Ricerc@Sapienza

The phenomenon of depopulation that has affected many small Italian historic centres - immediately after the unification of Italy, then still after the Second World War and aggravated by the seismic events that have occurred throughout the national territory - has long posed the question of how to attempt the recovery of many minor centres of various historical, architectural and landscaping interest, now abandoned or in conditions of increasing demographic decline.
The choice of any reuse for historic buildings - from adaptation to integral conservation - while remaining a means for the preservation and therefore the transmission of a historical architecture to the future, must necessarily confront themselves with the issues related to structural safety.
The current regulatory framework for historic buildings in the seismic area directs us towards ways and techniques of reinforcement that are as much as possible ‘compatible’ with the constructive characteristics of the architecture, with the aim of ‘improving’ the structural behavior and at the same time to respect the values of historical and architectural heritage.
This approach is outlined by the regulations for the single building, not for the urban fabric in seismic area, which is also characterized by historical and architectural features, with specific problems related to the nature of the transformations occurred over time, generally referable to episodes of successive accretions.
The paper intends to discuss about the binomial, safety and conservation, from the point of view of the reuse, drawing inspiration from some examples of smaller centres, abandoned or characterized by growing depopulation, appropriately detailed and able to allow a wide functional range.