Rewriting architecture. The question of language as a rhetorical device for reconstruction

The argument that the problem of architectural language is of extreme importance in processes of architectural and urban reconstruction may appear to be a trivial conclusion, but if we consider the case of Frankfurt’s Dom Roemer district, completed in 2018 and rebuilt in the medieval style, we spontaneously ask ourselves what cultural distance has been travelled since the Second World War, when cities such as Warsaw mimetically rebuilt their historic centres. From Frankfurt, however, it is possible to abstract the two primary impulses that precede a reconstruction process: on the one hand, the reconstruction carried out with International Style skyscrapers throughout the post – war period aspires to be the theatre of prophecy for the city, the will to promote a new urban idea; on the other hand, the Dom Roemer district is inserted as a bulwark to preserve the historical identity of the city, its theatre of memory. The reflection to be made on a disciplinary level is how, in reality, these two opposing impulses are not in contrast in the processes of urban evolution: just as the architectural language has its own evolutionary component – the ability to adapt to the figurative needs of its time – so urban identity is often founded precisely on an valid discord (Venturi 1991) between different languages, which finds its own harmony and representativeness in discontinuity: what about Piazza San Marco in Venice, where the Basilica of San Marco, the Biblioteca Marciana and the Palazzo Ducale not only coexist, but determine the identity of the square? This reasoning can also be conducted on a number of case studies exploring the coexistence of different languages in new architectures, attempting to restore a new architectural and urban identity without eliminating the previous one: just as Zumthor’s Kolumba Museum in Cologne is very clear in its demarcation of pre – existing from new building interventions, though always in their final unification, the coexistence of memory and prophecy is a theme, articulated in different ways, also in the expansion of the National Gallery in London (the Sainsbury Wing) by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown – borrowing some iconography from the historic building; in Leon Battista Alberti’s Tempio Malatestiano in Rimini – with the rough superimposition of two compositional rhythms; in Andrea Palladio’s Basilica Palladiana in Vicenza – where the discrepancy between the new rule and therhythm of the historic building is softened by the structure of the serliana.