“KNOWLEDGE PROCESSES BUILT-UP ENVIRONMENT RECOVERY AND HERITAGE ENHANCEMENT”

Abstract

To exchange views about the forms, actions and instruments of “doing architecture”, and to analyse in depth the needs for “recognition”, renewal and sustainable development, means to grasp the intrinsic relationship (gradually established in the course of time) between conservation – cultural heritage enhancement, maintenance, protection and safety – and the innovative aspects deriving from the dynamics of change. Such issues contribute to the delineation of the field of the research experience, and help to produce the terms for the definition of its subject matter KNOWLEDGE PROCESSES, BUILT-UP ENVIRONMENT RECOVERY AND HERITAGE ENHANCEMENT, with the aim of experimenting with methods, processes and techniques useful for the enhancement of the cultural and environmental heritage, and for the sustainable development of local resources. The study of “built-up heritage” (both of ancient construction and of recent creation) is a vast and complex research field which, besides being part of the cultural thread of local economies, at the same time opens out onto international contexts, thanks to the extensive co-operation and partnership agreements signed by the Palermo University with foreign bodies and institutions on multidisciplinary research platforms. The contribution of multidisciplinarity, as an active and interactive praxis of design, allows to analyse the built-up environment – manifold and heterogeneous in itself – according to different research angles (structural/building/transformation processes – landscape creativity and weaknesses) and to study the heritage, in a broader perspective, without separating its cultural, environmental, historical, architectural and archaeological aspects. On such bases, in the course of the research, the following questions have been raised: what “value relations” does the “technological project” share with tradition and what relations is it required to establish/measure with new domains and languages? How can the “technological project” (process/project/product) be made to interact competitively with the prospects of new development? On the whole, the tradition/innovation interaction has been regarded as one to be analysed both as a complex propositive action aimed at the enhancement of what already exists, and as an interpretative opportunity for the theoretical and applicative framework of the contemporary project.