Stratigraphy of Inner Space - A Method of Investigating Preexistences

Since the beginning of the last century, the term stratigraphy has been associated with archaeological research through various references to the analysis of all the layers constituting a preexistence.

The historical monuments present this duality by which the exterior and the interior can initially be studied separately, to recompose the reading of the whole in a second phase. The stratigraphic method is defined as an overlapping relationship between the disciplines of architecture and archaeology with deconstruction, which becomes the analysis key to understanding how the interior space was designed. The process by which an element, structure or construction is initially decayed for examination and later recomposed is part of a quasi-repetitive, mathematical investigation system.

The present article intends to emphasise the analytical way each addition, completion or modelling of the original material may be revealed and interpreted by explaining and defining the stratigraphic method. Such an approach often appears in contemporary interventions associated with historical monuments, where the material limit of each layer is clearly demarcated. Like the hypothesis of Christian Norberg-Schulz, taken from the Swiss theorist Heinrich Wölfflin, Scarpian architecture, for example, does not consist of simple geometric shapes but starts from an overall spatial vision, a “topology”, in front of which the detail becomes a subordinate element.

In-depth knowledge of all the elements that make up the interior architectural space is comparable to deciphering an archaeological site. Using a grid that repetitively sequences any structure, it will be possible to identify each intervention’s meaning and importance over time by juxtaposing the negative (gaps in the material) and positive (traces in the solid), respectively, of memory and anti-memory spaces.

Thus, it can be considered that the interior architectural space is con-stantly fighting between the closed-tectonic Piranesian forms and the open, poetic ones represented by its original essence. We can associate the stratigraphic method with Franco Purini‘s definition of the design practice as a composition of elements. It can be thus considered that the interior architectural space is constantly fighting between the closed-tectonic, Piranesian forms and the open, poetic ones, represented by its original essence. We can associate the stratigraphic method with Purini‘s definition of the design practice as a composition of elements and implicitly an a priori knowledge of all the context fragments.