Piero Sanpaolesi and the debate on architectural restoration criteria in the postwar Italy

• Grant number: 17/00832-7
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Start date: May 01, 2017
• End date: July 31, 2017
• Field of knowledge: Applied Social Sciences - Architecture and Town Planning - Fundamentals of Architecture and Urbanism
• Principal Investigator: Regina Andrade Tirello
• Grantee: Pedro Murilo Gonçalves de Freitas
• Supervisor: Chiara Lucia Maria Occelli
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Engenharia Civil, Arquitetura e Urbanismo (FEC). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Politecnico di Torino, Italy
• Associated to the scholarship: 15/02022-7 - Piero Sanpaolesy: history, teaching and project of architectural restoration at the florentine school, BP.DR

Abstract

The following BEPE Research Project aims to contribute to the doctoral thesis "Piero Sanpaolesi: History, Teaching and Architectural Restoration Project at the Florentine School". Considered one of the protagonists of Italian postwar restorations, also called the restoration of danni di guerra, Sanpaolesi was part of a rich period of academic discussions that seems to be not fully accounted for yet in Brazilian Restoration studies. The Second World War was a traumatic event and raised the problem of reconstruction of completely depleted buildings throughout Europe. It was an issue unforseen by the regular evolution of Restoration as a "modern" discipline. A crisis was also felt in the History of Architecture field, due to the questions raised about its role towards design disciplines. In the middle of a methodological dilemma for both disciplines, Sanpaolesi developed a personal manner of working through time. "Operativeness" and other concepts further stated such as "manual skill" [manualità] and "diagnostics" [diagnostica] were methodological principles that helped the architect to work and live through the problems brought by the war on a daily basis, within the lack of criteria for monuments intervention and its related historical studies. We state the hypothesis that one of the main issues regarding limitations of Restoration as a conservation science in Brazil is the lack of general understanding of how postwar discussions functioned as a laboratory for those disciplines combined. The current stage of thesis development needs to confront and assess how and why those ideas were affirmed within the gradual international expansion of cultural heritage awareness. As part of an ongoing PhD thesis, the research aims to get a broader contextual framework to support a deeper view on Sanpaolesi's methodological principles developed in his professional life.