Il restauro nell’epoca dell’apparenza: quando intervenire diventa rinnovare

After a few decades since the start of the debate on the architectural finishes conservation, even today a misunderstood concept of restoration tends to systematically renew the surfaces of architecture, erasing the signs of time and past events. Starting from this observation, this article is a reflection not only on the material damage caused by unnecessary interventions on architectural surfaces (e.g. extreme cleaning of stone materials, substitution of finishes with inappropriate materials or products) but also on the intangible damage achieved from it (the diffusion of a “kitsch restoration” that uses history for consumer purposes) and on the origins of a presumed and unjustified division between surfaces and architecture. It is assumed, in fact, that some important ways for documentation, successfully proposed and realized in the context of restoration since the early Nineties, may have helped to dissociate the ‘representation’ of the architectural surface from the complex material reality of architecture. The geographical context of these considerations is that of post-seismic reconstruction in Abruzzo; observing the results so far achieved and the rare experiments that avoid to remove the memory of the traumatic event, we try to compare the reasons for the preservation of authenticity (where existent) and the motivations for renewal. The result is a general reflection on restoration and the discrepancy observed between the ‘inner’ awareness of the discipline and the ‘outer’ (sometimes antithetical) perception, as well as between study methods addressed to architecture and individual specialized approaches on different materials or artefacts. So, it seems that the unity of methodology (and of purposes) is today broken up into different orientations, with goals that are not always clear and coherent with the discipline.