Sub specie æternitatis: the role of the ruin and the ancient in the process of architectural renewal between metamorphosis and resurgence

Abstract

Composing new works of architecture inspired by vestiges from antiquity or archaeology. The reflections and the case study which will be proposed, pertaining to a recent design experiment for the archaeological area and Antiquarium of Tyndaris, are dedicated to this theme. Over and above any charm exerted by such places, by landscapes in which the ruins appear identical in substance and which sometimes manifest themselves as “sub specie æternitatis”, there are reasons linked to the very profession of architect and to the gashes in the crucible of controversies around the role of history in its contentious relationship with architectural design. That apart, the aporias revealed by Michel Foucault, in questioning what he proposed as a global history project, laid emphasis on discontinuity, fractures, and thresholds; in short, transformations that counted as the basis and renewal of the very foundations themselves. Within this conception of history, or rather a methodology for history that “leans towards archaeology as an intrinsic description of the monument”, architectural works and projects appear protagonists of a dramatic action centred on the opposition between the permanence of a ‘structure’ and the thrill of change. That thrill which, in the Humanist age, animated the minds of architects, treating the fields of philology and architecture identically, studying ancient monuments as texts in order to “generate new forms and thereby bring a new classical tradition to life”.