Demolition as a Territorial Reform Project
41
that are not always recoverable, which must therefore eventually be removed or
accompanied in a process of decline. Not everything can be saved, reused, enhanced
from a recycling perspective (Corbellini and Marini 2016). And this of course raises
considerable problems in a cultural context marked by the centrality of memory and
by the symmetrical distrust about future (Andriani 2010; Bauman 2017). There is an
entire research field that should probably be reformulated, and in which, even demolition can regain an important planning role. And this of course involves technical
questions as questions pertaining to the value assigned to the inherited assets and to
the possible redefinition of contemporary settlements.
2 Demolition, Between Failure and Promise
A demolition is a violent act: destruction is its constitutive and unavoidable part, and
so its ambition to be a conclusive action. But it is also an act of repair, a kind of
compensation and/or promise. In the recent history of urban transformation, at least
in our country, demolition has acquired, somewhat simplistically, a dual meaning. On
the one hand, it was considered an event, an anomaly reserved for a few exceptional
cases loaded with symbolic meaning; on the other, it was the slightly hidden face of a
more ordinary transformation process that has perhaps overestimated the qualitative
effects of building replacement interventions.
The first case includes those demolitions that take up a compensatory value, either
because they have the effect of correcting for the violation of a rule and damage
suffered, as occurs with the removal of illegal buildings in a valuable landscape
(Curci et al. 2017), or because they put an end to a recognized failure, as in the
case of some buildings that represent the problematic legacy of modernity. In the
second case, there are the demolitions describable as a precondition of a real estate
development process. The tabula rasa is considered here an opportunity, as can be
read in the debate on industrial dismantling (Russo 1998; Dansero et al. 2001), but
also in ordinary demolition action often guided by an economistic logic or from the
safeguarding constraints. To make a tabula rasa to rebuild was, in other words, a
non-problematized process, both in relation to what was removed, and in relation
to the new building production, often architecturally modest, not very ecologically
virtuous and incapable of defining articulated and complex urban relationships.
Two ways of considering demolition often made even more ambiguous by a further
simplification, which reduced the urban quality to the removal of the “ugly” with the
conviction that it was a necessary step in a process of modernization. Deviation from
the norm, removal of an aesthetic damage, recovery of a public asset, promise of an
urban development responding to new housing needs and capable of supporting the
construction industry: these were the main terms of a discourse on demolition that
oscillated between overexposure and indifference. Hence, the need for conceptual
and operational repositioning (Merlini 2019).
41
that are not always recoverable, which must therefore eventually be removed or
accompanied in a process of decline. Not everything can be saved, reused, enhanced
from a recycling perspective (Corbellini and Marini 2016). And this of course raises
considerable problems in a cultural context marked by the centrality of memory and
by the symmetrical distrust about future (Andriani 2010; Bauman 2017). There is an
entire research field that should probably be reformulated, and in which, even demolition can regain an important planning role. And this of course involves technical
questions as questions pertaining to the value assigned to the inherited assets and to
the possible redefinition of contemporary settlements.
2 Demolition, Between Failure and Promise
A demolition is a violent act: destruction is its constitutive and unavoidable part, and
so its ambition to be a conclusive action. But it is also an act of repair, a kind of
compensation and/or promise. In the recent history of urban transformation, at least
in our country, demolition has acquired, somewhat simplistically, a dual meaning. On
the one hand, it was considered an event, an anomaly reserved for a few exceptional
cases loaded with symbolic meaning; on the other, it was the slightly hidden face of a
more ordinary transformation process that has perhaps overestimated the qualitative
effects of building replacement interventions.
The first case includes those demolitions that take up a compensatory value, either
because they have the effect of correcting for the violation of a rule and damage
suffered, as occurs with the removal of illegal buildings in a valuable landscape
(Curci et al. 2017), or because they put an end to a recognized failure, as in the
case of some buildings that represent the problematic legacy of modernity. In the
second case, there are the demolitions describable as a precondition of a real estate
development process. The tabula rasa is considered here an opportunity, as can be
read in the debate on industrial dismantling (Russo 1998; Dansero et al. 2001), but
also in ordinary demolition action often guided by an economistic logic or from the
safeguarding constraints. To make a tabula rasa to rebuild was, in other words, a
non-problematized process, both in relation to what was removed, and in relation
to the new building production, often architecturally modest, not very ecologically
virtuous and incapable of defining articulated and complex urban relationships.
Two ways of considering demolition often made even more ambiguous by a further
simplification, which reduced the urban quality to the removal of the “ugly” with the
conviction that it was a necessary step in a process of modernization. Deviation from
the norm, removal of an aesthetic damage, recovery of a public asset, promise of an
urban development responding to new housing needs and capable of supporting the
construction industry: these were the main terms of a discourse on demolition that
oscillated between overexposure and indifference. Hence, the need for conceptual
and operational repositioning (Merlini 2019).