Paralles between archive images and photographs in post-World War II Abruzzo architectural heritage

Abstract

The fate of architecture in the second half of the twentieth century is often that of being absorbed into an anonymous urban fabric, metaphorically becoming the backdrop of daily life for inhabitants to whom only the monument is known. Abruzzo does not escape this fate, accentuated by the frenetic development of postwar reconstruction, which progressively occupied city spaces with high-density buildings.
The Ministry of Culture’s initiative to census these architectures marks, the moment of the physical rediscovery of these artifacts and a first step toward the protection of those that have not reached fifty years since they were built.
The research induces the rediscovery not only material of the works, which in the instant of the photographic capture fixes the character of the architecture, its physical semblances trying to capture the intangible dimensions of each of them through the original design expression. Thus, the analytical, graphic-documentary and photographic operation, in its expressive dimension, marks a parallel through the years with the role of the images that accompanied the design drawings, portraying the building showing itself, emerging from the building fabric and offering itself as a unique element in the urban palimpsest.
In the comparison between the original representation, which imagined the urban scene in the making, and the current photographic shot, which contextualizes the built environment in the real context, the volumetric and spatial figurative elements of the projects and the contemporary city can be brought to light.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.20365/disegnarecon.31.2023.10