War damages and restoration.

Defensive works, damages, building and urban intervention

practices, after the second World War.
Politecnico di Milano
Abstract

The aim of this research is to investigate, qualitatively and quantitatively, intervention practices carried
out in the years of post war reconstruction, both at architectural and urban level.
The study, starting from the analysis of bibliographic materials about this argument, will investigate a
wide range of intervention practices that took place during and after the war (preventive measures,
defensive works, restoration) selecting emblematic examples (both of single building and extensive
urban districts). The kind of analysis we want to do regards non only the relationship between the
different requests which deeply sign the historical city, partially at least.
We necessary consider to analyse and to comparison the different knowledge and experiences in this
field, as a preliminary statement for a comprehensive reinterpretation of post-war reconstruction and of
the reasons of the different orientations and operative choices.
We particularly consider to study in depth the decisional processes which been contributed to the
reconfiguration of the historical city as it is to day too, about the technical point of view, like result of
theoretic reflection, practical knowledge, operative means.
The research will also examine closely different technical and theoretical issues that took place after the
II World War.
This kind of analyses will be used for all the situations in which after more than half a century its
necessary to make new interventions in those parts of the city or in those monuments rebuilt,
reconstructed, restored, reused in that time. <<<
Principal Investigator

Amedeo Bellini Politecnico di MILANO

Research Objectives

After Second World War, the theme of reconstruction gives a series of new questions to the Italian
discipline of Restore.
First of all, the discipline had to understood the application of philological principles in the occurrence
of serious damages and the possibility to adapt the interventions of reconstruction to the Card of
Restore. Then, the large scale of damages encouraged to approach not jet the restore of buildings but
also the restore of cities.
This epistemological passage puts forward new fields of study: the possibilities to apply restore to
urban area and, in this light, the necessity to consider the Second War reconstruction of cities as
technical, social, economical and environmental problem.
One more crucial theme emerges: its the approach to modern architecture and its interpretation and the
related methods to manage the relationship between modern and ancient buildings or modern
architecture and historical urban area.
In this period, the theme of reconstruction has two different sides. The first, is based on a political,
economical and also social interpretation of architecture and urban planning. The second inside the
culture of restore is totally based on an aesthetical approach (far from the needs of society). The result
of these conditions were improvise and un-planning solutions.
In Italy is available a considerable literature on reconstruction practices and experiences but only few
notes ad researches regarding damages entity in monuments and historical towns. We have some well-

know cases (Florence and Verona are typical examples of that) but we need a large and precise
reconstruction of war damages repairing practices an policies
Its useful to set up a research based on documents and sources never analysed before. We have to
understand which operative choices were applied to preserve monuments and historical towns before,
during and after the Second World War. Bomb effects had deep impact on urban assets as well on their
surrounding reconstruction, for that reason at present time, a lot of Italian towns are material documents
of these procedures.
At the scale of building, repairing practices was finalised to increase volumes and fabbricative areas.
And, in the case of monuments, repairing approach was based on the reintegration of the image. In this
period were also developed concrete and new technology related to new constructive practices and
methods.
Research purpose is reading Second World War restore and reconstructive procedure and effects in
Italian cities . Reconstruction practices are usually the expression of historical, material and local
conditions. In the matter of facts, cities are distant from the mythic idea of a common tradition on
which are mostly based conservative urban policies.
In this light, for the actual culture of restore, post War period had anticipated the need for rapid
rebuilding and repairing in occurrence of traumatic damages on a vast scale.
Such a systematic study about Italian cities, could be correlated to the International debate on urban and
architectural reconstruction and restoration, whose analysis would seems to be particularly useful for
the comprehension of similar dynamics, at the European scale, by comparable methodological and
operative approaches.
The research about realized interventions is supposed to allow methodological suggestions for current
restoration intervention. For all these reasons the project was joined by UNESCO, the British School in
Roma (who is going to catalogue, digitize and publish on Web site the J. B. Ward-Perkins photographic
collection relative to the war damage occurred to Italian monuments during the II World War), the
American Academy in Roma (archive MFAA Commission archives, who contains documentation
about American activity for the protection of Italian monuments in the period 1943-1946). <<<
First Results

Starting from contributions and knowledges already dedicated to this subject available in recent and
historically settled bibliography, the analysis will be oriented, for the first year, towards the collecting
of data in order to explore and integrate the existing bibliography.
During the second year the research units will collect files about damaged and repaired buildings and
urban areas and particularly: recording of the traces actually present on the city woven that are relating
to war damage; elaboration of metrological reliefs of structural elements and finishes with the creation
of specific catalogue forms; filling on the field, through inspections of a sample meaningful for
historical area and chronology, of catalogue forms completed with metric and photographic reliefs of
the structural elements and finishes; catalogue forms of structural and finishes solutions realized
according to traditional or innovative methods; identification of the present estate of the buildings; files
of examples of intervention with techniques.
During the second year the work will be carry out a critical synthesis of the research process previously
executed, both in general terms and through the selection and analysis of specific emblematic examples.
In this fase the investigation of technical issues will be related to the disciplinary debate that took place
in Italy after the war (in Milan, in particular, and Naples, where it started up).
The examination of effective results of post-war reconstruction will be compared not only with
restoration theories, but also with other disciplines involved in the cultural debate, such as architecture

and urban planning, in a perspective aimed to put in relationship technical and cultural characters of
those interventions with todays problems in restoration of the same buildings or urban districts. <<<
Timescale

24 months
National and international background

The wealth of the disciplinary debate about reconstruction in Italy after the II World War represents the
starting-point for critical researches about operative manners which took origin in that historical and
cultural context.
On the other side, the distance between the disciplines involved in that process (restoration,
architecture, urban planning ) requires today to examine closely put in comparison different
knowledges and experiences in this field, as a preliminary statement for a comprehensive
reinterpretation of post-war reconstruction.
The documentation and the appraisal of the war damages have been object of the reports contemporary
to the events, besides some interesting discussions about the aims and the methods proposed for their
repair, in specific or general terms. Subsequently, from the seventies, meaningful reports and memories
have been published, exhibitions and specific books have been produced, and they have been contextual
also to the critical consideration of the architecture and the city transformations of the prewar years
between the two wars. Such experiences are framed in the emergent interest for the coding of the
memory, in the attention of the narrative and of the urban critic. In these contributions, references were
already made, also in the Universities that presents this proposal, to some searches, in particular
formalized through practices, laboratories and thesis of bachelor, contextual to the constitution of a
specific attention to these topics within the disciplinary instruction of Conservation. <<<