Chairman of the Benetton Group

From “use and throw away” to “repair and use again”

Views on restoration work

Adjusting rather than knocking down. Restoring rather than building from scratch. But who decides the borderline beyond which there is nothing for it but to demolish?
For a pair of shoes it was the cobbler who used to do it.
A rapid calculation of the cost of materials and the time needed … a quick look and an answer. Apparently it was him alone who made a decision in a few seconds. As a matter of fact concentrated into those few seconds was a mentality, a taste, a conception of the consumptions that also belonged to the person who asked for the judgement and, at the bottom of it all, the entire community in which the cobbler and that person lived, with their ways of life, incomes, expectations and habits.

Modernity has produced an endless catalogue of things, messages, ideas and places. This catalogue has rested on the pre-existent historical heritage (in its turn already particularly stratified), enriching it and trampling over it at the same time. In this inextricable heap we have to move with the diagnostic and operative ability of the cobbler tackling the problem of the used shoes. We will have to construct both the arts and the occupations capable of good practices, both the right parameters and the new
ideas.

At our disposal we have a theory and a practice for the works of figurative and plastic art for monuments, perhaps also a little special spots of natural interest. But we are just at the beginning as far as the immense catalogue of normal things and places of ordinary opacity and widespread degradation are concerned.

In this direction (of ordinary landscapes) an important hand is also being given by the European Landscape Convention.
For this reason I would like to begin precisely from cases that are very well know, from subjects that for their identity represent extraordinary occasions (present throughout the world) to demonstrate the wisdom and the utility of a strategic change from a “disposable” conception to a “put right and use again” conception.

I would first of all choose the injured places, those that are lacerated or torn: open cast mines, quarries, situations where the surface of the earth has irreversibly been changed.
There are many examples that show how a laceration can be transformed into a design opportunity: the Fondazione Benetton is putting together a dossier of examples of this type. Among the many, I would like, in particular, to mention the case of Buttes Chaumont, a quarry, a place where the gallows once stood and then a rubbish tip in the heart of Paris that already in 1870 was transformed into the most beautiful park in the capital. A second example nearer to home in the Nineties is in Barcelona: the Fossar de la Pedrera, a sort of sinkhole where Catalonian partisans were executed and then a rubbish dump, became one of the most beautiful memorial sites in the city. Recently on the occasion of the 2004 European football championship
in Portugal, in Braga, an enormous quarry that disfigured an area of the city was converted into a stadium, while maintaining its harsh wall and by building the grandstands on in the two long sides. 

I would also choose cases of industrial areas, both historical and recent, totally without dignity and comfort as are many “equipped areas” for small-scale industry in Italy. Some could be selected and improved beginning with the many existing studies, bringing experimental nuclei of social activities into being around the industrial sheds, such as public parks, cafeterias, post offices, underground car parks and nurseries. These initial examples of experimentation should then be communicated for example to the press and documentary services to illustrate the possibilities of change and upgrading.

In conclusion, but crucial, it is necessary to face up to the matter of the outskirts. Here too many thoughts but up to now few reasonable and interesting proposals. Nor would I neglect thoughts and experiments in rural and mountain landscapes that have been rendered insignificant and altered by a phase of agricultural and forestry policy that needs to be rethought.

In short, there would be something for everybody to do. And this could represent an occasion also to recover and save a whole slew of occupational skills – I am thinking of marble cutters, experts with stucco and glass and ancient peasant knowledge from the field, from the vineyard and the wood – that would otherwise risk disappearing altogether.

Personally, recovery in rundown areas fascinates me.
Restoring architectural life and dignity to areas in ruins is exciting. There are numerous cases on which we have spent time and energy experimenting, with the recovery of a number of Neopalladian villas where some of the Benetton Group activities are headquartered, that to restore is not much more expensive than building from scratch. It gives a lot of satisfaction and represents a powerful symbol of communication.

Luciano Benetton