Stone surfaces: variation and scientific study

Fabrizio Antonelli
LAMA Director | Università Iuav di Venezia

Surface variation based on possible material definitions. The presentation will give an overview of a study aimed at identifying and establishing the provenance of stone material used in opera sectilia of the classical age, in the columns and capitals of San Marco, and in the Venus in Bikini (Aphrodite unfastening a sandal) in the National Archaeological Museum in Naples. The overview will conclude with a reference to construction materials, the form of their deterioration in works and their treatment as project surfaces.

Wilbury Park. A sleeping beauty brought back to life

Peregrine Bryant

Director Studio Peregrine Bryant, London

White Rooms and Coloured Rooms

Massimo Carmassi

Architect, former Professor Università Iuav di Venezia

Buildings that have survived from antiquity are, with rare exception, the result of innumerable transformations that have increased their complexity and their material and historical value. At the same time, the process of physical and functional obsolescence make conservation and reclamation for contemporary use necessary. One of the most prominent and widespread phenomena, beyond the restructuring of interiors, consists in placing simpler decoration on top of plaster that was painted at the time of the original construction, arriving at a complete whitewashing in light colours over all surfaces, maintaining a few frescoed sections. Our projects allow for the recuperation of decoration hidden beneath layers of uniform colour without removing the most recent of the underlying layers, which may remain visible between more or less random lacunae. This praxis contributes to the writing of the buildings’ history, also allowing for the reclamation of an uncommon beauty alongside the appropriate and strictly necessary contemporary additions, which ensure satisfying usage and conservation over time.

The Evolution of the Concept of Lacunae

Maria Gabriella De Monte

Restorer, S.E.I. 1983 Society

My experience of work undertaken in Italy and France over the last 20 years has demonstrated the different ways of reading, interpreting and restoring lacunae, whether in painted artefacts or architectural elements. An account of the evolution of the concept of lacunae in restoration and conservation will be discussed, using several sites as examples, from the period of my training at the Istituto Centrale del Restauro to the present day.

The meaning of surfaces. A critique of transparency between semiotics and image theory

Angela Mengoni

Università Iuav di Venezia

The presentation aims to give a brief account of the central role of the tangible aspect of the work of art in the creation of meaning. The acknowledgement of this aspect has, in fact, been central to visual semiotics since the late ‘70s, when the functioning within images of “plastic semiotics” and “opacity” were recognized, and theoretical tools and methodologies for their exploration were developed. At the same time, the field of study of the so-called Iconic Turn has explored the “iconic” aspect of the image, developing, from a different perspective, an equivalent critique of transparency. These propositions, which prioritize the semiotic productivity of “tactile logic”, may be particularly relevant to the study of temporality and practices in the conservation and restoration of material surfaces.

Sir John Soane Stables at The Royal Hospital Chelsea: cleaning tests to remove impervious paints from brick walls

Laura Morgante

Studio Peregrine Bryant

The talk will describe the conservation project on Soane Stables at the Royal Hospital Chelsea with special attention to the finishes included in tender package.

The aim of the project is to repurpose the Soane Stables from storage spaces to visitors centre.

Laura will describe the trials of different cleaning techniques and the challenges in choosing them on the light of conservation, environment, cost prospective.

The “moment” of architectural surface conservation and mechanistic deterioration as temporal indicator: of past history, current state of conservation and future development. An essay on method in the phases of recognition, project and intervention

Simona Sajeva

Engineer, INP (Institut National du Patrimoine)

Decorative surfaces in architecture contain multiple revelatory signs of their history and state of conservation.

Some keys to reading them are part of normal and shared practices. Others are less so, such as the analysis of mechanistic degradation, or signs attributable to the support structure. This is in large part due to the compartmentalized approach to architectural and artistic monuments, which, among various consequences, has resulted in the exclusion of the building and its structural behaviour from the conservation of its surfaces, with the exception of a few cases and circumstances.

Instances of mechanistic deterioration present on surfaces are key to accessing past history, the state of conservation at the moment of analysis and also probable future development. To read them, however, it is necessary to consider architectural surfaces as part of the building as an organic whole. If, in the abstract, this may seem straightforward, in practice, it is not. There are many obstacles: the scale of the analysis, the expertise, the languages, the timing of the intervention and procedures.

Making use of actual cases, this presentation aims to illustrate, through the analysis of mechanistic deterioration, how the study of structures may be integrated into the study of surfaces, increasing our knowledge of past phenomena in the mid-to-long-term period, and significantly contributing to the planning of conservation interventions, whether they be for prevention, rehabilitation or restoration.

Archeological site and painted surfaces: 10 years of conservation activity at Qusayr Amra (Jordan)

Giorgio Sobrà

Director SAF - ICR Matera (Scuola di Alta Formazione e studio)

Not only sacrifice

Fernando Vegas & Camilla Mileto

Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura, Universitat Politècnica de València

The finishing surfaces of the architecture not only represent the protection of the built fabric but are able to convey feelings and messages that transcend this function of physical protection. The strokes of its application, its composition, the gentle erosion and patina of time, the traces of its use are physical signs that possess the virtue of expressing the ineffable. Even the fragment within its context is able to evoke the building's past. The intervention should therefore consider its eventual cleaning, reintegration and conservation against the widespread view that conceives the finishing surface as an element of sacrifice, the replacement of which does not alter the value of its architecture. This lecture will present this approach and show examples of restoration carried out by the authors of whitewashing, lime mortar renderings, gypsum plasters, etc. showing that the preservation of the expression of these historical surfaces is not at odds with decorum, their protective efficacy and their durability, even in cases where significant reintegration of lost gaps has been necessary or where critical selection of the historical areas to be conserved has been unavoidable.

Piranesi: a dialogue on material and architecture

Aldo Aymonino
Department Director | Università Iuav di Venezia

Luigi Ficacci

Former Director ICR

Architecture in the utopian vision of Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778) acquires dignity and relevance from antiquity. For the artist, engraving is the surface to return the image of time: the present in ruins and the ancient as a reference. The synthesis between matter, architecture and time in Piranesi's etchings will be investigated in the dialogue between Aldo Aymonino and Luigi Ficacci through a reflection, in the aesthetic field, for a reading of the contemporary work of art.

Contemporary art in historic sites. A conversation between Renato Leotta (artist) and Claudio Gulli (Palazzo Butera Foundation)

Claudio Gulli

Curator, Palazzo Butera Foundation, Palermo

Renato Leotta

Artist, award winner Maxxi Bvlgari Prize 2020

In recent years, Renato Leotta has often linked his artistic research with historical places. The restoration site of Palazzo Butera in Palermo, explored as part of Manifesta 12 (2018), is the first episode that will be investigated in the conversation with Claudio Gulli, engaged in Francesca and Massimo Valsecchi's project. The exploration of a possible recording of Nature proceeds from technique to technique: from the fall of a fruit imprinted on the earth, translated into baked clay to create a floor, to the traces of sea salts on cotton. At the Castello di Rivoli, for the solo exhibition Sole (2020), a light representing an era - the spotlight of a Fiat 500 - undermines the time and identity of an eighteenth-century marble or the Juvarra staircase. Finally, the conversation will find its centre in the Mondo project that involves Leotta and Gulli at Palazzo Biscari in Catania. Here the "gipsoteca" (plaster casts gallery) of Renato Leotta, a production of plaster and sand casts that maps the coasts evoke the section of the naturalia of a lost eighteenth-century museum.

Conversation with Alessandro Viscogliosi

Alessandro Viscogliosi

Università La Sapienza, Rome

Marco Chiuso

Architect, MiC