectural space-matter and functional, social and creative requirements of a new architectural project, as well as his ability to include innovative materials together with traditional construction methods, to make an intertwined space as a tissue, and to establish emotions and sensations around a totally faithful dialogue between a single element and the set, are particularly interesting for contemporary architecture in heritage contexts, although the extremely expressive formal language becomes, sometimes, a significant impediment to the recognition of conceptual decisions. That’s why the present research, underway in the PhD in Architectural and Urban Engineering at the University of Rome La Sapienza, in joint supervision with the University of Seville, PhD in Architecture, intends to overcome the question of the mere formal solution in the attempt of making evident the relationships between the components, the architect’s work processes, the induced collaborations and the characterizing elements of his work, with the aim of identifying possible project keys that, maybe, shall become useful in the complex current debate on architectural intervention procedures on architectural heritage.