Storia della costruzione e recupero antisismico dell’Edificio Postale di Cassino

The February 12th, 1952 Giuseppe Nicolosi, a well-known architect and ur-ban planner of the XX Century was commissioned to design the new Cassino Post building to merge into the context of the new urban center in the middle of post-war reconstruction phase. The original image of the building is a com-pact volume, with the surfaces enriched by a texture of brick masonry left ex-posed. The regularity of the main façade, characterized by differentiated openings per floor, is interrupted only by the steel entrance canopy while in the rear elevation alternation of solids and voids behind it reflects the func-tional accommodation. The building, over the years, has undergone several interventions, both on the inside as outside of completions resulting pro-foundly transformed. Original living room to the public fittings and parts completion made on the author's design have been lost because the space over the years, was inevitably adapted to following commercial entity require-ments. Also on the ground floor, significant functional changes were made: the inclusion of a lift blockade and the closure of the rear canopy compro-mised the distinctly figurative image of the rear elevation and sides. The orig-inal curtain wall was covered with a yellow plaster layer resulting now un-readable. From this in-depth historical-constructive reconstruction, (made possible thanks to the personal archives consultation of Nicolosi) where the proposal intends to examine memory a series of interventions that aims, to-gether with the restoration of architectural and functional peculiarities which is no longer evident to the definition of solutions aimed and improving both the seismic structural elements and non-structural elements. A very incisive design address which aims at the one hand to restore the original characters, the other to the subsidiary redesign and integration of some noticeably deli-cate items.