Bunkers after bunkers: cross-conservation and enhancement experiences between Italy and Portugal

Predicting a second life for architectural heritage is always a very difficult and challenging task. Today, the functions for which buildings from the distant to recent times were built appear to be outdated or even completely unrelated to the dynamic of contemporary life. A case in point is fortifications, and among these modern fortifications such as bunkers, which open up a complex scientific questioning on the issue of our “after-life” for the need to balance the preservation of the physical structures, the design of new, credible and sustainable uses, and the management of a controversial memory related to the traumas of war or the rule of the oppressor, with high-risk of interpretative and semantic conflicts. Since the mission of architectural restoration as a discipline is not only the material preservation of artifacts, but primarily the cultural supervision to their enhancement, this study provides a critical reflection on the second life of bunkers – what happens to bunkers after a conflict has ended? in short, bunkers after bunkers – through the analysis of two coastal defensive systems built in Europe during the Second World War and for some years now the focus of strategies for their active reintegration into today’s cultural landscape: the Galla Placidia Line in Italy and the Plan Barron in Portugal. Thus, the paper describes the two military landscapes, traces assumptions and phases of their construction, delves into the state of conservation of the surviving network of bunkers, investigates their legal protection regime as well as local communities’ perceptions of these legacies, and finally it illustrates ongoing regeneration practices and possible management models that may result. By means of similarities and differences between the Italian and Portuguese context, the goal is to share value-oriented strategies in the approach to a difficult heritage as well as quality-based solutions for the conscious integration between heritage conservation and sustainable urban development, gaining opportunities for an effective process of transferability (and not replicability) in similar cultural districts.