L’asilo Sant’Elia di Giuseppe Terragni, architettura per l’infanzia dagli anni Trenta all’attualità / Sant’Elia kindergarten by Giuseppe Terragni, architecture for children from the 1930s until today

Abstract

The Sant'Elia nursery school in Como, designed by Giuseppe Terragni (1934-1937), is a landmark in 20th-century architecture and restoration. Its long-standing educational use frames the building's ‘use value’ in the discipline of modern heritage conservation. Through a critical reading of the construction documents and subsequent interventions – a ‘rehabilitation’ in the 1960s, ‘philological restoration’ in the 1980s, modern restoration techniques in 1998-2001 – the paper highlights how each intervention is a compromise between the cultural context in which it is carried out, the choices suggested by disciplinary developments, and the materiality of the building, constituting a representative case for modern school buildings.