The rhetoric of the real in the contemporary city. Three English architecture renovations

This paper aims to investigate the operational methods through which, over the past ten years, three buildings have been re-designed by three English Architects Studios: Caruso St John-Tate Britain-, Sergison Bates -Hult Business School London-, 6a Architects -Raven Row Gallery-. These interventions show a specific sensitivity to pre-existing architecture. The material constituents of the previous architecture are considered as an interior landscape (rather than a problem) which the project has the responsibility to continue and integrate with. This radical revolution of perspectives is the product of a non-linear creativity selection in which some elements have to be ennobled and conserved, while some other presences can be obliterated. The time of the choice in this rhetoric dialogue of the real consistencies is the crucial moment in the designing process. This attitude takes care of the memory as a fundamental part of the project. This group of architects is deeply rooted in a strong English tradition that considers history and physical presence as witnesses of incommensurate human value. Influential theorists were J. Ruskin and E. Violet le Duc, and, in a more recent time, the charismatic figures of A. and P. Smithsons with their architecture “As found” approach are the references for these operations. Architectural objects, often lacking in formal protection but not in value, are returned to the city’s life with their meaningful aspect made by the overlapping of material traces. Structures and patinas are respected not because they are historically bound to some extraordinary events, but because they can evoke the memory of past time. From this point of view, different spaces from different ages are allegorically connected in a reconfigured perception produced by the observer. This strategy, as well as having conceptual and perceptive purposes, has substantial ecological and social implications. The architecture of these public spaces is based on minimising the interventions and the costs of transformation, as much as restoring dignity to apparently marginal spaces. The architectural choices are leaded by a powerful nonlinear and political view played to re-include the buildings in the city, and through this, the community that refers to it.