A material for memory

Abstract

Every piece of architecture always aspires to become a monument, if only for the intentionality of meaning, witness and duration that becomes suggestive and evident through the etymological interpretation of the Latin verbs memini, moneo, maneo: every construction, in fact, it recalls the sense of its necessity and essence; it admonishes by arousing respect with the force of the image and the meaning it conveys; it remains durable and, ideally, eternal. There are, then, the architectures specially built to remember in which the utilitas transcends the usual considerations of functional type and sublimates itself in the manifestation of the memory, while the fi rmitas conserves and maintains them over time, venustas consecrates its memory through the power of form. The architecture of the monument thus becomes an image of itself, which in the past developed an aesthetic intentionality through contemplation, while today it pursues emotional narratives generated by spatial involvement. In these architectures the exposed concrete has replaced the most traditional and classic materials (natural stone or marble) and has been privileged to determine the structural and expressive value, to give the building a signifi cant iconicity and express the sense of time that lasts. The reading of a selection of realizations and the interpretation of the material choice intend to delineate a poetic of the concrete as a material for memory.