Urban traces: revitalization strategies for abandoned villages

Research In Italy today, one can count more than 6000 villages that have been abandoned(deserted) for a variety of causes. This negletc state produces a serious problem related to a wider phenomenon of abandonment of entire portions of italian territories. Realities that differ form the city because of their morphology: Does urban shape represent an urban limit? or is it an alternative testimony to the city?Research purpose is to understand how relationship, between these cases and the territory, works; in particular during the absence of the main component: the human one. The case study Santo Stefano di Sessanio, an ancient village in the center of Italy, inhabited until 90’s, shows how the examination of urban shape represents the potentiality of his own revitalization. By relating his historical identity to the scattered hotel projectual approach, it contributes to combine conservation, valorization and sustainability of the existing building fabric, in order to claim the authenticity of these villages declaring their own autonomy and dimension to major urban centers polarization. In this example transformation is meant as conscious project that grow up from the built reality not from the project itself, transformation as knowledge of urban facts, tool to approach to the structure of this reality.