A participate action to regenerate historical small town centres

Economical and energy restraint affecting Europe lead contemporary architecture to focus on long term strategy for energy renovation of the national building stock (European Union, 2012). Besides, European strategies on urban environment acknowledge the strengthening of community identity as a major opportunity to focus resources specifically for energy retrofitting of historic centers and districts (Lewis & Sadhbh, 2013). Within such a frame, the aim of this research is to investigate a refurbishment model for nonmonumental historical districts, which fulfills the general criteria of cultural, environmental and economic valorization, through an integrated design that combines principles of innovation and conservation, minimum intervention and energy efficiency. The refurbishment of historical villages calls for a participative action, in order to deeply value the cultural heritage standing behind the historic significance of built environment. This paper tries to investigate a methodology to trigger the regeneration of small historical villages in Abruzzo, through channeling the management capabilities of local administrations with the technical know how of professionals and the real needs and possibilities of citizens, in order to generate an integrated project for the safeguard of rural historical landscape, local development and architectural regeneration. With a multi-scale and multi-disciplinary approach, the study sets a research analysis and evaluation methodology of the building system, meant to establish the feasibility of its transformation and development at every step of the process. All in all, it proposes to generate scenarios that will strengthen and promote local tourism as well as enhance the potential of the territory, recover the architectural typology while enhancing energy performances and achieving microclimatic comfort, in compliance with regulated performance requirements and innovative models of traditional spaces in terms of accessibility, management and equipment. Methodology and tools are introduced through the refurbishment of the rural burg “Le Pagliara”(Opi, AQ), a case study within the Mountain Community of Alto Sangro. The renovation scenarios proposed together with the guidelines framework form a tool useful to direct local administration to direct the participatory process for the new definition of the area and to govern the operational stage of the retrofit process.