La définition d'une stratégie d'intervention. La ... - RehabiMed

La définition d’une stratégie d’intervention.
La definición de una estrategia de intervención
Defining a strategy for intervention
Protection and valorization of common
housing and regional architecture.
State and perspectives of the university
research in Italy
Carlo Aymerich
Carlo Aymerich is full professor at the University of Cagliari and
he is the Dean of the Faculty of Architecture. Scientific Director of
many rehabilitation projects in traditional heritage and industrial
archaeology and author of several books, monographies, articles and
reports about the connections between context and architecture,
design and technology, with specific attention to the traditioninnovation
relationships.
Address:
Department of Architecture, University of Cagliari Piazza D’Armi 16
– 09123 Cagliari (ITALY)
E-mail address:
caymeric@unica.it
presidenza.architettura@unica.it
Telephone:
+390706755806 cell. +39 3356208011
During the second half of the past century, the architecture has been
characterized by the enlargement of the gap between the historical
heritage and the new building production. A conspicuous part of this
estate – basic housing and historical architecture of the minor centres
– has been left to decay and obsolescence, when preference turned to
the outbreak of large suburbs. These were featured with new imported
types, techniques and characters, imposed by a process often led
by speculative advantages. Only since a few decades, with the crisis
of modernity, a renovated production system is risen, based on local
identities and resources, turned towards the re-use of local materials
and to the knowledge, the protection and the valorisation of the
architectural heritage. This new culture is also directed to answer the
question of the environmental compatibility of building with the aim
both of optimisation of typologies versus the local techniques and the
existing housing, and of valorisation of the demand of sustainability
and energy saving.
Nowadays, a great number of Departments and Research Bodies
in Italian Universities are deeply involved on these arguments, often
operating with shared methodologies to produce a network of
knowledge, where the different local contents are classified, analysed
and compared. An investigation is also conducted, that considers the
traditional architecture of the Mediterranean environment, looking at
similarities, relationships and precedents. Starting on the 80ties, the
Department of Architecture and the Faculty of Architecture of the
University of Cagliari produced a great number of studies concerning
these arguments. The principal reasons of their interest are directly
connected with the problems of the rehabilitation of a quite large
and typical heritage of traditional-rural architecture. This patrimony
is still reasonably well preserved - thanks to the insulated position of
Sardinia in the centre of the Mediterranean Sea - and could also be
considered like an interesting and paradigmatic field of application of
recover methodologies. But - as well as for other Mediterranean regions
- a concrete danger of neglect and of replacement with improper
new constructions is quite real. The researches and studies of Cagliari
University have been run in co-operation with a wide representation
of Sardinia public institutions (among others, the Region of Sardinia,
the Network of Earthen Towns, counting at the moment more than 15
Communes, the Building School of Cagliari that allowed the set up of a
laboratory for tests and environmental performances).
Starting from this basis, in 2004, the Cagliari Department coordinated
five more university teams in a more wide research program. This was
entitled: Protection and valorisation of common housing and regional
and its goal was to
define operatively a set of coordinated instruments in order to face, in
a wide geographical italian context, the questions connected to the
preservation of the regional heritage, looking at the different characters,
techniques, materials and typologies in many regional contexts and
historical minor centres, suitably located in the national territory. The
researches started with a wide and well articulated range of surveys
and analyses of cases of study, well placed in a large extension of the
italian peninsula, from Veneto to Emilia - Romagna, Abruzzo and Molise,
Puglia, and the major islands, Sicilia and Sardegna. These represent
a considerable number of contexts which the six Research Units
(Bologna, Ferrara, L’Aquila, Bari, Palermo and Cagliari) were in a right
condition to face up. The aim rose specifically, from the necessity to set
out both an operative framework of tradition - innovation comparison
and a renewed directory of criteria, proceedings and rules for the
recover and the conservation of the traditional architecture. The final
issue was to configure a compatible and appropriated re-use of the
building heritage. This should affect the historical features as well as
the environmental protection and the themes of sustainability and the
save of energy. In such a meaning, the six Research Teams used the
respective local contexts for tests and developed more items inside a
common methodology with the aim to integrate and to enlarge the
know-how of a subject regarding quite a large extension of national
territory (Fig.1).
More particularly, the specific issues of the research were: a) to identify
a code about the typological order, the environmental characters
and the process of growth of the basic architectural features in minor
environments; b) to study the building characters belonging by the use
of the natural and local materials; c) to point out the transformation,
growth and decay issues; c) to investigate about the lines for the
rehabilitation of basic building structures, and to establish the standards
and the design codes concerning the recover, including the addition
of new building elements; d) to identify standards and criteria for the
valuation of the environmental compatibility of the technological
components according to the sustainability. The research was focused
on the rehabilitation residential architecture required by the new needs
of energetic balance and environmental preservation. In this meaning it
concerned: the new needs of inhabitants, the technological innovation
and the updating of the building processes, the contemporary
development of new building quality and environmental requirements,
in the sense of a better integration with the historic architectural context.
All Units followed criteria of typological performance homogeneity and
elaborated local repertoires of the building types and of the constructive
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