Gustavo Giovanoni-contributia la notiunea de patrimoniu urban a unei

personalitati europene-

Materia: Teoria monumentului de arhitecturaFacultatea: ArhitecturaGrupa: 63 BStudent: Suru George

PATRIMONIU URBANCuprinde tesuturile, prestigioase sau nu, ale oraselor si

ansamblurilor traditionale preindustriale si ale secolului al XIX-lea si tinde sa înglobeze la modul general orice tesut urban puternic structurat. Notiunea de patrimoniu urban a fost propusa pentru prima oara de G. Giovannoni (Vechia citta ed edilizia nuova, 1931). În Franta, recunoasterea sa tardiva a venit odata cu Legea Malraux privitoare la sectoarele protejate, care a reprezentat – în primul rând – o reactie contra renovarilor masive ale centrelor urbane întreprinseîncepând cu anii 1950 în conformitate cu doctrinele CIAM. Schematic vorbind, recunoasterea patrimoniului urban a fost preparata si realizata în trei etape care s-au derulat succesiv în trei tari diferite (Marea Britanie, Austria si Italia) si care pot fi legate de trei nume simbolice: Ruskin (începând din 1840), Sitte (1889) si Giovannoni (începând din 1913).37

Giovannoni a fost si primul care a pus accentul pe valoarea sociala a patrimoniului urban vechi. De atunci, ideile lui au fost preluate si aplicate în Italia, mai ales de orasul Bologna. Ele au primit o recunoastere internationala în Recomandarile (numite) de la Nairobiprivind “salvarea ansamblurilor istorice sau traditionale si rolul lor în viata contemporana”, adoptata de Conferinta generala a UNESCO (1976). La ora actuala, în Franta, asociatiile de cartier care militeaza pentru apararea anumitor tesuturi din secolele al XIX-lea si al XX-lea, tesuturi amenintate de distrugere prin diferite interventii urbanistice, au dus la descoperirea valorii sociale si conviviale a acestui patrimoniu urban “infra-ordinar” (cum a fost numit de G.Perec).

4. The Invention of the Urban Heritage It took so long for the urban heritage to be considered a conservation objet nondeductible from the historical monuments for three reasons: 1.The city definition and the framework for its study were not so clear until the twentieth century. 2. The absence of cartographic documents before the nineteenth century. 3. The difficulty to find archives related to the production and transformations of the urban space in the time. In the same context, the history of architecture forgot about the city and its historical expressions [2] [3].

The conversion of the city as an object of historical knowledge was caused by the transformation of the urban space during the French Revolution. The notion of Urban Heritage emerged into the adverse context of the urbanization processes. The historical city was conceived as a strange object, fragile and valuable for the art and the history, and at the same time as object for museum exhibition, so the experts considered it had to be taken out of the life circuit. As a consequence it brought a big contradiction: while the historical city was transformed in historical, the city lost its historicity [2].

Gustavo Giovannoni was the first one who talked about urban heritage. He was the first who gave the antique urban complexes value of use and value of museum, integrating them into a general conception of territorial planning. This implied a new model of conservation of the historical urban complexes for the history, for the art and for the present [2]. Under this approach the historical city itself became a monument, but at the same time a living fabric. Giovanonni funded the doctrine of the restoration and conservation of the urban heritage, resumed in three principles: the urban heritage has to be integrated to the urban, local, regional plan. 2.

The historical monument concept is not only related to a single and isolated building. It corresponded to urban dialectic and cannot be disconnected from that; for the first time it was recognized the spirit (historical) of the places, materialized in the special configurations. 3. The urban heritage requires procedures for its preservation and restoration as the monuments does.

Proiecte:

One of the most influential figures in Roman architecture and urbanism between the two world wars was Gustavo Giovannoni (1873-1947). In addition to being a talented architect, urban designer, restorer, author and historian, he was also the founder of the architecture school at the University of Rome.

Peroni Brewery Complex, Rome, 1908-12, by Gustavo Giovannoni. This industrial complex was designed as urban architecture, rather than merely as a factory, and includes advanced reinforced concrete technology, as well as human scale and charming details. The fully integrated artistic and technical mastery is typical of the designer.

Among Giovannoni’s architectural works are the Peroni Brewery complex from 1908-12, an important work of early industrial architecture. Occupying three city blocks, the complex is not just a factory but a truly urban place, like a centuries-old village with a little piazza and tower. The buildings recall the vernacular architecture of northern Italy, while the reinforced concrete structures are technologically sophisticated and very well constructed. Despite recent rehabilitation efforts, one part of the complex was subjected to a shameful exercise in “facadism” when Odile Decq and Benoit Cornette converted it into the MACRO gallery of contemporary art.His other principal built work is the Church of the Guardian Angel at the Garden City of the Aniene, a planned suburban town on the northeastern outskirts of Rome for which Giovannoni made the master

plan. Modeled after English “garden cities,” it reminds me of Forest Hills Gardens in Queens, New York, from about the same time. The heart of the new town is Piazza Sempione, enclosed by municipal and mixed-use buildings (designed by Innocenzo Sabbatini) and Giovannoni’s church. It is an exercise in full Baroque style, with the architect’s characteristic combination of beautiful detailing and sophisticated structural design. The interior features a complex dome that, had it been realized according to Giovannoni’s design, would have been a marvel of space, structure and light. Even in its imperfect state, it is one of the best modern churches in Rome.

