Riuso tra antico e moderno. Dalla trasformazione di Palazzo Ardinghelli al ripristino della Colonia Montana a Roio

The reconstruction of L’Aquila is an outstanding issue, rather than a long-awaited conclusion. Therefore it seems untimely to propose a detailed report on the outcomes reached up to now; however, reasoning about what happened, could be useful to understand the dynamics that have characterized the rebuilding phase. The events of almost ten years are iconic representations of a technological and building scenario that has been often addressed only to reasons of building seismic reinforcement, mainly marked by the uncritical use of intervention measures and materials, which despite their ostensible innovation and conformity to building regulations, have not triggered an incisive reflection concerning the “unwritten” congruence principles of architectural restoration. The few proposals, that have tried to take a position against this trend, seem to be more meaningful than others, accepting the design challenge arranged to achieve a better and more rational reorganization of spaces, to reconfigure spatial and functional layouts, according to fitting and updating logics. Among them, the experimental design dealt by some professors of the University of L'Aquila open to an "other" path, based on a methodological approach to functional refurbishment, which is suitable both to interventions on the antique and modern architectures. They are organized on univocal operating phases defining adaptive and resilient strategies in relation to different conditions of the operational and technique context. The paper proposes two case studies: the Palazzo Ardinghelli, and the summer holiday camp “Colonia elioterapica” in Roio, near L’Aquila. In these re-use projects, the space-functional reconfiguration chooses different intervention strategies: in the case of the antique they are based on adaptive logic, which are open and updatable according to different needs of use; in the case of the modern architecture they are connected to a re-proposal of their own logic, in order to reconstruct consistent and compatible ways of use. According to guidelines provided by different clients, the interventions on the eighteenth-century architecture concern single parts in the perspective of a controlled and balanced transformation of the building, while the choice of full preservation of the building for the summer holiday camp entails the inclusion of underground additions. From this point of view chosen strategies would seem to contradict current restoration practices, but they find an intrinsic congruence in the methodological assumptions which have been assumed as a basis for reuse interventions.