Architettura ed assemblaggio. “La logica del dettaglio” nell'esperienza di Piombino (Architecture and assemblage, “The logic of detail”, in the Piombino experience)

The paper focuses on Enrico Mandolesi’s technical research applied to industrial prefabrication on a case study in the Salivoli neighbourhood in Piombino. Due to the complex system of evolutions and involutions which accompanied the success of industry applied to the building sector in Italy, this research has summed up the main stages of the timid advent of prefabrication and the measured development of the architectural language it was linked to. This language has been revised over the years thanks to the use of a kind of prefabrication which greatly invests in building elements, rather than on the entire production process, still today tightly linked to craft methods. From a solid and firm manifestation of the walls, the primordial element of Italian architecture from avant-garde to the 1930s, the progressive concept of element assemblage (frames, fixtures, decorative panelling), leads to a language made up of deviations, staggered planes, expressive anastylosis which from the 1950s up until the 1970s will allow the creation of complex divisions of the façade into decorative motifs. The experiment in Piombino is paradigmatic: the prefabricated constructive element, both with in-line buildings and residential towers, preserves the visionary and decorative tension through new constructive details, wisely mixed with industrial elements. The study of the project will highlight the fact that in a new scale sequence, focus on details and on the technological options will push toward the urban scale system and the configuration of common spaces, with special reference to the unsolved urban extensions originating from the building ground connections. The whole rehabilitation project is based on this awareness.