Eredità della Guerra Fredda tra dismissione, salvaguardia e riconversione / The Cold War Legacy Among Buildings’ Decommission, Preservation, and Adaptive Reuse

Abstract

Many U.S. chancelleries of the Cold War have been decommissioning, privatized and adaptively reused. Evidence of a relevant cultural-political program, even if authored by world-famous Modernist architects, they are often not adequately protected today. The conservation, reuse and expansion of the Oslo and London buildings are exemplary in this light. Both listed but with differences in limiting their erasing, they reveal some affinities in the treatment of the ‘Ancient‘ matter. Wider was the freedom granted in London in carrying out building innovations, such as gutting wholly the interiors, occupying fully the lot and putting up a massive raising. Even if in Oslo, where the chancellery is worth as national monument, the same type of additions took place ‘invisibly’, the result however preserved a Modernism icon rather than the real building. Jorge Otero-Pailos made here some sculptures by using the steel of the fence, so taken away from the landfill, thus inviting to reason on heritage and conservation as tools of social and cultural critics, multiplying the associated narratives.