Un-Covering Architecture

Architects working with archaeological sites must deal with contrasting factors from the very start of the process to define an architectural solution, relating to the need to protect, musealisation, ongoing excavations and research and the transfer of knowledge. In this sense, design research is fuelled by works that are culturally significant – both for the way they interpret and construct a relationship between the new architecture and the archaeological remains and for the added value that comes with their fruitfulness in generating more architecture that can highlight a place’s worth and identity. Setting aside suggestions that explore various forms of reconstruction, guided by the reproposal of a hypothetical original state of the building, the essay draws on our knowledge of significant designs and focus on architecture that integrates and protects the past without pursuing debatable technical and formal compromises in the development of the shell or the roof. Three interesting projects, very different both as regards their specific features and their reference context, are here cited and commented. These three examples, respectively designed by Savioz and Fabrizzi, José M. Sánchez García and Francesco Venezia, develop architecture in relation to: a simple, suspended covering protecting a particular archaeological area; the definition of an urban margin creating a perimeter around an archaeological monument; the creation of spaces for an ongoing excavation process where the architecture can take in the changes of the covered area.