Church of the Guardian Angel (Parrocchia Santi Angeli Custodi), Piazza Sempione, Città Giardino Aniene, Rome, 1924-25. Conceived in a Baroque spirit but without imitating any historical Baroque work, the church is also a technically sophisticated structure. Unfortunately, it was not completed entirely according to Giovannoni’s design, especially in the dome, where the windows of the drum were filled in and other changes were made to reduce cost. Giovannoni had master planned the surrounding “garden city” new town in 1920.

His other ground-breaking urban design work was the master plan for the Garbatella quarter on the south side of the city. Like many of the state-sponsored housing projects of the era, it was begun before the rise of the Fascist government and reflects a progressive approach to social housing, in this case for the industrial workers who were to staff the new port facility on the river nearby. In the end, the port was never built, and the neighborhood became a dumping ground for those displaced by the demolitions in the center; but the original plan and buildings are a remarkable testament to a humanistic traditional urbanism. Today, the neighborhood shows signs of the neglect it suffered for decades after the war but still remains a lively and charming district.

In his 1931 book, Old Cities and New Construction, Giovannoni sets out his urban theories, which are largely based on those of the great Viennese urbanist Camillo Sitte; like Sitte, Giovannoni believed that the historic centers of the great European cities could be adapted to modern life without destroying their architectural character, not by the massive demolitions required by the model of Hausmann’s Paris, but by what he calleddiradamento—a thinning out or pruning of the urban fabric, as one cares for a forest by clearing underbrush and trimming the trees. Here’s a sample of his description (all quotations are my own translations from the Italian):

A street in the Garbatella quarter, with houses by Giovanni Battista Trotta and others, based on the master plan by Giovannoni, 1920. This “new town” neighborhood south of the center of Rome remains a vibrant working-class district and an alternative to the Modernist projects of the 1920s and following decades. This and other public housing for workers in Rome completed before World War II contradict the claim that traditional architects and urbanists were not interested in housing for the poor and working class.

“All this is done with patience and love. . .by means of small changes derived from the local conditions and not with grand means, freeing without adding, improving without transforming radically. In other words, the method is carried out with demolition in small increments, leaving areas free and reconstructing little or nothing, reducing almost to the minimum the introduction of new elements – almost always inharmonious with the old – and carried out with sensitivity to the

resulting perspective views framing the major monuments or characteristic groups of small houses. All this work should be done by means of restorations and adaptations – and not radical ones! – for modern needs and obtained through the ‘pruning’ and opening of the interiors of the blocks with the same sense of measure applied to the urban context of the street.”When it came to adding new buildings in the historic settings, Giovannoni asked that architects strive for visual consonance between new and old, aiming at wholeness and continuity in the built environment.“And in the new construction the maximum respect for the context must be exercised, according with the criterion of the maximum simplicity of architectural lines. . . .If one doesn’t know how to create a new contextual art, one may have recourse to the simple and familiar forms of the Renaissance; the traditional crafts carried out not in architectural camouflage, but in elements like balconies, loggias, railings and balustrades, planting boxes, etc.”

Corso del Rinascimento, Rome. In 1931 Giovannoni made a master plan for the Corso del Rinascimento, a new street connecting Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, the city’s main east-west artery, with the new district of Prati north of the Tiber. The street illustrates Giovannoni’s theory of diradamento (“thinning out”), thereby avoiding the wholesale demolitions that reshaped Paris in the previous century. New buildings constructed between 1936 and 1938 to the designs of Arnaldo Foschini were intended to harmonize with the remaining historic structures.

Some of Giovannoni’s ideas were implemented by other architects, many of whom were his students. The Corso del Rinascimento, a

north-south connector just east of Piazza Navona, sacrificed the straight-line layout of a Parisian boulevard in order to preserve the Palazzo della Sapienza, the Palazzo Madama and Piazza Navona itself, and the new buildings designed by Arnaldo Foschini in the 1930s largely fulfill Giovannoni’s vision of a modern street with a harmonious mix of new and old structures.Giovannoni was a consistent critic of the Mussolini regime’s clearance operations, in which thousands of medieval and Renaissance buildings were destroyed. He was virtually alone in denouncing the demolition of the Borgo Vaticano neighborhood to construct the Via della Conciliazione, the lifeless boulevard that now links St. Peter’s Square with the Tiber and Castel Sant’Angelo. His public opposition aroused the anger of the Duce, a risky thing to do under Fascist rule. In 1945, as the Second World War was ending, Giovannoni wrote with a poignant sense that his brave defense of the historic city was not embraced by the rising generation of Modernist architects and designers, who sought to supplant the building traditions of Italy with the Modern Movement ideas imported from abroad.“The persistence of the classical feeling. . .has typically maintained a unity with the context; that is, with the collective architecture. . . .To these conditions the modern tendencies make a strident and unhealthy antithesis. . . .With regard to contemporary design, we are still far from finding something that harmonizes with the historic context; the continuing fluctuations of the architecture – I myself have seen arrive and fade away four different styles, each in contrast with the others – show how far we are from the maturity necessary to have stable forms that represent the architecture of our time and yet could be taken seriously for at least two centuries in the city’s life or, with necessary adaptations, could be harmonious with the past and the future. . . .When here and there some exceptional architect has resolved this problem well, or passably well, taking inspiration from the pre-existing forms yet without copying them, we have had some very modern and functional buildings, more practical than those constructed according to passing fashion. . . .But we cannot base an art on exceptional persons, and, on the other hand, experience has demonstrated that codes and prohibitions have little or no effect in guiding taste. Until this longed-for maturation of local architecture and the feeling for the context come together, . .it is necessary to

remain strictly and intransigently a conservationist in the defense of our beautiful cities.”

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