The Poetry of Restoration

When Vittorio Cini wrote the statute of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in 1951, he wished to deploy a far-reaching plan of renewal for the island of San Giorgio Maggiore. At the same time, confident in the Foundation’s long-lasting existence, he seems to have adopted fresh coordinates to guide his efforts: a novel balance which would ensure that constant care for the sites and respect for their history and vitality, both past and present, would be placed at the centre of attention. #is was not just a matter of maintenance and restoration, but of ongoing study of the context and of attention to the values that the buildings and works of art bear witness to, along with their reinterpretation and the discovery of new ways of understanding them in order to adapt them over time to ever-changing human needs.
This was not as simple an undertaking as one might think. It called for the spirit of the researcher and scholar. Every sign of the passing of time – the various phenomena of deterioration a$ecting the artefacts – constitutes the paradigm of a system of clues that brings together traces of construction data, functions and modes of use imprinted by men and women over past centuries as well as more recent times, and which at the same time opens up to embrace the potential of future projects. This is also how Vittorio Cini’s grandiose project for San Giorgio might be interpreted. While the spirit of humanism powered the creation of the Institutes of Art History, of the History of Venice, of Literature, theatre and Music, the vitality of the places themselves also had to be restored: a dual way of looking at and handing down to the future, through study, education and conservation. It was not by chance if, one year after Cini’s death, a plaque was placed in the Palladian cloister: SI MONUMENTUM REQUIRIS CIRCUMSPICE (if you seek a monument, look around you).
Thus, on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, everything contributes to both life and memory, without temporal limits, meaning that the future is not a completely unknown and elusive land but one across which trajectories may be picked out, scrutinised as they appear on the horizon, picking out familiar traces rooted in experience.
The ground surfaces built over the last five centuries as well as those configured in open spaces, together with the construction of portions of landscape so strongly characterised by the imprint of the twentieth century, constitute a unique set of harmonious relationships.
The great architecture of Palladio and Longhena goes hand in hand with the contemporary architecture of Norman Foster, Eduardo Souto de Mura, Terunobu Fujimori and Michele De Lucchi, to name but a few of the architects who have worked on the Island. It is the concrete sense of bringing cultures, times, contradictions and overcoming differences into dialogue, welcoming contamination and diversity as a source of wealth. This is why the beauty of the spaces and settings of the island of San Giorgio Maggiore never fail to enchant us.

Renata Codello
Secretary General