Lo spessore del limite. Metabolismo della massa per ripensare l'esistente.

This work is the result of a research that tries to frame the thickness as the last character of the wall, the basic element of Mediterranean historical architectures which is related to the discipline archetypes, seeking in it new possibilities for spatial and semantic exploration, for complexity and relationship density, for materials application and related technologies in a seamless process, ruled by the project and internal to the discipline of architecture. The thickness, from a simple measurable dimensional data, through a process of abstraction and mass metabolism, is synthesized into a geometric data that structures the space. The more general topic of research, thus identified, it is not so important for the project results of some architects presented here, whose works are the fundamental basis for the development of technical architecture and for this research, as for the methodological issues that it brings with it. Through the study of buildings, in fact, it is possible to refine critical and operational tools for the project aimed to rule consciously the process from the technical definition of detail and, on the contrary, to prevent that only performance and economic aspects, although important, direct the designing choices. The thickness from a necessary character becomes a possibility and, through the project, a potentiality. Following the fil-rouge of the presented architectures, all of them different from each other in materials, technologies and forms, it is found a character that identifies in the distance between two ideal plans a space full of events and meaning. The research is inserted in a path of progressive reduction of the thickness that has been taking place, systematically, for almost two centuries and whose engine were (and are) the technological innovations and modern cultural revolution. The term metabolism refers to the idea of transformation that is linked to long-term concepts when it refers to the appropriation of places and to their vitality as a prerequisite, even at the architectural scale, as indicated by Kahn’s note "the paradoxical experience of living in the wall ". Objectives: - to identify critical and operative issues that allow to reconstruct a possible relationship between old and new in a planning perspective; - to abstract critical and designing tools that may have a more general significance for the contemporary project; - to re-establish the link between technological advancement and pursuit of space quality in contemporary architecture. Method The research concerned, between Italy and Spain, about thirty contemporary buildings among the most recognised by critics in historical contexts. Four of these buildings were selected for the detailed study and the synthesis: offices for Junta de Castilla y Léon in Zamora by Campo Baeza; the Wine Museum in Penafiel by Valle Gonzalez; the Fine Arts and Archaeology Museum in Zamora by Mansilla y Tunon; the San Telmo Museum in San Sebastian by Nieto y Sobejano. In general, within the relationship between old and new, a critical state of the art is outlined. It was a choice of method more than a choice of objectives. Results. Two "operational tools” are identified and summarized as follows: a design principle defined as "the principle of the box", which identify in discrete systems a chance to approach the complex pre-existing buildings and in the box the minimum unit suitable, also through its thickness, for the interaction between the parts; a particular form of the building limit thickness, called interphase that summarises much of the thickness character as it is intended in the entire research. Recognized as a device of physical interaction with the environment, it is abstracted as a conceptual operator for the critics and the project.