The former Kerasav factory in Portici. New perspectives on the City.

Kerasav ceramic factory in Portici, Italy. The architectural restoration project lays its foundations on a thorough understanding of the existing buildings’ specificities with a view to transmitting them to the future. In this respect, an accurate historical research provided the background knowledge for the requalification strategy reviewed in this paper. The study focuses both on the technical characteristics of the peculiar trussed beams of the former Kerasav and on the role that the latter can play within its context, imagining it as a new urban hub. The goal is to develop an industrial rehab project that responds to the urban planning requirements outlined in the Strategic Urban Development Plan, with particular attention to preserving the memory of the industrial heritage within the Vesuvian territory. The debate on the enhancement of brownfield sites and the opportunities they offer to their urban contexts has become increasingly important in re-cent years. The need to keep widening the field of research without limiting it to single artefacts is the leitmotif that led the research, taking into account their social, environmental and historical values, as well as their small and large-scale potential, in order to deliver a tailor-made urban regeneration proposal for the densely inhabited city of Portici. Furthermore, preventing these artefacts from turning into "something else" by respecting their industrial memory through a set of interventions capable of establishing an effective dialogue between past and present.