1990 – 2010

A premise

To pick up the thread of a story interrupted in 1990, ANCSA’s thirtieth anniversary, in order to outline the association’s activities and the changes that have redefined its identity over the last twenty years is not immediate. The story of ANCSA reflects the conditions of a very complex political, economic and social, even more than cultural, context, with the resulting government choices regarding cities and the territory.

The association did not change its acronym, nor its organisational chart; scholars and experts on architecture, the city and the territory, representatives of municipalities and regions continued to be members.

Nor has the structure given from the outset to seminars, conferences, congresses changed, where the analyses and proposals put forward by ANCSA members in their introductory reports, which reflected the issues considered to be cogent, were followed by the interventions of the speakers chosen to debate them.

But beyond these invariants, the itinerary travelled by the association does not appear linear and univocal, even if certain watchwords are repeated over time, with the corresponding discourses.

The last few decades have not been the time of shared objectives, of great battles that were at least partially won, of close confrontation with institutions, of positions accepted by the scientific community, recognised by local administrations and public opinion. The themes of safeguarding cities and minor architecture, the issues that emerged overwhelmingly from society in the 1970s – the right to the historic centre and the city -, interpreted by the culture of town planning, architecture, and protection, and summarised in the locution historic centre as an economic asset destined for the widest possible social use, have changed in nature and character.

The initial objectives enshrined in the ‘Gubbio Charter’ of 1960 and reflected in the ANCSA acronym, already revised in the 1970s and 1980s, required continual re-examination and a new search for meanings congruent with a changing general framework1. The lesser involvement of the local authorities, the limited participation of the institutions, also meant that the association’s proposals were poorly reflected in legislative and financial measures, and more generally in the policies promoted at a national level.

The extension of the field of interest to the existing city and the historical territory has clashed with a policy of territorial resources that is almost reversed with respect to the foundations and aims of the association, which has gradually been confronted with settlement processes unprecedented in quantity and form, with the outcomes of globalisation processes that have also invested the soil and economy of our country.

While ANCSA’s role in cultural promotion and civic engagement has not changed, the need to build new interpretative strategies and working tools has become apparent.

In this sense, the drafting of guiding documents – declarations, charters – was intended to update and adapt the ‘constitutional charter’ that resulted from the first Gubbio conference in 1960.

The increasing openness to Europe and the international debate has given a broader and more significant dimension to the themes and practices of intervention on the existing. Through the successive editions of the Gubbio Prize and the institution within it, in 1993, of the European section of the prize, the association has sought to extend its observatory, which more recently has included some Latin American countries, to return a panorama of experiences, research, case studies and interventions of great interest.

On the basis of this research, which is representative of innovative strategic and intervention lines, ANCSA’s work has been carried out over the last twenty years and general choices have matured.

Urban redevelopment in the 1990s

On ANCSA’s website we read: ‘In this decade the historic centre is seeing its classical paradigm come to an end, i.e. a place to be preserved from the ‘intrusion’ of industrial development, in favour of a new paradigm that sees it as a place of stability and connection in the face of the great variability of physical and social order. In the great mutation that we are witnessing, the historic centre is read as a place of stability and mediation towards the many cultures that now invest the city, and, at the same time, as a place capable of weaving new relationships with the multiplicity of spaces and subjects that characterise the territory.

…undoubtedly the most immediately legible phenomenon in our cities is the change in the social order dictated by a series of phenomena: new migratory flows, the stationarity of the demographic rates of ‘historical’ populations, the polarisation of wealth, the growth of unemployment, the crisis of the welfare state.

A system of variables that is changing the nature of our cities: the flows of nomads now outnumber the number of citizens living permanently in a place, the eternal problem of coexistence and tolerance emerges, it is increasingly difficult under these conditions to apply the rules borrowed from the combination of orientation planning and the welfare state.

These are some of the features of the social and physical change that has affected the territories of Western Europe.

The decade began for ANCSA as an occasion for celebration and stocktaking. Scrolling through the sequence of conferences and seminars, one can see how the term ‘historic centres’ was already absent from the titles of the major initiatives promoted in the 1980s. Thirty years after its foundation, the association measures itself against the new dimensions assumed by the themes of intervention on the existing.

The search for an up-to-date operational context in turn entailed the transition from the concept of recovery to the also very successful concept of redevelopment. The primary object of the association’s research and proposals has been the existing city, in its complex becoming.

