Reconstruction, Addition, Grafting, Overlapping and Subtraction. Five Approaches to Intervention in Historic Contexts

The theme of designing in historic contexts is as old as the history of human construction. It could be said that every construction is a redesign of something pre-existing, whether artificial or natural. Since antiquity, the act of rewriting atop an existing building is determined, beyond merely functional aspects, by the desire to mark a gap, an interruption in a pre-existing condition. This occurs through the strong, and in some cases even violent, introduction of something new; an act that also comports a re-semantization of the building to be modified. The present text proposes an analysis of this operation through five approaches to intervention. Each category features a comparison between an ancient and a modern project. The categories of reconstruction, addition, grafting, overlapping and subtraction refer to an equal number of relationships with pre-existing elements, in other words, five different ways of reading history in relation to new eras, new uses and new ideologies that leave indelible signs on a building. The text concludes with a unique case study, the object of a reconstruction, addition, grafting, overlap and subtraction, currently underway. While of lesser historic importance than the other buildings analysed, it nonetheless refers to the complexity and contradictions that are an inevitable part of any intervention in a historic context.