Ventilated rainscreen, new materials and modern construction techniques in the renovation and recovery of a historic heritage building

The paper deals with the revision and implementation of a study conducted some years ago on a proposal for the recovery of a mid-19th century theatre in the historic center of Melfi, a town in southern Italy. Originally (1856) it presented the classic typology of the Italian public hall with a horseshoe-shaped stalls and boxes, subsequently modified due to the works of transformation of the theatre into a cinema at the beginning of the 20th century. It is a recovery hypothesis that is partly alternative and partly complementary to those that have repeatedly involved, over the years, reconstruction, restructuring and currently energy efficiency works. The main parts of the intervention consist on the one hand in the reconstruction of the upper part of the façade with a ventilated rainscreen in zinc-titanium that allows a simplification of the classical prospect order; on the other hand in the arrangement of the hall and the definition and organization of rooms that the theater had never had, with the recovery of the original horseshoe-shaped form of the atrium through the construction of a load-bearing structure, in its horizontal elements, with glued laminated wood of Quercus Cerris, as developed at the Laboratory of Construction Technology (La.Te.C.) of the University of Basilicata. This is an example of how it is possible gives back to the town a prestigious building, preserving its original form and, at the same time, characterizing it with some modern elements but connected with its architectural language; thus, implementing an intervention strategy that can be exported to similar buildings in Italy and abroad historical centres.