Archaeology and nature: hyblean cultural landscape and territorial ...

having an infrastructure in a certain territory. To state it more exactly, the expression “conceptual quality”
appears in the Italian regulation for public works (D. P.R. 544/99 and further modification – Art. 46
Verification of the preliminary plan [...] 2 . The verification aims to ascertain the conceptual quality, as well as
the social, ecological, environmental and economic quality of the chosen plan solution and its conformity to
the specific functional, performing, technical dispositions enclosed in the preliminary plan document, and it
aims to optimise the chosen plan solution). However, because the expression “conceptual quality” is never
defined, its plan application has always turned out to be generic and of little meaning. Recently, the D.P.R.
05/10/2010, n. 207, regulation of enforcement and actuation of DLgs 12/04/2006, n. 163, about public works,
under “verification of the plan”, the expression “conceptual quality” has disappeared and has never been
substituted by any other parameters referring to the external quality. This situation has determined a
normative “emptiness” which limits a documented consideration and represented in genius loci with the risk
of increasing the existence of infrastructures lacking in a intangible as well as indispensible quality.
Thus, the intention to grasp this “conceptual quality” as a way to reflect about its meaning, becomes concrete
in order not to lose the comprehensive awareness which is able to improve the harmony in the infrastructurehuman
being connection.
2. The appraisal of the projects: a survey
To better understand how added values existes in a road infrastructure, it is necessary to dwell upon the
features which are part of the complex connection between the plan and the territorial context. The main
features of such correlation are: the user, who perceives the road infrastructure work and its context
according to a specific cognitive process, the work (roads and bridges) and the territorial context (the plan
area). To start with the first feature, the human aspect is included in those environmental factors both biotic
and abiotic though with an interpretation addressed to the protection. Should we consider the human aspect
from an anthropocentric point of view, which has to do with people’s everyday life, this aspect assumes many
different connotations depending on who uses those road infrastructures, through its perceptive and
interpretative faculties, becoming thus the user. According to this point of view, the user becomes the most
important for both using road infrastructures and for living with them. From a cognitive point of view, the user
stimulates a perceptive as well as a representative process which produces an evaluation – positive,
negative, indifferent - regarding all that activates our attention. Briefly, “the perception is always part of
valuation criteria, - more or less self conscious, intuitive or automatic – which becomes the appreciation
about the shape, meaning and function of something”[1]. Even though the shape, function, meaning and
features of the object refer to the cognitive activity of the user and according psychologists they are
interrelated, in this survey they are separately analysed and seen as an interpretation key for infrastructures.
As far as the perceived shape is concerned, there are two main categories: the first one belongs to the
context, be it territorial, peri-urban or urban. The second one regards the road plan as a linear system of
roads and bridges. The growing awareness about safety measures and acoustic impact meant to reduce
road accidents as well as human and biotic impacts, leads both the designer and the buyer to incorporate
safety measures such as increasingly higher guard-rails and sound proofing barriers which make the
infrastructure looks like a enclosed lane. Consequently, it happens that the technological structures of roads
and bridges dominate over the road and bridge shapes. From the point of view of perception, when the work
is finished, its shape can either be lost in its context or become more prominent but it is always inescapable
within all that surrounds it. The perception of the work shape is always incorporated with its context. The
second feature, the function, is also to be considered in a different way. As far as the work is concerned, the
function is the reason of a road infrastructure’s existence which allows the transport of people and animals or
the clearing of a obstruction in the case of bridges. Culturally and strategically speaking, the large quantity of
infrastructures in our country is due to the maximization of the means of transport and to safety measures.
There is also the function relevant to the area, such as the rural or urban one, with different ways of
connection with the road infrastructure. The third feature, the meaning, described as “the content of any
means of communication as it is translatable into concepts, notions, references”, or as “importance of a fact,
in consideration of the reasons which have motivated it and their possible consequences”, leads one to
understand that both a territorial context and a road infrastructure can have many meanings. A bridge, with
its formal and chromatic features, can be the main symbol of a town, for instance the fourth bridge in the
Canal Grande, Venice, by Santiago Calatrava or the highway access in East Padua where the former is a
outright monument, the latter an access to the town. In the same way, agricultural land means not only the
production of bounties of the earth but also the representation of cultivation techniques, an urban context can
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