rebuilding
The ideal in architecture is fully conceived just when a building in all its separate parts and in the whole corresponds perfectly to its aim from a physical and spiritual point of view. (K.F. Schinkel,1833)
This publication is conceived to briefly represent a research work that has impacted on teaching activities and that concerns the role of architectural design, related both to urban changes in highly historicized contexts and to the testing of theoretical postulates through the operational dimension of the project itself. The research, where teaching experience has made its first steps forward, arises from the desire to evaluate a precise moment of European architecture which fits into the large urban variations of the 19th century, able to project their influence until now, and into some components of contemporary architecture in its classical and Mediterranean matrixes. The opportunity offered by the current international debate about the reconstruction of the building for the Baukademie, realized by Karl Friedrich Schinkel from 1831 and demolished in 1961 after war damages, has allowed this ongoing research at the University of Florence to take on a specific dimension in a relevant European urban context: starting from Jean Chrétien Selter’s plans in 1811, this is recently changing and still in progress with the interventions on the Museum Island of the Chipperfield’s studio and Professor Franco Stella. This fruitful condition has enabled the work not only to rely on the definition of theoretical assumptions or on the accurate understanding of those urban projects occurred over the years in order to determine the place identity and character, of those constitutive models and those structural and spatial measures; but also to encourage the role of the project as a testing of this complex system. The debate on the reconstruction of the Bauakademie is extremely active in Berlin and in all German and European architectural culture starting from 1990. After the demolition of a ministry building erected on the original foundations of the Schinkel’s building, a call for the reconstruction project of the Bauakademie was launched in 2017, promoted - among others - by the Technische Universität, the Akademie der Kunste and the Berlin Municipality, organized by the director of the Deutsches Architekturmuseum in Frankfurt and widespread thanks to the journal Arch+. The initiative had a strong impact on the collective culture with exhibitions, presentations and events in Berlin. It also led to the definition of a charter of intents for the reconstruction of the building called Bauakademie Code. The developed projects - among which
