Architect

What do we do with it?

The problem of restoration is perhaps a problem to be faced tangentially because restoration as simple restoration of a building or a picture or a sculpture is also a fascinating theme but, in itself, arid in the sense that things are certainly made to last longer but inevitably the authenticity is affected.
I personally deal with architectural revamping where the big problems are to be found in making the spaces functional for new purposes and the technological uprating of the systems.
These are the subjects that most interest me and that I meet very frequently and I know that the first problem of restoration is to be found in the question “What are we going to do with all these old mansions, castles, salons, enormous churches, huge parks etc that we have, above all in Italy, and what can we do to make sure that they do not all go to the dogs?”

I understand the problems of property owned by great institutions, large companies, great family heritages that see in the possession of very precious, incredibly beautiful
mansions great management and economic problems and I know how hard it is to uprate these assets using them for useful, practical and cost effective services.
The question continually doing the rounds of property offices is (always the same): “What are we going to do with that huge mansion with the huge rooms and those huge pictures with those huge frame and with those huge doors?

Museums there are now in abundance and they are hard to manage and keep up, hotels and shopping centres it is harder and harder to have a license, cultural centres do not pay for themselves, restaurants stink, bars create disorder and chaos and bookshops bring in even less than cultural centres.
Leaving them as they are for guided tours costs more than they earn, there are people who steal from them and breakages are probable.
In America they make a wonder out of some terrible things of twenty years ago and sell it to half the world, in France they have invented the formula of subsidies in exchange for guided tours, we in Italy…

Michele De Lucchi