La copertura del Teatro Farnese di Parma. Costruzione, memoria, innovazione / The roof of the Farnese Theatre in Parma. Construction, memory, innovation

The paper concerns one of the first studies on the roof structure of the Farnese Theatre in Parma. The structure dates back to the beginning of the seventeenth century, representing one of the the biggest timber construction in Europe before the nineteenth century. In addition to construction, two keywords of the paper are memory and innovation. The concept of memory has to do with the object of the study, because the structure has lost its original configuration; the roof was in fact deeply renovated in the second half of the nineteenth century, due to its conservation state, and the structural scheme was completely changed: while the original roof was the result of experience of the master builders of that period and the trusses were statically undetermined structures, the configuration of the new ones, which reused many of the original parts, followed the new principles of the Science of Construction. The second scheme was innovative, and the solution probably came from the loss of confidence in the old construction, or from the belief that the new building science would have brought consistent improvement in the structural safety of the theatre. Or, on the contrary, this solution simply derived from the total lack of knowledge for the old techniques; in other words, from the loss of construction memory. The memory has to do also with the actual configuration of the theatre, because the hall was rebuilt in wood, “as it was and where it was”, after the bombing and the subsequent fire of the Second World War. The few collapsed trusses were replaced with new ones and the wooden parts of the hall were reconstructed with the same shape, except for the coloring of the surfaces. The ceiling was not replaced. This study is based on accurate analysis of the available historic documents and on laser scanner survey; it brings some observations on the current deformation of the structure and on its supposed behaviour. The detailed survey was the basis for the recent intervention to secure the roof system.