'400 - '500
Restoration, on this website, is a wonderful occasion for the practical assessment on the fallout in the world of employment linked to a widely articulated world of activites, without sacrifying any scientific or cultural prerogative. Fundamental aspect (along with the restoration case histories) is to highlight the quality / potential of Milan as a city of art, through the works of restoration, for the most part of considerable historic architecture (and often involving unique decorations), performed over the last ten years. Actually, the completely unknown potential of Milan as a city of art emerge from the connections imposed every time you perform an architectural restoration. What can you say when running multiple restorations simultaneously concerning the architecture of '400 and '500? It's clear that the work of restoration involves primarily the action of knowing, or knowing in a brand new way, all the entrepreneurial satellite activities that are strictly connected.
It is now an opportunity to talk about restoration, right here in Milan, where the debate on this issue is absent since a long time, through meaningful interventions that spell out the obvious meanings of the restoration as a "rediscovery", but also showing all of its complicated aspects of impact on the work's world, finally becoming 'non-exclusively academic. Restoration as the fundamental transition element from a simple cultural value to the world of work, avoiding aspects of exclusive intellectual character.
Some restoration workshops in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries provide a valuable starting point to reflect on both conservation and preservation of the city's monuments, in terms of degradation of monuments, in terms of methodology of intervention and, finally, also under the aspect of valorization of the territory.
If reconnected, information derived from the work-site, in its broadest conception (from the studies to the historical research, from chemical and material exams to static evaluations, up to the inevitable discoveries in the realization phase), becomes documentation for a material history and encourages us to provide important planning of reconstruction focused on an historical moment, examined through an unusual point of view.
At the same time "Milan in its Art Yards" can also offer important reflections on the organization of the contemporary business world.
Arch. Libero Corrieri
Commission for the Architectural and Landscape Heritage of Milan
Highlights
The abbey church of Santa Maria di Morimondo was built between 1182 and 1296, according to the building modules and forms of Gothic Cistercian: latin cross shaped bases, apse rectangular profile; transept with central bay surmounted by an octagonal lantern; façade with arched windows , rose window and crown hanging arches, naves separated by columns and covered by ogival vaults. The elegant and simple Gothic structure was enriched over the centuries by some pictorial: among them you can see the wall paintings of the exterior walls of the choir, made around 1591, after the abbey church was converted into a parish.
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The surface had suffered extensive loss of paint film due to infiltration of water also responsible for the formation of salts. Lifted from the support and pulverized in some parts, it did not appear as cohesive; plasters were also detached from the wall in several areas. The intervention was limited to the removal of salts on the surface to stop degradation.
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Given that the life of a cultural object is closely influenced by the environmental conditions of the context in which it lies (shading, orientation, etc..), and that this artifact materials and shape are characterized by porosity and water absorption, currently, at the end of intervention, it is yet to define future maintenance and the possible limits of acceptance and coexistence between the green and the walls, with the knowledge that it is unthinkable to oppose to the biological cycle of re-growth, but being forced to take care of these remains of the defensive system of the sixteenth century citizen, or suffer their loss.
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The project to restore the façades of the eastern wing of Medici castle in Melegnano, under the responsibility of the Province of Milan, welcomes the principles of conservation, and integrates the transmissibility of the architectural heritage thanks to a series of measures to arrest the process of decay limited to the degraded parts.
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