Ignazio Gardella. Building within the built: dialectics of history, character of architecture

The jury considered Claudia Cavallo’s thesis highly stimulating and of great interest. It is part of a series of theses on Italian urban design architects of the twentieth century. The thesis focuses on the understanding of reconstruction after the war and the rewriting of the existing city as the unveiling of essential features of a living space. However, it is also a reflection on the meaning of Gardella’s architecture.The research takes the theme of ‘building on the built’ as an intellectual attitude and a paradigmatic condition of the project. This is illustrated through the study of Ignazio Gardella’s works. Reconstruction implies attention to existing buildings and the ancient part of the city as active elements of the composition. For the author, a reconstruction project enables operational reflections on architecture questions.This study’s methodology seamlessly integrates two distinct approaches. The first is based on archival research through different sources and state-of-the-art knowledge. The second critically redraws Gardella’s works, to break down the system that he used and compare design hypotheses[...]