When a Masterpiece is Auctioned Off: The Holiday Camp Rinaldo Piaggio in Santo Stefano d’Aveto

Abstract

This essay contributes to the discussion around the following question: what happens after a children’s holiday camp ceases its activities? Are abandonment and ruin an inevitable fate? The former mountain holiday camp “Rinaldo Piaggio” is the case study around which this reflection unfolds. The holiday camp was built by the Genoese architect Luigi Carlo Daneri in 1939 in Santo Stefano d'Aveto, Liguria, where it housed the children of employees of the Pontedera company until 1983. Later, it was sold and affected by an unsuccessful project to convert it into a healthcare residence, and as of today, it is painfully encumbered by a judicial sale procedure, and is in short “a masterpiece at auction.” The holiday camp is mentioned in many publications on modern architecture and was declared of cultural interest in 1996. This vast historical-critical consensus, however, was never followed by a monographic study aimed at understanding the problems of the building’s conservation, its functional recovery, and the preservation of its modernist qualities. After an introduction on the building, the text reconstructs the attempts to transform and update its use, focusing on what has happened in the last two years, between the start of bankruptcy proceedings and an unexpected opportunity to protect the architectural qualities of this masterpiece and promote the revival of its accommodation function.