Assessing the reuse compatibility of cultural heritage for the built environment regeneration

[ 364 ] Cultural heritage the physical system into: the physical system of natural conditions and the man-made physical system. This natural physical system favours or prevents human settlement and conditions the activities, works and modes of proposition and organisation of the built physical system. The latter is determined by the human presence, which is organised in social structures, which choose the locations of new settlements and act on how resources are used2. In the settlement system, the man-made physical system of the built environment is the product of the slow accumulation of the actions outcomes, generated and realised by the social system. The transformations of the physical system are the mirror of socio-economic changes, linked to particular historical events, periods of development or economic crises, variations in the employment sector, catastrophic natural events, regulations, the transformation of productive activities, and migratory processes that have modified the population’s behaviour and lifestyles, shaping the image of the city. The method developed for the Palazzo Nicastro reuse project was based on two types of analysis. The first analysis was carried out on the building (framing, architectural survey and performance analysis), making it possible to identify its performance (Fig. 1). The second phase analyses new use to be settled, according to the transformation dynamics observed in the area, defining desirable development directions. From the analysis of the settlement requirements, different hypotheses of new uses were identified, and submitted to the local community’s attention through a survey. The analysis of the regulatory framework enabled to identification of the performance requirements of the chosen new use. The comparison between the requirements and the performance offered by the building made it possible to define a functional layout, which was subsequently verified according to the constraints on transformation3. 2 Chia-Sheng, C.; Yin-Hao, C.; Lichiu, T. (2018) Evaluating the adaptive reuse of historic buildings through multicriteria decision-making, Habitat International, vol. 81, pp. 12-23, https://doi.org/10.1016/j. habitatint.2018.09.003. 3 Wong, L. (2017) Adaptive Reuse: Extending the Lives of Buildings, Basel, Birkhäuser. At the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (Dubai, 12/12/23), COP28 recognised in the Mitigation and Adaptation section the need to identify appropriate strategies for transforming cultural heritage. Aligning with it, on 21/12/23, Italy launched the National Plan for Adaptation to Climate Change (D.M. 434/23). Among 361 measures, the research focuses on the implementation of actions to improve the adaptive capacity and enhancement of the vulnerable cultural heritage. Adaptive reuse as an enhancement strategy could have effects on an urban scale through an extensive study of the relations between regulatory instruments and settlement transformations. Adopting a systemic approach to the analysis of the city, the project for the reuse of buildings follows a logic of consistency for the urban context, to contribute to the start of an organic development process on a broader scale.