Costruire nel costruito. Chiarezza costruttiva e valore espressivo dell'acciaio = Building in the built. Constructive clearness and formal value of the steel

The use of steel in architecture involves the search of the form and the sense it takes through the definition of the individual forms of single elements, their mounting and a syntax that can express an aesthetic value as a representation of the constructive value that the individual elements and the architectural organism assumes. It is in the ability to define the form of architecture through decor and thus the transfiguration of constructive value within the formal value that resides the ability to interpret this material architecturally. The lesson of Mies Van Den Rohe resides precisely in this, in the ability to bring the exact definition of the form of steel structures by referring to the correspondence between architectural form and technical form that Greek trilithic architecture expressed. Constructive clarity must be the goal of using steel in architecture and restoration in order to arrive at the definition of its exact form. The experience of design work in Polignano's ( Bari, Italy) historic center, the INARCH 2015 award, represents a case study in which individual materials are employed each for specific use, which are naturally destined and formally defined according to their destination, to express the achievement of a significant form of architecture as a whole.