The consumption of endless resources and land cannot define our contemporary approach to the making of architecture which should, on the other hand, be concerned with the re-use, repair and regeneration of our built environment. With the highest number of UNESCO world heritage sites globally, the notion of re-use when explored within the complex and fragile Italian context is particularly interesting. It is refreshing to see that in the eyes of a group of young architects this is not seen as a limit, but rather taken as an opportunity and almost a generational duty. In this conversation with the ReUse Italy team, we explore the varied cultural and educational agenda that the team is undertaking which spans from the organisation of international competitions, workshops, exhibitions and most recently also publications to ensure the activation of Italy’s rich and abandoned cultural heritage.
KOOZ The cultural project Reuse Italy stems from the premise and fact that the Italian landscape is full of forgotten historical buildings and it has the long-term goal of focusing the public attention on this issue. Can you please expand on why you decided to concentrate on this area of enquiry and brought forward this agenda?
REUSE ITALY Inside the difficult historical frame of our time - when everybody is finally recognising that energy resources are limited and that the consumption of the territory is not an option anymore - we believe that the refurbishment of the abandoned historical heritage represents the main challenge especially for our country, Italy, along with the fact that architectural design plays a fundamental role in tackling this issue.
Italy is the country with the biggest number of UNESCO world heritage sites globally, and this data perfectly reflects the complexity and richness of our fragile territory; we have to deal with our heritage on a daily basis. Someone can say that it is a limit, but we believe it should be taken as an opportunity.
Staying in Italy is somehow a life mission for young architects, but we firmly believe reusing our built heritage is a generational duty, and we will keep pursuing this mission.
Nowadays, staying in Italy is somehow a life mission for young architects, but we firmly believe reusing our built heritage is a generational duty, and we will keep pursuing this mission.
These are the reasons why we started organising cultural activities about Italian built heritage, acting both globally and locally. If you think about it, our competitions are global, but the exhibitions and the themes we tackle are local. The workshop is international, and its final exhibition is a public event in Florence. This duality is essential.
In fact, one of the main goals of our organisation is to promote the debate around abandoned buildings both in Italy and abroad, to raise public awareness regarding this problem, and to make this issue more central in the public debate.
KOOZ Through the organisation of competitions, lectures and workshops you both seek to show how these historic artefacts can be re-used, whilst also engaging a diverse audience within this activation process. Could you tell us a bit more about how each of these formats works independently and as a programme?
RI Our cultural project has the long-term goal of focusing the public attention on the issue of abandoned heritage promoting activities that show how it is still possible to bring back life inside those ruins. In the activation of any renovation process architectural projects play a crucial role.
We have planned many activities in the last four years, including international contests and local exhibitions. In a certain way, we started from the beginning to physically gather talented people who were interested in the issue of forgotten heritage.
We always feel the necessity to develop our mission in different ways, to spread the effectiveness of our actions. The development of a critical culture of architectural restoration has always been the core of our mission and, at a certain point, we believed that fostering the education of future architects would have contributed to create a community of people united by the same will to save valuable ruins. These are the reasons why we decided to start offering an educational experience: a summer architecture workshop here in Florence.
We are currently researching new ways to work on the issue of abandoned ruins. For example, we have released a book including essays from worldwide academic scholars, and we have also just published four Dossiers, one for each ruin we have dealt with.
Our cultural project has the long-term goal of focusing the public attention on the issue of abandoned heritage promoting activities that show how it is still possible to bring back life inside those ruins.
KOOZ How and through what tools does the project seek to re-activate these abandoned sites in the collective and political imaginary?
RI The re-use of the forgotten ruins is our final ambition. We firmly believe that a bottom-up approach is a powerful process to activate real change, especially when the political institutions have previously failed. The community consensus around the future of an abandoned ruin is a sempiternal driving force, it must always be the tipping point to begin any activity, and the design proposals of creative minds from all over the world have proven to be capable of inspiring the public imagination. The projects developed during our activities generally provide hope to the citizenry, who have the opportunity to visualise their ruin alive again.
All the activities are thus based on the ultimate goal to positively help local communities. This is why the organisation always establishes partnerships with local stakeholders, with whom we coordinate all activities. For instance, we have worked on a castle near Pisa and, together with a local association of citizens, we turned it from private to public. We have also worked with the archaeological park of Campi Flegrei, near Naples, to re-activate a Roman reservoir lost in the scenery of 1970s property speculation. After centuries, it is now open again for visits and events. Then we worked on the challenge of the depopulation crisis - a common fact in southern Italy's small towns - by promoting the reuse of a church, and we re-opened abandoned houses for a diffuse exhibition. All the ruins have different problems, and they must be treated with a particular attention to local issues.
The re-use of the forgotten ruins is our final ambition. We firmly believe that a bottom-up approach is a powerful process to activate real change, especially when the political institutions have previously failed.
KOOZ Your latest workshop was sited within the Castle of Montemassi. Why did you choose this site for this year’s workshop? Which criteria usually inform the selection of your sites? What is for you the power of the architectural imaginary?
