Il complesso dell’ex-ospedale San Salvatore a L’Aquila: il contributo del restauro per il progetto di un nuovo polo universitario

One of the Strategic Projects of L’Aquila, which plan to transform the former San Salvatore Hospital in a University Campus, is the occasion to apply the Conservation methodology to a different context (a building complex that can be defined as “hybrid”). It was built in the 20th century near pre-existing buildings, some of them demolished (the Church of St. Maria in Guasto), some others re-used and modified for functional requirements of the past (the former Monastery of St. Agnes). This paper provides a specific contribution (in the field of Architectural Conservation) to the “regeneration project” of the urban complex, so that the new use may be compatible with the preservation of what remains of the former buildings and with their meaning. The method is to identify - through the study of archival documents - the earlier buildings materials traces and to ensure their preservation and integration in the new building, not in a “passive” way (as a kind of archaeological material exposition), but with a reverse procedure, in which the project accepts the incitements provided by the analysis of historical context and by the acknowledgement of its multiple and stratified values. The analysis is developed on different and interconnected levels: on one hand, the study of existing buildings (by investigating the constructive stratification and by detecting the additions that alter the building understanding) identifies what elements must be safeguarded and what, instead, can be modified. On the other hand, the historical reading of the urban context (which has been greatly transformed by the construction of the hospital and of the new roads system) aims to return a part of the city which had been alienated from the civic attendance. Through the usual instruments of Conservation (here used in a new circumstance) the study traces the history of the buildings that marked those places, so that the new project may be based on the recognition of the site values and their authentic transmission.