Architettura Razionalista a Forlì. La conoscenza per il progetto di restauro

In recent years, the City of Forlì has initiated, in part with funding provided under the European cultural route project ATRIUM (Architecture of Totalitarian Regimes of the XX Century in Urban Management), a phase of reflection that could lead to noteworthy results, in operating terms, for the sizeable heritage left in this city of the Romagna region by the twenty-year period of Italy’s fascist regime. The objective of the program is to give due recognition and value to the rationalist architecture of Forlì, which has been treated for decades with an attitude that amounted to abandonment, on account of the curse of memory placed on the fascist regime and almost everything it produced in the way of architecture and art. In a recent restoration effort closely tied to the ATRIUM initiative, the “Casa del Balilla” – former headquarters of a fascist youth organisation that was later known as the G.I.L., or Gioventù Italiana del Littorio (Cesare Valle, 1933-1935) – served as a guinea pig project for consideration of the problems that typically arise with this category of structures, bringing to light how the absence of in-depth knowledge – of the materials, technologies and structural systems used, the original plant-engineering equipment installed etc. – can result in noteworthy losses of matter and, therefore, history. Apart from this shortcoming, further drawbacks include the limited time available for the planning and performance of the work, due to the scheduling of the funding programs, plus the occasional lack of effective oversight from the Office of the Superintendent of Cultural Resources. In order to move ahead with the program of initiatives for the city’s rationalist architectural heritage, the local university has proposed to the municipal government an operating agreement whose primary focus is a preliminary study and analysis of these structures, seeing that only by gathering in-depth knowledge prior to the start of the planning process can effective support be provided to the operators involved in the various stages of further planning and operation to follow. To this end, it was proposed that, in addition to the anamnesis carried out in preparation for the restoration of the former G.I.L. headquarters, an effort that can lead to an understanding of the errors committed in the past, attention be focussed on a pair of architectural assets on which projects of restoration, or simply maintenance, are likely to be performed over the next few years: the Santarelli Nursery School (Guido Savini, 1934-1937) and the Aeronautical College of the G.I.L. (Cesare Valle, 1934-1941). In the essay, the authors review the experimental work currently underway, illustrating why they hold that such explorations can make a key contribution to the process of preserving and actively upgrading this valuable yet fragile architectural legacy.