Industrial metamorphoses. Art saving industry (once again)

The paper considers one aspect among the many induced by the succession of the industrial revolutions: the concept of obsolescence. From the era of industrial revolutions onwards, this concept accompanies the production of objects, creating a very strong ideological contrast with the concept of art, which by definition does not know the obsolescence or craftsmanship, which knows him only when the object meets its final break. But not only: industrial revolutions have always been marked by buildings that, as they proved insufficient, were gradually abandoned. These processes of obsolescence and insufficiency are unavoidable, as they belong to the same nature of the technology. However, some trends can be opposed to them, which today constitute a real phenomenology: in the case of objects, we talk about recycling, reuse, or the modern age; in the case of buildings, we talk about adaptive reuse, re-functionalization, or industrial archaeology. These last attitudes, respectively, attribute an unprecedented qualitative value to the products of industrial revolutions, which for this very reason, must in some way call into question art in an attempt to overcome any temporal limitation imposed. Not surprisingly, among the many uses for rethinking these buildings, today are those for theatrical or musical buildings and museums. Through the analysis of Italian case studies, the reasoning is conducted on these questions and some emerging issues today relevant to reassigning a function for this large part of architectural heritage.