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From Italy to India:
Restoration
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ike most other countries, Italy is peacefully going on to devastate its rich but limited territory, consuming its ground at an impressive speed. Every day the equivalent of, approximately, six Piazza Duomo’s are “urbanised” only in the region of Lombardy! Speculation and consumption of soil are widely criticised but still widely practiced. One good thing about Italy is that it is, more than any other country, taking care of existing buildings and towns and sees it as a necessity. It is quite obvious, tourism and culture are crucial sources of income for the country, and they are possible because of the variety, the richness and the unique quality of its landscape and historical heritage. At the same time, the Italian population has been stable if not decreasing for decades, so while speculation is still going on almost undisturbed, its numerous failures are showing with increasing clarity that quantitative growth is not the only option for Italian cities. Since most of new constructions are purely speculative and are not really looking for architectural quality, this is usually easier to achieve in restoration jobs, a field in which Italy has got a very advanced experience. Occasions of designing new buildings are few, so Italian architecture is (on an average) somehow less competitive than other countries when it comes to contemporary architecture. This static situation can be an interesting starting point for new reflections and approaches to architectural design. There is already a certain amount of scepticism to unchecked growth, and a moment will come when cities in the world will resent growth and will have to think seriously about what to do with what is there. These are of course the most straightforward cases of restoration: everyone understands the need of preserving important relics of the past – especially when the global appeal of the country relies on them! But restoring important buildings is just a small part of a broader and more interesting work: extending the knowledge accumulated in the restoration of monuments to more conventional existing buildings and neighbourhoods. Most of the time, restoration is not about important buildings, they are just simple existing buildings: their value is their very existence. It is just cheaper or easier to restore them or extend them than to demolish them and build something else. This design problem will be the real working ground for architects in the future - not new constructions on a tabula rasa. Restoration is sustainable. We already have more than enough buildings and we now have to think about what we should do with them. We see a link between our interest in bringing new functions and design to existing buildings in Italy and the condition of unplanned settlements in India. It seems to us that experience in dealing with existing structures can be useful for working in those neighbourhoods and vice versa. It is increasingly accepted in debates on neighbourhoods such as Dharavi in Mumbai that wholesale redevelopment is not the answer. The extreme spatial constraints that shape Mumbai’s homegrown neighbourhoods have produced urban formations that are also relevant to Italy, for it is becoming a worldwide necessity to deal with existing fabrics, optimising space, resources and scale.
Indian Architect & Builder - July 2012
Michele Bonino & Subhash Mukerjee (MARC)