Il ruolo delle grandi fabbriche dismesse nei processi di riqualificazione e rigenerazione urbana

The project of reusing historic buildings is a controversial subject as it has the task of governing the inevitable changes that new uses require, while at the same time trying to maximise the permanence of the signs and values accumulated over time. The phenomenon of decommissioning generates urban areas that are often considered as urban voids or non-places when on the contrary they are spaces charged with meaning and memory, oscillating between the significant loss of the values they possessed in the past and the potential they offer the contemporary city for its regeneration in a sustainable key. Is it then possible to define intervention strategies capable of transforming them from passive consumers into active protagonists? This question represents the starting point of the research presented here on the theme of the reuse of heterotopic spaces in the consolidated city. The idea is that it is possible to manage the transformations that a project of redevelopment, recovery and reuse of disused architecture inevitably entails through the definition of strategies and modes of intervention capable of understanding the palimpsest of signs and traces stratified over time and governing their transformation. The contribution illustrates a brilliant and original example attesting to the validity of this type of approach, represented by the Les Abattoirs project by Antoine Stinco and Rémi Papillault, which in 2000 transformed an old city slaughterhouse in the south of France into a cultural and leisure centre.