The project explores the paradox of preserving the architectural remains of contested pasts. Centred on the former House of the Fascist Party in Predappio, Italy – birthplace of Benito Mussolini – the project engages with core challenges and dilemmas in the work of preserving and commemorating contentious heritages. Rather than asking whether such sites should be preserved or erased, Fragile Power investigates how conservation itself becomes an arena of tension and contention.
Employing research and hallucination, the project constructs a fictional space in which preservation and destruction, conservation and intervention, celebration and denial, responsibility and complicity, glamour and violence become difficult to disentangle.
It is not only a story about the fragility of power, but also an exploration of the power of fragility.
Fragile Power was commissioned by the Co.Co.War. Dissonant Heritage and War. Conservation and Communication of a Difficult Legacy – a research project funded by the Italian Ministry of University and Research. The work was presented at the Co.Co.War Final Conference and Exhibition, Castello del Valentino, Turin, February 2026.
