Macchina, Fabbrica e Progetto. Convergenze disciplinari per il recupero del Palazzo-Fabbrica della Zecca di Roma

Many disciplines are involved for the industrial heritage restoration project to be successful. Achieving the knowledge necessary for heritage recognition and subsequent intervention is the result of a convergence of purpose among the technological, architectural, historical and economic sectors. The research, aimed at defining functional solutions and design intervention tools for the Royal Mint of Rome, takes on the value of a real manual for the investigation of archaeology and history of industrial heritage. The methodology applied starts from the relevance of the technical and economic facts, to finalize architectural and engineering studies on industrial objects and allows one to grasp rules and contents of a very specific type of heritage and of absolute monumental value such as the palace-factory. Guiding the understanding of the specific object and allowing it to be placed in a cultural as well as architectural dimension of the industrial vicissitude is the search for the links that exist between the industrial evolution of production and the definition of the typological characters of the factory-building organism. The contents eventually converged with meta-design character at the basis of an international design competition.