Drawings guardians of memories

Abstract

This study, starting from the representations of a number of projects kept in Palermo in public and private archives, seeks to highlight their role not only in the knowledge of little-known architecture, but above all their value as custodians of memory and bearers of knowledge. “The architecture in the drawer”, that which remains on paper and not debased by compromises, not only takes on a “material” value but above all an ethical value because making visible the thought and operative practice of an architectural scholar is a moral act. Analytical and critical redesign, in this sense, contributes with its natural slowness, which is synonymous with reflection, to nourishing knowledge of the project, of making architecture, of compositional and figurative processes and, last but not least, of the constituent principles of an architectural thought. Through the analysis of a number of drawings preserved in two archives containing projects by Salvatore Caronia Roberti and Salvatore Cardella, the aim is to show part of the points of a timeline, in this case coinciding, describing themes and modes of architecture making in Palermo, with the awareness that many significant passages are left out. Thus a drawing of a timeline, open and welcoming, which however identifies two substantial points in its development; two graphical stages that may constitute further reflections that assist architectural historiography and above all the knowledge of what has often been relegated to an unknown fate.