The architect dialogues with Saint Augustine

The architect dialogues with saint augustine

Giovanni Multari (Università degli Studi di Napoli - Federico II)

Surely, the projects for the restoration of the Bourbon military district in Casagiove and the restoration of the Pirelli skyscraper in Milan are representing the meanings, values, and ideals of what we have called the links. We have always carried out this kind of research with great care and respect for the existing heritage, relying on the knowledge as the first and most important act of design. The large factory, first a barracks then a hospital, has now become a place of community, activating new relationships and opening up the large courtyards to a necessary public use. From here, the system of plant architectures welcomes the new programmes, implemented through a strategy that always produces a process action, made of subtractions, additions and connections. It is a space for different cultures, welcoming, inclusive, and crossable. In the same years, the meeting with Gio Ponti and his most representative and exemplary building.

Our strategy was the same: knowledge and possible actions aimed at preserving a monument of the second half of the twentieth century, taking on board the lesson of the great architect contained in every detail of the Pirelli building and made explicit in the text “Listening to the building”, in his essay Amate l’architettura (Loving Architecture) of 1957.