Il Palazzo delle Poste e Telegrafi di Augusta : una lettura delle radici culturali del Sud nel disegno del Fichera

The architect Francesco Fichera from Catania was perhaps one of the most consistent supporters of the local Sicilian architectural tradition, so much so as to decline this attitude in his various projects designed and built especially for south-eastern Sicily. Pupil of Ernesto Basile, he accepted his reluctance towards the internationalization of the architectural culture that could have undermined the local identity and led to homologation. The acceptance of modernity, especially in small towns, eschews the principle of tabula rasa with respect to the past, placing itself rather as a meeting point. The design in the ‘30s of the new Palace of the Post Office and Telegraphs of Augusta becomes a way to experiment with a new language in a context strongly historicized and to understand the monumentality according to a different meaning that transcends the use of large scale, as was happening in the major cities of Italy. In this regard, a study is proposed, which conducted with the tools of Representation (survey, drawing, three-dimensional modeling) aims to investigate how the basic design components theorized by Fichera, such as heredity and adaptation, can be conjugated according to the Mediterranean genius loci.