Widespread Industrial Heritage in Fragile Sites as a Resilient Resource: A Life Cycle and NetZero Approach to Regeneration

This chapter examines a research area focused on experimenting with adaptive reuse strategies of the industrial and disused heritage widespread in fragile contexts. Experimentation, through environmental technological design with a life- cycle approach, aims to de ne interventions and integrations in architectural and landscape heritage compatible with the updated functional, construction, economic- productive and energy-environmental needs, in a condition of continuous variability also determined by the multiple actions of climatic, natural and anthropic risks. The keywords that emerge refer to the founding themes of the research centred on little- known, widespread and small- and medium-sized architectural heritage, with lim- ited material and functional interest, serial, often dif cult to be recognized, but whose value lies in the historical, technological, social and scienti c testimony of the factory, of the machinery and of the infrastructures, that can be considered as the result of experiments and innovations which have contributed to determine the char- acteristics of the contemporary territory. The research questions concern the strate- gies and tools to integrate and balance the demands of transformation with those of protection, with adaptive reuse actions to support the transition towards a historical heritage that is “ecologically resilient” according to a NetZero approach (zero soil- energy-CO2-waste) aiming at the adaptation and mitigation and at the same time at the climate neutrality of these complex urban or peri-urban systems. Strategies and principles declined in concrete interventions set in complex, sensitive and fragile scenarios that host a widespread industrial heritage throughout Italy, as in the case study of the Ex SAI in Passignano sul Trasimeno.