The defence of the urban area of oldest sedimentation from the aggression of a ‘new’ perceived as totally other from a technological and formal point of view belongs to a distant season. The historic centre is still the place that preserves the foundations and roots of urban culture in its configuration, topographical layout and construction, but the social structure and the uses of artefacts and public spaces have largely changed, and differ from city to city.

The relations of the historic centre with the built environment have also profoundly changed. The changes that have occurred within and around the core have blurred the boundaries with the contemporary city, and have proposed in other forms the terms of the historic centre/urban identity equation.

The conference ‘An Italian Contribution to the Redevelopment of the Existing City’ (1990) put forward for debate the proposal of a new ‘Gubbio Charter’2 , while the ascertainment of the failure of the hypothesis of public intervention in urban and territorial planning choices led to the season of participatory territorial government strategies.

Beyond the historic centre, the propositions intended to direct the policies of local administrations concern the ‘historic territory’, the landscape inherited from previous generations and modified in recent times, up to the present day. The historic centre is thus ‘the area where the values of the civitas and urbs have been concentrated in every European city, and at the same time constitutes the node of a broader settlement structure. This structure, interpreted in its centuries-long process of formation, must today be considered as ‘historical territory’, the overall expression of cultural identity and therefore the subject in all its parts (existing city and periphery, built-up landscapes and rural territory) of an organic intervention strategy‘.

As Roberto Gambino would write years later, this statement constituted the culmination of a process that had gradually extended the meaning of heritage from monuments and cultural assets to the historic city and territorial cultural systems, expanding the meaning and scope of the conservation option, increasingly based on the project perceived as the privileged place of production of the new values of contemporary society.

The charter, which remains an open document, represents the association’s act of refoundation. Two years later, the theme would be re-proposed in Bergamo in the Seminar ‘The New Existing City. Beyond the 1990 Gubbio Charter’.

During the 1990s ANCSA promoted an intense activity aimed at defining the ‘project for the existing city’. The limits of the city, its relations with the territorial context, with new forms of living, with the extension of the so-called diffuse city constitute the object of reflection, which takes up the questions posed by the settlement of new social components in the territory. The role of the historic centre appears to be essential in the project of re-composition of the city, in the work that unites the disciplines of architecture and town planning, bringing them closer to the actors of the planning process. “The Historical Territory and the New Existing City” (Venice, 1994), “Dimensions, Forms, Strategies of the Project” (Gubbio, 1994), are the titles of the meetings held in the cities historically involved in the life of the association. Discussing the topics introduced by ANCSA members are mainly architects and town planners.

The innovative components of the project, at different scales, represent an important basis for the elaboration of strategic and operational guidelines. ANCSA proposes to search for its elements in the most significant experiences produced by public administrations, private operators, universities (degree and doctoral theses), in Italy and abroad. The ‘Gubbio Prize’, established in 1990, will represent the place where the studies, projects and realisations that best interpret ANCSA’s orientations can be compared, thus highlighting the significance of the ‘requalification’ of urban and territorial contexts.

Introducing the second edition of the Prize (1993), ANCSA president Bruno Gabrielli explained the reasons for the creation of a foreign section, aimed at strengthening the association’s international openness, and the motivations for the prize awarded to Alvaro Siza for the ‘Plano para a Reconstrução do Chiado’, after the fire that devastated the area inside Lisbon’s historic centre: “the ANCSA wanted to show those involved in urban recovery and redevelopment where to turn their attention: to Europe, which is the reality to which to relate, the term of comparison and the gymnasium for our presumptuous urban-architectural culture, a Europe that practices little theory and aims at concrete realisations. With this I do not want to say that theoretical practice is bad, what we complain about – deafness and insensitivity of the public administration, regulatory cages, decision-making and planning incapacity – does not lend itself to excuses and will never be removed if we continue to complain about it ‘calling ourselves out’. […] the European Award is not meant to be a presumptuous show of strength (which ANCSA could not really afford), but rather an openness towards a reality from which we expect useful feedback to renew our instruments.

The award to Lisbon and Alvaro Siza Vieira represents an act of faith in the design of recovery and a response to the culture of emergency: in that case, a disastrous event was transformed into a great opportunity for architectural design in a very short space of time.

On this occasion, the National Award also took on a similar significance. The recognition awarded to the Municipality of Pisa and to Carmassi represents a further act of trust; it means that a local culture can be happily stimulated and become a source of teaching and guidance for urban design, assuming, as has already happened in the past, an international significance‘.

