Local Cultures – Global Spaces
Abstract
Settlement system regeneration could be the rendition of cultural heritage as the main developed resource for balancing the merging of material and immaterial values of the built environment. Considering material culture as the product of creative action that a community imprints on the available resources, the intangible culture is the value derived from such operations and that, in a circular perspective in turn, produces a materiality that affects the strategies of city redevelopment. The research investigates how the cultural heritage is able to regenerate itself over time by introducing key elements of performance in a continuous urban transformation. The methodological approach is based on binomial slowness/creativity. Such relationship influences the way of life in the temporal and physical dimensions. The research introduces a rehabilitation model aimed at increasing social cohesion and improving the quality of the built environment. The slowdown in urban metabolism brings the city back to a human dimension. The community’s involvement is capable of reactivating dialogue between the parties and the care of the context. Experimentation in Sciacca, the next UNESCO site in South Italy, reveals how the art-based approach could mitigate the speed of accommodating different dimensions in multiple spaces. The systemic analysis process of the art infrastructure of the historical center, redeveloped by the collaboration between the artisans and the local community, assumes the transferability requirements in other contexts to face the dynamics of gentrification and touristification of contemporary cities.
She is Lecturer Professor, and Research Fellow at DiARC of University of Naples Federico II. Also Architect, Ph.D. in Sustainable Technology, Regeneration and Representation of Architecture and the Environment,and Master Expert in the Maintenance and Sustainable Regeneration of the Built Environment. She carried out research at GSAPP of Columbia University (NY). A three-time winner of COST European Cooperation in Science & Technology. She won two Horizon Europe for adaptive reuse for cultural heritage in a circular perspective. Selected by Association of Women Inventors and Innovators Awards.
Stefania De Medici Stefania De Medici, architect, PhD in Building and Environmental Rehabilitation at the University of Genova, is Associate; Professor in Architectural Technology in the Department of Civil Engineering and Architecture at the University of Catania, satellite university campus of Architecture of Siracusa. She is the author of “The new uses to protect and enhance the built heritage. The privatization of public real estate assets, 2010” and “Enhancement of abandoned buildings. Rudinì Winery in Pachino”.
Giulia Marchiano, PhD candidate in Architecture at DiARC of University of Naples Federico II. The research activity, in partnership with ETT S.p.a., a digital company specialised in technological and scientific knowledge integration, focuses on maintenance of buildings. She earned cum laude a Master’s Degree Architecture for Sustainable Project in 2021 at Turin’s Polytechnic, then in 2022 she attended and passed an advanced training course at University of Perugia and Polytechnic University of Marche. In 2023 earned a master’s degree in Sustainable maintenance and redevelopment of building environment at University of Naples Federico II.
Maria Rita Pinto, architect, PhD in Building and Environmental Regeneration, Full Professor of Architectural Technology at the Department of Architecture of the University of Naples Federico II. She has been the Scientific Coordinator of the international research: Real Albergo de’ Poveri: New Uses for Old Buildings. Methodologies for Compatible Design, funded by World Monuments Fund (USA). She has been the scientific coordinator of the research “Artists in Architecture. Re-activating modern European houses” funded by the Creative Europe Program (2018).