On 12 October 2026 at 3:00 pm, Lorenzo Carmassi will give the seminar “Building through Time: Architecture, Memory and Transformation” (Costruire nel tempo. Architettura, memoria e trasformazione) at the Department of Architecture and Design (DAeD) of the Università degli Studi Mediterranea di Reggio Calabria.
The seminar, conceived within the field of architectural restoration, will explore the relationship between architecture, memory and transformation through some of the principles that have guided Carmassi Studio di Architettura’s work over more than fifty years. At the centre of the lecture is the idea that time itself can be understood as a material of architecture: restoration does not mean returning a building to an imaginary original condition, but recognising, preserving and interpreting the traces left by its successive transformations. Particular attention will be given to the authenticity of historic matter, to the value of stratification and to the possibility of recovering spatial continuity through measured acts of subtraction rather than through reconstruction or stylistic imitation. The removal of incongruous additions, the reopening of blocked passages and the rediscovery of historic surfaces can become genuine acts of design, capable of making the structure and history of a building legible again. The lecture will also address the role of contemporary additions within historic architecture. New elements should remain recognisable, light and potentially reversible, avoiding both mimicry and formal competition with the existing fabric. In this sense, conservation and transformation are not opposing attitudes: they belong to the same continuous process, in which architecture is able to accommodate new uses while preserving the identity and intelligibility of what already exists.
A further theme will concern restoration as a process of knowledge rather than the execution of a predetermined image. Survey, direct observation, material investigation and the experience of the construction site progressively reveal the building and can modify the project itself. For this reason, restoration cannot always be completely defined in advance: it must remain capable of responding to discoveries, unexpected conditions and the physical evidence of the existing fabric.
Ultimately, the seminar proposes an idea of architecture as a continuity through time. The contemporary project does not close the history of a building, but becomes one further layer within it — an “ultimo strato”, significant but never definitive — while the true objective of restoration is not to return architecture to the past, but to give it the conditions for a long future.
Institutional greetings will be given by Prof. Consuelo Nava, Director of the DAeD, and Prof. Nino Sulfaro, Deputy Director of the Department. The seminar will be introduced by Prof. Alessandra Maniaci and is curated by Dr Francesco Alberto Modafferi and Dr Francesco lo Torto.