The Stratospheric Wind Tunnel of Guidonia: reconstruction of a «lost» heritage

The documentation of twentieth-century architectural heritage under conditions of material loss raises open methodological issues, particularly for industrial architectures subordinated to performance requirements. The paper addresses the case of the Stratospheric Wind Tunnel at the Guidonia Experimental Centre (1935), a facility for high-speed aerodynamic research almost destroyed in 1943. The integration of photogrammetric survey and analysis of contemporary sources reconstructed not the image of the building but the unified technological logic that informed it, oriented towards vibration control. The study demonstrates how the critical reconstruction of a «lost» architecture can restore not an image, but the understanding of the constructive logic that generated it.