Architecture, preexistence and restoration: a new-old confrontation
This article seeks to explore the relationship between design and architectural restoration, seeking to review
the boundary between these different modes of intervention and the possibilities to reconcile respect for the
conservation of cultural heritage and the intention of creation. It focuses on the study of the production
of the second half of the twentieth century to bring together the theoretical propositions linked to the
critical and creative restoration described by Renato Bonelli concerning the intervention practices of two
contemporary architects: Lina Bo Bardi (1914-1992) and Giorgio Grassi (1935). The analysis of each
specific intervention - the Sesc Pompeia (Brazil, 1986) and the Sagunto Theater (Spain, 1989) – seeks to
reflect on the role of memory in architecture: not only the memory present in the materiality of buildings
and the urban fabric, but also the memory understood as an active instrument within the creation process
developed by the architects in question.
