I was standing in a crumbling courtyard in the outskirts of Naples last Tuesday, watching a contractor try to patch a structural fissure with nothing but cheap, grey cement and a prayer. It’s the same way politicians approach the concept…
Author: Elena Vasari-Pucci
A building tells you how it was built if you know where to look. I write about joints, mortar and the decisions of people who are long dead, because that is where the real story sits.
I remember sitting in a dusty studio in Ravenna, my fingers stained with glue and charcoal, staring at a mass of balsa wood that refused to behave. Everyone around me was obsessed with the latest high-resolution digital renders, treating them…
I was standing in a dusty courtyard near Paestum last autumn, tracing the edge of a weathered column with my thumb, when I realized how much we get wrong in the textbooks. People love to talk about the seamless transition…
I was surveying a small, nineteenth-century farmhouse near Ravenna last Tuesday when I saw it: a jagged, ugly seam where a new housing development had simply slapped itself against the ancient boundary wall. There was no transition, no respect for…
I was kneeling in the dust of a Palermitan courtyard last summer, my magnifying glass inches away from a limestone block, when I realized how much we miss by simply looking at the “grandeur.” Most guidebooks will try to sell…
I remember standing on a scaffolding in a crumbling palazzo near Palermo, squinting at a patch of wall that everyone else called “faded.” To the untrained eye, it was just a dying shade of yellow, but as I brushed away…
I was standing in the heat of a Sicilian afternoon last July, tracing the edge of a weathered Doric capital with my fingernails, when I realized how much we get wrong. Most guidebooks treat temples and their orders like a…
I was crouched in a damp corner of a 14th-century chapel near Ravenna last Tuesday, the smell of wet limestone and old dust filling my lungs, when I realized my sketchbook was more useful than my laser scanner. Most people…
I was kneeling in the salt-crusted silt of a Roman pier near Ravenna last autumn, my fingers tracing the jagged edge of a broken travertine block, when it hit me how much we misunderstand the sheer defiance of these structures….
I was surveying a mid-century renovation in Ravenna last Tuesday when I found myself staring, not at the beautiful frescoes, but at the junction where a new drywall partition met an old stone lintel. It was a mess of cheap…