Climate change and liveability in the Mediterranean area. Technological continuity for a sustainable rehabilitation project in Marzamemi (Sicily)

For Fernand Braudel, the Mediterranean area is "a thousand things together. Not a landscape, but countless landscapes. Not a sea, but a succession of seas. Not a civilization, but a series of civilizations stacked on each other". These characteristics determine different environments and for some years the discriminating character of these differences has been the liveability. Linked to the human actions that use the built space, it constitutes an organized, technological and environmental system that evolves in function of social and cultural transformations. This is evidenced by the changes in the use of materials, the expression of semiotic systems linked to the technological solutions of a certain historical period and a certain place. Today, in the field of smart cities and smart buildings it is essential to consider the redevelopment/ reuse project in a green key, without losing the values of the built heritage (UNESCO). In this sense, the study proposed here relates the characteristics of the Mediterranean landscape typical of the south-eastern coast of Sicily and the small village of Marzamemi, with the possibility of improving the energy behaviour of existing buildings, using traditional local systems, respecting the concept of contemporary living. The result is the energy improvement through the combination of the project on the existing with the study of an envelope appropriate to the local climate, which prevents the loss of cultural significance of the built heritage and allows significant performance improvements in respect of identity characteristics.