Historical Buildings in Fragile Areas. Problems and New Perspectives for the Care of Architectural Heritage

Abstract

In recent times, widespread reflection on the destiny of inner areas has arisen. New approaches, particularly in the economic, social and “territorialist” fields tend to consider fragile areas – it matters not if they are mountain or hilly areas, rural or urban peripheral areas, monumental sites or areas whose values are to be found in memories and stratifications which time had transcribed onto “what remains” – as strategic places for the care of the territory, to hinder civil and economic inequalities, and those which stem from climate change. The prevailing idea is that fragility or marginality of the so called “places that don’t matter”, which conserve important cultural capital but where more and more often very worrying social and political demands mature, can become an important resource if only we try to reconstruct the connections between places and dwelt-in communities, which with time, for diverse reasons, have been frayed. In the wake of this new vision, the main objective of this essay is to investigate not so much the fragility which regards the physical degradation of buildings and settlements, which is the consequence of the marginalization of territories, but, more in general, and with more ambitious aims, to investigate how the crisis of the system of relationships between man and his habitat, which underlies every kind of fragility, has a consequence on the lack of memory and significance of architectural heritage. The paper also analyses a perspective that has already been studied in other fields, but which has been less studied in the field of architectural restoration. According to this perspective, the programme of reconstruction, more than on the tangible aspect of this heritage and on the possibility of re-use, should intervene on the relationships that over time have transformed these places and buildings in important “reserves for meanings”. Starting therefore from this reflection on the concept of fragility and trying to focus on the relationship between fragile heritage and lack of identity, the essay tries to outline possible approaches based on the idea that the relaunch of these places does not depend on a possible, self-referential recognition of the values that this heritage holds, but on the role that they take on in processes of construction (or reconstruction) of the communities that live there.

Keywords

• fragilità
• aree interne, patrimonio costruito
• cura