La Casa dell'Abate a San Giovanni in Persiceto: Indagini conoscitive e questioni operative per la conservazione di un “edificio-fossile” = The Abbot’s House in St. Giovanni in Persiceto:Cognitive surveys and operative matters for thepreservation of a «Fossil-building»

The Abbot’s House in St. Giovanni in Persiceto (Bologna) is a “fossil-building”, one of the few survivals of wooden-framed buildings in Italy, probably the seat of the Abbot of the monastery of Nonantola. It is a very interesting object, because of the rarity, the ancientness of the structure and building modes and also of the presence of an almost millenarian stratgraphy. The Abbot’s House was since the past subjected to a slow but continuous transformation process – through a gradual replacement of wooden elements with masonry – leading it from the settlement of a storehouse to a prevalently residential function. We must then consider a certain level of stratigraphic unlegibility, due to the fact that a restoration was made in the Sixties, and it caused some deep structural changes and a wide renewal of external surfaces, altering the perception of the antiquity of the whole building. This condition induces to reflect upon the relationship between stratgraphic readableness and perception of material authenticity. In such an altered building, the efficacy of the stratigraphic instrument is suddenly reduced and this requires a different use of stratigraphy, whose codes and modes have to be adapted. Thus, the necessity of adaptation to different reading conditions gives stratigraphy a different and more articulated role – if it is organically included in the conservative project – and stratigraphic readableness can become a precious alteration index and a technical and cultural project criterion. A sort of ideal strain after control of transformations, leading to the idea of a minimal intervention and respect toward the fragmentary survivals of past times and of their stratigraphic legibility