Multidisciplinary approach for renewal of historical centers: the case study of Ceglie Messapica

Designing a Recovery Plan for an represents the defining of the spatial configuration of this part of the city, deducing it from the role that it exercises in the urban and environmental context, measuring it on the basis of its functions, to build a new coherent figure with what the original urban core has been and what does it represent today. The historical urban core is a legacy that must not be squandered, and it’s not legitimate to think of an inhabited city developed around a stationary nucleus from which it originated. Just because the city is the materialization of historically layered spaces, symbols and construction techniques, the rule of mutation must be accepted. It is then to find a method of intervention that makes compatible the two terms, both necessary, of "permanence and change." Mutation that implies an approach no longer linked to the traditional planning, but who knows how to integrate to the instances of preservation, revitalization and protection also strategies for rational use of energy, which have become indispensable in any program of qualification and valorization of the historical built. In the Recovery Plan of the historical urban core of Ceglie Messapica (BR) was envisaged that all the recovery and remediation interventions, from those limited to a single building unit to those extended to built compartments and that operate to groups of buildings, should recourse to the best available technologies according to coherent strategies both; with the regime of restrictions finalized to the protection of the architectural and historical value, and to the proposed energy retrofit program. In order to Re-inhabiting and relive the historical urban core, the intervention model implemented assumes as the founding pillars the current regulatory framework, progressively more demanding in terms of energy efficiency, and the changing context of needs of the population. This new methodological approach has allowed us to enrich the plan with a medium and long term strategic study on the possible evolutionary scenarios of greenhouse gas emissions. The estimation of energy consumption and CO2 emissions according to both the current trend and in relation to alternative scenarios characterized by strategies of action more or less incisive has led to the identification of the optimal combination of interventions with the least expenditure of resources. After analyzing the effectiveness of various interventions taken into account, the tendential evolution of CO2 emissions that would occur following the adoption of various measures of promotion of energy efficiency, was evaluated. Comparing the evolution "without intervention", i.e. the one that would have occurred in the absence of an energy policy, with the evolution "with interventions", the result is a reduction in emissions by up to 20% in 2020. This data, if related to the complexity of the historical and landscape high-value context where we intervene, shows how, thanks to an holistic approach, competitive results without sacrificing the preservation of the identity of places can be achieved.