RI It all started from a casual inspection in the area of Maremma, a large region between Tuscany and Lazio, studded by several small mediaeval towns on the top of the hills. Montemassi was somehow special, the Castle was fascinating and the municipality had already started to schedule some interventions to make it accessible again. It also had a strong relationship with the landscape, facing the valley below toward the seaside, as a benchmark, so we realised that it was perfect for our proposal.
As it happens during Reuse competitions, participants of the workshop have fallen in love with this ruin. The appeal of this castle was instantaneous (it is like an altar over the territory) and we literally felt goosebumps when we saw it for the first time. Its territorial atmosphere with its material simplicity are two elements that the participants have captured in their proposal and enhanced perfectly. This workshop embraced again our mission to prove that it is still possible to activate new functions inside these ancient spaces after no human being has used them for centuries.
We consider the Castle of Montemassi unique: it is spectacular and evocative, and it has all the characteristics to suggest great design proposals.
Its territorial atmosphere with its material simplicity are two elements that the participants have captured in their proposal and enhanced perfectly.
Drawings are the main language of architectural visualisation, and they have the power to move people inside. As you can understand, thanks to an architectural project the idea of showing the true potential of a ruin always finds a way to trigger the collective imaginary in our activities. We intervene wherever there is a local community’s feeling around architectural heritage. Even if the ruins have been forgotten for so many centuries, and local people do not know how to save them, the reuse projects represent the spark that activates the collective imagination. This is the mysterious power of the architectural imaginary.
KOOZ From re-envisioning the castle as an amusement park to rethinking it as a site for a hyper-luxurious Spa or a walkway which would enable access to all, what are your impressions on the variety of proposals developed by the students?
RI Regarding the design proposals, we provided each time a detailed program to the participants right at the beginning but, at the same time, we assured them a certain freedom according to the multifaceted contributions they would have received from the lecturers and the tutors during the workshop.
After a critical analysis of the ruins most of the teams felt the necessity to perform substantial gestures to give value to the castle, even if it implied breaking the constraints of the initial program. Every time we call for projects creativity is the leading quality we look for in the entries. We always encourage participants to be brave and to submit unexplored ways to reuse the space, letting their imagination run free.
The spectrum of presented solutions is underpinned by a collective desire to rethink the unity of a fragment and the multiplicity of languages, spatial solutions and, above all, the different materials chosen.
What the participants' projects on the Castle have shown as a whole, thanks to the richness in their diversity, is how the existing artefact - presenting itself in its current unfinished form whose value is determined by a critical reading - can offer degrees of freedom.
From an overall vision of the projects it emerges how the spectrum of presented solutions is underpinned by a collective desire to rethink the unity of a fragment and the multiplicity of languages, spatial solutions and, above all, the different materials chosen, offer valuable answers and design solutions every time.
KOOZ You just launched the competition “Reuse the Nymphaeum – Genazzano”. What are your expectations for this international competition?
RI Reuse the Nymphaeum is the fifth edition of our international contests. We selected a ruin of stunning beauty for this edition. The competition is supported by a local association that has been taking care of this ruin for a very long time. It is a unique architecture in terms of typology: there are no other examples of isolated nymphaeum buildings from the Reinassance. Moreover, its attribution to the famous architect Donato Bramante is currently not 100% confirmed. Despite the mystery that still remains about some construction phases, it represents a masterpiece of Renaissance architecture, lost on the slope of the hill, just outside the village of Genazzano.
We are sure that participants will be able to enhance its value through the power of architectural imagination and their design, so we are really looking forward to seeing the final design proposals.
In terms of reuse, we hope that this competition will be the opportunity to shed a light over such a precious architectural ruin, and to start a restoration process with the purpose of its preservation and reuse after centuries of abandonment.
We hope that this competition will be the opportunity to shed a light over such a precious architectural ruin, and to start a restoration process with the purpose of its preservation and reuse after centuries of abandonment.
KOOZ Beyond the Italian context, how important is it for you to safeguard both our historical and contemporary built environment and rethink ways in which this can be re-used, repaired and regenerated for a more sustainable approach to architecture?
RI The 1964 Venice restoration charter stated that "The conservation of monuments is always favoured by their use in functions useful to society". In order to limit land consumption and optimise the use of the already available resources, the reuse and restoration of the architectural heritage should be the first and most important purpose.
The Italian case is paradigmatic because a consistent part of the built environment can be considered historical, thus adding the conservation needs of the architectural heritage to the demands of sustainability. However, the principle is valid for any other context, where the reuse of heritage is still the best sustainable approach to architecture.
For this reason while fostering our activities we encourage the culture of reuse and restoration to an international audience, with the aim of raising awareness on these issues, especially among students who will become the future architects of our planet.
Bio
ReUse Italy is a cultural project which promotes the re-use of the forgotten historical buildings in Italy, in team with national organizations, institutions, worldwide famous architects and the local citizenry.
Federica Zambeletti is the founder and managing director of KoozArch. She is an architect, researcher and digital curator whose interests lie at the intersection between art, architecture and regenerative practices. In 2015 Federica founded KoozArch with the ambition of creating a space where to research, explore and discuss architecture beyond the limits of its built form. Parallel to her work at KoozArch, Federica is Architect at the architecture studio UNA and researcher at the non-profit agency for change UNLESS where she is project manager of the research "Antarctic Resolution". Federica is an Architectural Association School of Architecture in London alumni.
