Should we compensate the loss or support it? Points of view of contemporary restoration

In the experiences of some of the protagonists of contemporary architectural culture, a modified sensitivity towards the historical heritage emerges strongly. José Ignacio Linazasoro plays a prominent role. He has followed an autonomous and independent professional path, similar in many ways to that of Emanuele Fidone and Bruno Messina, Peter Zumthor and Antonio Jiménez Torrecillas. Beyond the individual results, the common denominator of many works and designers is the detachment from ideologies and institutional practices of restoration, and the lack of interest, often performed, for questions of “method” in comparison with the pre-existence. José Ignacio Linazasoro is a designer who works mainly on residual architectures: ruins, schedules, incomplete texts, which require modern intervention in order to regain a meaning, not just, a functional one. Therefore the actions he proposes have no educational purpose, but are directed first of all to the research of a new balance, with few material and formal means and in compliance with stratifications. The intervention at Escuelas Pías de San Fernando in Madrid is exemplary in this regard. This paper intends to clarify the destiny of the existing constructions in Europe starting from Linanzasoro’s contribution to the debate on the progressive distancing of restoration from the necessity to compensate the “loss”. His new approach aims to renew ancient methods, not explain the past or correct the structure, but to find the most compatible way to restore a building according to its history.