In search of a possible dialogue between restoration and ruins. From ekphrasis to the ‘new whole’ evoked by the architectural fragment

The ruins, the buildings in the state of ruins, the architectural fragments that characterize a landscape are increasingly involved in planning interventions; however, these interventions often go beyond the narrow field of conservation, which has as its aim the transmission to the future of the values still existent from pre-existence, but also from that of restoration in its present meaning, to encroach on real compositional exercises where the new architecture does not enter into any relationship with the ancient. It is possible, however, to glimpse in contemporary work also a conscious attention to the aesthetic and historical values transmitted by the buildings to the state of ruins that in their transformation have found a new balance. The relationship that is established over time with the environmental context makes the ruin ‘second work of art’ characterized by a new spatiality. This new spatiality will have to be considered both if there are still residual formal traces able to tell the historical past of the pre-existence (and also any relationship with other architectural emergencies, such as in the case of a fortified system to defend and control a given territory), both when the pre-existence in its fragmentary state has become a ‘new whole’.