27th August 2020
Stazione Rogers, Riva Grumula 14, Trieste and online
Reparing the human: architectural lessons from a border asylum
On Thursday 27th August, the book Riparare l’umano. Lezioni da un manicomio di frontiera, edited by Letteraventidue, will be presented at 7.00 pm at Stazione Rogers. Editors of the book, Giuseppina Scavuzzo – professor of architectural composition (UNITS) and Sergio Maffei – professor of restoration (UNITS) will talk with two authors of the book, architects Raul Pantaleo and Laura Candelpergher (TAM Associati), architects Marco Terranova and Benedetta Rodighiero (StudioLemur) and Luca Merlini – emeritus professor of architecture of the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Paris-Malaquais. Also with them Raoul Kirchmayr, professor of architecture (UNITS) and Pompeo Martelli, director of the Museum Laboratory of the Mind in Rome.
Starting from the double meaning that the verb “repair” has in Italian, to adjust and to protect, the book compare architecture and psychiatry, in their “architectural union” which is the psychiatric hospital, place that welcomed the mentally ill to protect them from society and at the same time to protect society from these patients.
By planning the reuse of the spaces of a former asylum, the comparison between architecture and psychiatry becomes indispensable when we talk about the provincial psychiatric hospital of Gorizia, where, in 1961, the battle for the rights of people with mental disorders was born, which he banned with the Basaglia law of 1978 an architectural typology (that of the psychiatric hospital) which became a symbol of the denial of those rights.
Riparare l’umano. Lezioni da un manicomio di frontiera, Letteraventidue, Siracusa 2019.
It will also be possible to visit a small exhibition of models made by the students of the degree course in Architecture of the University of Trieste, outcome of the didactic and research experiences around the reuse of the Basaglia Park in Gorizia, former psychiatric hospital.
Photos: Dipartimento di Ingegneria e Architettura Units
