Industrial Architecture and the ‘Production of Evil’: the Risiera di San Sabba

Beyond the boundary that defines what is human and what is inhuman, architecture becomes the material evidence that narrates stories stratified over time and offers the stimulus to investigate dramatic events such as the Shoah. The lager became the instrument of a politics that turned totalitarian, despotic and violent. In this period, existing buildings often served as containers for the ‘production of evil’. In Italy, with Ordinance No. 5 of 1943 and the forced deportation of Jews, numerous buildings were reused for these political purposes. In particular, the research aims to analyse an emblematic case study: the Risiera di San Sabba in Trieste. This is an industrial complex that was used as a Nazi camp and is the only existing case of an extermination camp in Italy. The investigation is conducted through archival and documentary analysis to understand the processes of transformation that the building underwent and the layering of associated collective memory. The successive functional, architectural, and urban transformations are examined through a cross-sectional approach. This involves comparing the original design of the industrial building – a rice husking – its subsequent reuse, first as a Nazi camp and later as a refugee camp, and its current status as a Civic Museum. The remarkable adaptability of the spaces of this architecture demonstrates the relationship between technique, design, and the historical, urban, and territorial context, which has also led to a shift in the semantics of the place. The archival and documentary survey has highlighted reflections and discussions about the building and its several values. Related to this, the approaches, tools and limits of valorisation for transforming collective memory are critically investigated.