The belligerent origins ofthe Palladian Villa: medieval towersflanking the loggia, or columned arcade, ofthe more open, public living space. Palladio softened the towers, making them into wings, and classicized the loggia. Top three from Hands-On, Hands-Off. ^slng Ji^nclcnt J^rchltcctufe: CKands-on, Qlaricls off Hands-on, Hands-off, Experiencing History Through Architecture, Harris Stone, 1991, $18.00, Monthly Review Press, 122 West 27th Street, New York, NY 10001. In a key essay within this book, which is handwritten and fdled with sketches, a group of faculty and students, on a summer project in historic preservation, arrive at an ancient farmstead outside Siena. They are so confused by the jumbled remains of a thousand years of construction, repairs, and adapted uses of the buildings, that they cannot decide what restoring such a complex could possibly mean. What parts do we restore and why? A local artisan accompanying them answers by starting to fix things, leading them to ceaseless fascinating discoveries. They discover that getting involved in work at the site begins the process of making it meaningful for the present. Two main approaches to historic reconstruction are hands-off, meticulous archaeology and art history, and hands-on, preservation and renewed use. A problem with the hands-off approach is a tendency to allow a structure to fall down rather than risk modification before documentation; the problem with the hands-on approach is it can be driven by capital development and speculation, warping into designs entirely alien to the history and construction of the original structure. Working out in the field, the approach often depends on the energy that can be spent on the project. The students knocked down an ancient wall, then rebuilt it with better drainage, because otherwise the wall would fall down on its own, since no one would pay for more expensive preservation techniques. The rebuilding can deepen the workers understanding of the history of the structure, which is necessary to determine future use. But documentation and construction skills are not enough; there must also be a point of view as to what part of history needs to be revealed to a future visitor or tenant. A castle is a remnant of war, and we don’t want it to be used for war again but at the same time we don’t want to forget the past and just let castles become fairy tale tourist hotels. Stone’s book takes us through dozens of successful and suggestive projects of meaningful restoration. At the Castelvecchio of Verona, the curator Scarpa wanted visitors to realize that the art displayed in the museum was mostly stolen, hundreds of years past, from bloody raids on other towns and castles. So he scattered the artwork around the great halls haphazardly, as if it were bounty unloaded in a hurry, seeming terribly out of place as one stumbles upon one treasure after another. Associating architecture with modem expression can act as a restoration. Dance and music are more closely related to architecture than painting and sculpture are: if one excludes from the latter community murals and participatory sculpture, as many traditional art historians have. Stone describes Page 48 Rain Winter/Spring 1992 Volume XIV, Number 2
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