Il consolidamento dei calcestruzzi armati storici: contaminazioni e ibridazioni di esperienze tra nuove frontiere del restauro e tradizionali orizzonti della conservazione

Pure, linear, intact: that is how XX century architecture appears at the end of the construction and that is how books and magazines captured it, giving to posterity the image of buildings not yet “contaminated” – or better, almost “not contaminable” – by the action of time. Highly contrasting with this image is the aspect shown by these reinforced concrete buildings after their confront/clash with time. Therefore, placing the transmission to the future of these buildings as main purpose of contemporary intervention and considering their frailty as an endemic characteristic, restoration has to be able to find some useful tools to their preservation. Through the illustration of some interventions carried out on reinforced concrete structures of XX century architecture, the paper intends to reflect on the possibilities of “contamination”, on the one hand, from the sector of the restoration of the cultural heritage and, on the other hand, towards the wider field of the intervention on the built heritage in general. The aim is to verify if some virtuous aspects of reinforcement projects finalised to the conservation of the built heritage can improve the approach of the interventions on reinforced concrete structures. The certainty is that a critical and conscious approach – coherently related to the singular cases – can bring to a tangible qualitative increment of the results, both in static and aesthetic terms, contributing to extend the new frontiers of restoration in the substantial respect of the traditional horizons of conservation.