The project of re-use between technology and architecture

The age in which we live sees a real anthropological change, a turbulence which invests human society (from the perceptive structure of subjectivity to historical-social aspects, from environment to politics). It is believed that in the society of the 21st century the harnessing of existing architectural heritage and urban regeneration represent horizons that may better develop a re-reading of the ecological, environmental, landscape and economic instances. Once the horizon towards which to move is established, trying the solution for some general issues for citizens who live in the consolidated historic centers, it is necessary to begin to formulate questions for the problems which must be tackled. The open issues are elaborate and, as we know, there are no simple answers to elaborate problems. They range from urban scale to building scale and in both cases they can be solved through a careful observation and knowledge of building heritage and phenomena that have generated and informed themselves. Any architecture, historically, is the result of an integrated and coherent system of relationships between functional, technological and architectural aspects, declined through a clever cultural material which we always find inserted in a social and economic context. Nowadays, the choice of a new intended use for a traditional building must respect its cultural value. Besides, it should satisfy the changing needs of the community and, according to a greater environmental awareness, it should happen by following a systemic approach. Within a re-use project, it is necessary to activate relationships between different pieces of knowledge to recompose the interdisciplinary which characterizes any project area. The case study presented in this paper is the ex-convent of Carmelites in Acireale (CT). It is a traditional building in a state of neglect ("left to fend for itself", as Moneo teaches us to say). Moreover it is considered a landscape heritage unknown to the town in which it is located. The convent appears to us as characterized by its functional and technologic potentialities of social and environmental interest. This project represents the attempt to gather different pieces of knowledge and competences to succeed in understanding and re-projecting the architectural complexity, including the traditional construction and the history of the places.