Museo d’Arte a Ravensburg: il reimpiego di antichi mattoni in laterizio

Brick is the longest living element among the ancient building ones. Its always be used in the most diff erent variations, depending on the geographical origin, the climatic conditions and the constructive tradition. In addition to being made by a natural raw material, it can even comply with the most modern standards of environmental sustainability: the regulation about the reconversion of the disused quarries is an example. However, a high expenditure of energy during cooking is linked to its production process, and in buildings where it has been widely used, it could cause a large amount of demolition waste and could create great difficulty in proper disposal. The solution to both problems can be the massive reuse of bricks, which retain their properties much longer than it can imagine. The reusing methods depend strongly on the recovery process: if this is very intrusive, then reusing will take place in the form of splinters and debris, reusable in the landscape. If the material is suffi ciently homogeneous then it can be minced so fi nely as to obtain sand that can be reintroduced as a stabilizer in the production process of new bricks. It is much more complex to recover the whole brick, unless this is already foreseen in the planning phase. The paper illustrates the design and construction experience of the Ravensburg Art Museum by LRO Architekten (Arno Lederer, Jòrunn Ragnarsdóttir and Marc Oei) as a brilliant example of the recovery of bricks and stones from ancient architecture. In conclusion, the contribution will expose some of the design principles that inspired the architecture described, as told by the designer.