How design mistakes can make a building "sick" from the beginning: the case of a paradigmatic building of the brutalist architecture in Potenza (Italy)

The monumental building, formerly the seat of the Mediterranean Bank in Potenza, whose project dates back to 1976 and which was built between 1982 and 1985, proposing design modules and compositional structure of the Castle of Lagopesole, by Federico II of Swabia, is today a sad empty container. After about a decade of use, i.e. until the end of the 90’s, the building was abandoned, as its use was no longer economically viable. In fact, it was built with reinforced facing concrete walls, not isolated either inside or outside; flat roofs are not insulated; curtain wall fixtures are bad-performing in terms of heat loss. It has a large skylight, made almost horizontally, a cascade of glass cubes which covers the central hall. At present, spalling of concrete is diffusing, molds are spreading on the inner face of the exterior walls, and roofs are leaking. The interest in the described building, was born from the appreciation of the architectural value of a brutalist work of contemporary architecture, paradigmatic and relevant both for its many cultural and architectural references, both for the originality demonstrated in the synthesis of different languages attributable to the current period; as well as for the typical pathologies of a building with walls made of reinforced facing concrete. The aim of the work is to demonstrate how it is possible to work on a building representative of brutalist architecture in Italy, correcting the pathologies and turning it into an energy-efficient building, without changing its formal aspect.