Il progetto del colore della Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn di Napoli

The Zoological Station of Naples was founded in 1872 by the German zoologist Anton Dohrn (1840-1909) who, a fervent defender of Darwin's theory of "descent with modification", decided to devote his life to collecting documents in support of Darwinism. The foundations were laid in March 1872 and September 1873 the first building was completed.In the final version, this first part presented a very simple and regular diagram, a rectangle of sides 25 and 35 m respectively, with an entrance on the eastern side and loggias on the south and east facades. The exterior facades were modulated on the rhythm of the arches, closed by elegant Ionic couple of columns, which on the southern and eastern faces were opened towards wide galleries, the first one corresponding to the Sala degli Affreschi. The base band , as well as the four vertical towers, were characterized by the presence of bosses which, with the great cornice embellished with various decorations, gave a majestic look to the entire body of the building. In later years the building has undergone a gradual and interesting transformation that in 1883 led to the creation of a body to the west, separated from the original that was approximately 7.5 m and connected by two metal bridges, and in 1902 a further extension eastwards, with the variation of the inputs, split north and south, led into the new court that the original body distanced from the latest build. The last phase of growth is recorded in 1956 the building, done by Frediano Frediani who, in the space remaining between the original body and the second body to the west, builded the volume of the library.The current layout of the building consists of an elongated rectangle of sides respectively 25 and 115 m.In 2006 started the restoration of the exterior facades of the building and those inside the court and it was, therefore, possible to draw up the plan of the color of the entire building. The steps for finding the original chromatism have been conducted exploring the possibilities of investigation that the building offered during the restoration. There have been numerous essays for the collection of samples of painted plaster then subjected to organoleptic tests and microchemical tests, and through a series of stratigraphic pieces with scalpels, with technical and specialized restorer experience. The measures of color in both processes were carried out according to DIN standards for comparison using the Munsell Chart of Color. The results of these stages of processing and surface samples have not defined a chromatic scale, however, not satisfactory and consistent with the results of documentaries studies performed on archival material and old photographs. It has been, therefore, supposed with the Superintendent experts that the results obtained by stratigraphic tests were referring not to the original colors of the building but to a total renovation of the facades promoted at the time of construction of the eastern body or the library , which has standardized the surface of the building with one light yellow painting and has eliminated the polychromy and the rhythm of shadows in the plastic decoration of the facade. As prerequisites for the choice of colors to use have been considered both the color drawing, preserved in original in the Historical Archive, signed by Merculiano in 1902, in which the Zoological Station is represented with the first two buildings of 1873 and 1886, both the scale of polychromatic architecture represented in the Sala degli Affreschi by Hans von Marées within the original body. developed and deepened also in the cleaning an renewal phases. The result was a very compete- even inedited- base, for the working group planning choices. These choices were made after a work of continual optimisation of the given colour samples from the early stage till the final one, from the project to the final operative phase, made in situ with the chosen materials and after a good constructive debate, that led to collective choices and to the verification of the chromatic values and of the relations between the different parts.