The May issue of DOMUS features a “Viewpoint” by Antonio Gioli of GBPA Architects and Alexander Schwarz of Chipperfield on the heritage of modern architecture and its reuse.

Antonio Gioli: “… speaking of unprotected buildings, there is still no common code to guide the conservation of Modernism, for example in choosing what should be philologically preserved or reinterpreted with today’s materials and technologies rather than demolished. We are still at the beginning of a discussion about the heritage of Modernism, because it is only in the last 10 to 15 years that buildings built in the 1950s and 1960s have begun to show the gap between the technology of their construction and the functionality of today’s housing needs. The starting point, and this is what we adopt in the design phase, is first to understand the relationship between function, materials and original form; and then, through design, to satisfy the same equation, updated to new technologies and functional needs. …. “Today, technology is used in a more invasive way than after the war. I see it as the greatest challenge to reuse the modern. In many of our projects, the intended use remains the same, but what has changed is the way the sub-functions interact with the spatial constraints. The renovation of the Palazzo di Fuoco, an unrestricted building designed and built in the early 1960s by Giulio Minoletti in Piazzale Loreto, Milan, is currently being completed. Although not comparable to the Neue Nationalgalerie, it played a special role in Milanese modernism….. Our approach to the project was to delve deeply into Minoletti’s work through archival research and dialogue with his daughter. We decided to reproduce the same design as the original façade project, using new, more efficient glazing and the most advanced LED technology. The internal distribution has been completely modified to adapt to the new standards of office space.