Esercizi di analogia per Pompei

The contribution aims to investigate, in the field of architectural and urban composition, the process of forming the new architectural artefact when given through the compositional tool of analogy. The relationship between architectural composition and analogy is expressed in the latter’s affirmation as a logical fact capable of translating the shape of history through a circular movement whose peep is a return to things themselves. The analogy, as Ignasi de Solà-Morales states, allows for the assembly and articulation of a few permanent and unchanging elements that combine in a non-mechanical but compositional way to define the entire field of possible operations. The forms of a part of contemporary architecture – gathered under the name of rational architecture – are intimately linked to the forms of a past that belongs to us, and for this reason, they become intelligible and paradigmatic in their unfolding in continuity with history, translating – and necessarily betraying – the old masters. In particular, the analogy can intervene as a valid tool for analysis, interpretation, and choice of action by the architectural project with respect to the forms of the ancient. The new, through analogy, aspires to propose itself as an action measuring the vestiges of the ancient, establishing an unprecedented formal unity with the archaeological heritage and capable of conveying the latter in renewed urban and territorial dynamics. Suppose José Ignacio Linazasoro’s assertion regarding archaeological evidence is true, elevating them to the true inheritance of the past. In that case, the role of architectural composition can be the investigation of the profound meaning of this inheritance, as a patrimonium to be welcomed not only for its cultic value but, above all, for its cultural value, generalisable and therefore re-proposable in the contemporary through a procedure of structural and non-figurative analogy. The contribution, describing the results of a didactic experience, intends to refer to the ancient as a material for architectural composition, looking at archaeology as a “formal monument” at the same time as a material still capable of teaching, to seek in history and sedimentation of its traces the very reasons for compositional intervention.