Union-juxtaposition-interference between modern and ‘ancient’: architecture with architecture, arts with architecture
‘Union’, ‘juxtaposition’ and ‘interference’, are three terms that can be elevated to categories in situations
involving an ‘earlier’ architectural work when actions referring to these categories are implemented.
For the term ‘juxtaposition’, I refer to an ‘old’ Larousse where the corresponding word is “mélange”,
particularly used for the ‘styles’, sufficient to recall the Albertian experience in the Malatesta Temple in
Rimini, or the work of Bramante in the church of S. Maria del Popolo in Rome, where he combines the
sequence of the cross vaults with a “modernly - ancient” spatiality.
To express the concept of ‘interference’, which can be continuous or acute, I refer – among the many
possible cases – to the disputed case that arose for the ‘giant door’ of the Vienna Cathedral.
But in the past it was a question of structures, forms and expressions homogeneous in nature and feeling;
today there are countless situations of continuous and acute interference, especially in works extensively
falling within the restoration actions, in which exasperated technologies – in occult or in evidence – and
expressions, above all of functionalization, crucify with titanium, bandage with improper synthetic gauze
or drown the ancient architecture with the cement.
