Italia ‘90 World Cup. The Restoration of Oblivion

The 1990 World Cup represented a moment of reflection on the state of Italian stadiums, most of which had been built between the 1930s and 1970s. In some cases, this led to radical and hardly reversible interventions. Today, Italian football clubs are calling on the Government to enact new laws that would facilitate the construction of new, privately-owned stadiums. The contemporary stadium must serve as an architectural model capable of providing services and reflecting economic and socio-cultural values that have evolved since 1990. Football remains a phenomenon of great national interest and is undergoing significant transformation, with a more diverse audience and a search for more inclusive approaches in the design of “open” facilities that can act as socio-economic catalysts beyond the duration of a single sporting event. However, current analyses concerning the redevelopment of major football stadiums appear to overlook the formal and functional changes these structures already underwent during the preparations for Italia ’90. In order to adapt or regenerate Italian stadiums and make them active elements of urban dynamics—reintegrating them, where necessary, into the fabric of the city and surrounding territory—an intense and comprehensive design effort is needed. This effort should not serve as a pretext for the brutal erasure of the structures and scenographic elements created for the World Cup and its 'magical nights,' but rather initiate a restoration process marked by the difficult pursuit of a balance between memory of the recent past and a forward-looking vision. Completely obliterating the scenography created for Italia ’90 would undoubtedly be a censorial act. By means of previously unpublished documents—retrieved from municipal archives and the archives of the designers involved—related to the construction sites of the paradigmatic cases of Bologna, Genoa, Milan, and Rome (whose stadiums were completely transformed for the World Cup), this contribution aims to highlight how the study of the construction processes (through images and videos) is essential in the preliminary phase of a 'Knowledge Project,' which is indispensable for the operational planning of restoration projects for these facilities.