La flessibilità come strategia per il riuso del patrimonio storico

The buildings reuse has been field of studies and researchs that moves from the realization of the inadequacy of current housing models and related aggregative models. The existiting constructions and architectural models are rendered obsolete by the changed needs framework and the different lifestyles that characterize contemporary society. The literature demonstrates the relevance of the theme: numerous and different buildings have been used for different functions in different periods; important research lines have existed that have deepened the themes of compatibility and flexibility of the project on the existing heritage. Functional reuse is essential for maintaining the cultural values of buildings: preserving historic buildings and giving them new functions according to their location and size, can help future generations to value and understand where they come from. The recovery action of a building organism is an unavoidable objective, as well as sustainable, obtainable through project and process tools, and, among these, especially through the flexible project tools that is born with the aim of satisfying the expected requirements from potential re-use actions of an architectural body. The contribution includes some reflections, the result of a recent research work of the Department of Architecture at Roma Tre University, useful for evaluating the limits and potentials of the flexible project tools on the existing heritage and on the historical architectural value. The notion of reuse has been investigated by extending this concept to that of “adaptive reuse”, which includes an adaptive approach to design action aimed at optimizing the use of resources. The factors that influence the decision-making process of re-use, such as the actors, the characteristics of the building, the conservation actions and functional changes, define the complexity of the process of re-use and/or of adaptive reuse, especially without an appropriate methodology where the different performances of buildings can be compared with the requisites required by new uses for evaluating their actual compatibility. The reading of the building organisms with reference to the technological system as a condition of greater or less flexibility of the environmental system and to the compatible performances obtainable with the minimum of physical transformation, are the instruments of this research to decline the theoretical reflection through some case studies. This reflection, in the complex of the theoretical-applicative lesson of the possible actions for re-use, shows how flexibility is a design strategy useful to reconcile the distance between the original functions and the new needs.