Conversione e conservazione: alternative di recupero per l’edilizia rurale

Traditional farm buildings, which have stood for centuries and witnessed local farming practice, are about to disappear because of pressures due more to the times than to space-related problems. Several European institutions have already stated that rural architecture is a priceless building reserve that can not be wasted, and that the intelligent use of which may influence economic planning and rural development and decentralization policies. It is therefore necessary to start from a deep knowledge of a centuries-old architectural heritage, not only of its meaning for the collective imagination, in order to reinterpret the role of farm buildings. The more their role will be linked to local traditions and users’ needs, the more effective the effort to bring them to new life will be. To this purpose, the research devised a planning methodology taking into account the whole of productive and functional factors that can influence the choice to recover or to abandon traditional farm buildings. The proposed method was carried out with the experience of working in UK and Germany, seizing the opportunity to learn through working side-by-side with professionals from other disciplines. The Italian case study is the Parco Agricolo Sud Milano, located on the outskirts of Milan covering over 47,000 hectares, which comprises 61 municipalities and boasts a heritage of over 550 courtyard farmsteads, endangered by the growing pressure of urban expansion. The method developed can be adopted for other similar cases and applied to different types of farm buildings.