Riequilibrare i processi dissipativi degli antichi spazi di fruizione collettiva: risorse fragili e potenzialità latenti

Within the framework of the commitments that European cities are taking to reduce consumption and emission, public spaces are subject to design considerations aimed at countering processes of water management. Taking into account the multiplicity of solutions and devices developed by the research and industry communities for new buildings, the contribution investigates ancient cities attitudes to accommodate and connect new systems, accompanying the transition towards resources’ rebalancing with the preservation of ancient urban values. The paper aims to outline new opportunities for dialogue between old and new. The cultural approach exceeds the strict boundaries dictated by devices instances, thanks to the outlining of physical, social, economic and cultural constraints. The urban regeneration project is called upon to invest in latent potentialities of the ancient settlement systems, an essential condition for promoting new prosperity scenarios based on links between individuals, society and the living environment. The assumption behind the proposal is that the future of ancient cities, is inevitably linked to the ability to reinvent new behaviours for spaces and devices, with the design of technologies, able to fit within a built system characterized by high degrees of rigidity. Technology when penetrating within the historical centres, offers new answers to the request for circularization process. The concept of integration, referred to the use of new technologies into existing systems allows to redirect the current operational practice, fragmented and undifferentiated, to actions based on the respect and promotion of local diversity. Under these technological approaches, each environmental unit of the ancient city becomes an auto poietic and propulsive cell of metabolic conversion for the whole urban tissue. The penetration of a new way of technological thinking is related to spaces’ flexibility for the transition to a system that continually redefines itself and within itself sustains and reproduces.