"Eresia" o assenza di "credo"? Il restauro delle architetture del totalitarismo: l'intervento alla Casa del Balilla di Forlì

The two opposites Heresy and Orthodoxy, referred to the existing attitudes in restoration, can open the discussion to various observations. The present paper focuses on the analysis of an intervention on a rationalist building in Forlì in which it is hard to identify the theoretical principles leading the project. The paper concerns the intervention at the ex-Casa del Balilla. It constitutes a relevant passage of a larger process aiming to develop the modern architectural heritage of this city, symbol of the Italian rationalism movement between the two wars. However, the law in force, applied a-critically and a-dialectically, imposed the only orthodoxy in this intervention. On the contrary, the absence of a clear methodological orientation led to interventions that were increasingly heterodox – and sometimes lacking of any “creed” – as they were translated into operational apparatus, deceiving the requests of conservation. Therefore, this project is a complex framework, further complicated by the fact that the object of restoration concerns a controversial historical period – the Italy’s fascist era – and, even nowadays, a shared recognition of the values of these architectures, bearers of an already refused heresy, appears difficult. Through the description – in alphabetical order – of some interventions realised at the ex-Casa del Balilla in Forlì (2009-2015), the paper presents the heresies produced by this restoration, admirable for purpose but contestable for methodology.