Finally, as far as university research is concerned, ‘The Awards for Degree and Doctorate Theses take the ANCSA project further: we question ourselves on the state of the art by going to observe research in places of cultural education, an opportunity to meditate on the tools we possess and on how we train the younger generations on the crucial issues of our country. An extraordinary test of over a hundred works that testifies to the level reached by the culture of recovery and redevelopment in Italy… I see this opportunity as a great chance to question ourselves and understand what needs to be done. With these initiatives, ANCSA continues to exercise its function of critical stimulus and relaunching the debate‘.

The Award is also an opportunity to take up and relaunch the themes proposed for the 3 sections (European, National for degree theses, doctoral theses, specialisation theses) both in the form of a debate and by showcasing the selected projects. The production of knowledge and the different ways of approaching intervention in the existing/new relationship give rise to a virtuous circle: if one juxtaposes the sequence of the winning projects with the list of conferences and seminars promoted by the association, the intertwining between the themes of the Award, the contents of the selected projects and the issues that the ANCSA observatory perceived to be of greatest interest and topicality becomes evident.

On demolition

In the list of ANCSA’s activities, the seminar dedicated to the topic of demolition represents the most radical message made by the association. In the mid-1990s, it appeared as a ‘Copernican revolution’, if from the preservation (synonymous with safeguarding, protection) of the historic centre we moved on to demolition as a necessary transition to urban regeneration.

“The Demolition Project/Demolition in the Project” (Rome, June 1995) – the seminar’s initial title – did not burst onto the scene unexpectedly. At the end of the 1980s, in Palermo, ANCSA had presented demolition as a tool for the restoration of severely altered and degraded urban places, a sort of “environmental restoration” perhaps reminiscent of Giovannoni’s “thinning out” techniques, intended to restore the city of abuse and the city in disrepair. The following year (1990), in Gubbio, the exhibition “Italia da demolire” (Italy to be demolished) had proposed a sort of urban-planning error/horror-hunting exercise, evoking Cederna-style vandalism on the one hand, and clearly quoting, on the other, the plans contemporaneous with the birth of ANCSA and drawn up (1954-57) by one of its founding fathers, Giovanni Astengo. To indicate the buildings perceived to be in violent “contrast with the environment”, constituted in Assisi by the fabric of medieval origin, Astengo had used a yellow screen, the colour symbolising demolition (as such present in the plans destined for approval by the Superintendencies). Not too dissimilarly presented, thirty years later, was the test proposed by ANCSA as the first invitation to demolition.

The debate that took place in Rome in ’95, promoted by Antonino Terranova and Paola Falini and published under the title Il progetto della sottrazione3 (The Subtraction Project)3 was intense and close, and involved, among various scholars, a large group of professors of architectural design from the Roman school: “after wavering between the two definitions [demolition or subtraction], the conference seems to have opted for ‘subtraction’, perhaps in order not to appear too nihilistic, perhaps to direct the discussion towards the topicality of the ‘design method’ identified in the case of Venisseux [demolition of eight towers in the ‘Democracy’ district, in the suburbs of Lyon]… The impression is that an attempt is being made to restore to urban planning a centrality that is now in crisis, only it is willing to adapt to the idea of operating by de-construction rather than by construction,” comments Pippo Ciorra4.

The ‘tampering with the title’ has, according to Gabrielli, shifted the objective of the confrontation from the ‘civil’ to the ‘cultural’ sphere, since, while ‘to subtract one needs to explore, to demolish it is enough to decide…’. Similarly laden with ambiguity with respect to subtraction, “[demolition] is ‘political’ in nature, not only because of the favour/disfavour it has had in history, but because of its decision-making nature, because of the embarrassment it creates in our conscience, because of the fear of making a non-reversible mistake… If subtracting is the work of an architect, demolishing is – can be – the work of an urban planner”: a new figure yet to be constructed that, for Gabrielli, can be modelled on that of the strategist, a bearer of multiple skills exercised with great civic responsibility. In turn, “the demolition plan coincides with the construction of an overall strategy that is a guarantee of requalification, rather than mere profitable replacement “5.

An example, in this sense, could be the one brought by Renato Nicolini, who interprets the de-construction of the Italsider area of Bagnoli, conceived by Vezio De Lucia, in continuity with the proposal made a century earlier by Lamont Young for the same site, later occupied by the steelworks. The new project for Bagnoli, avoiding utopian drifts, envisaged a reconversion open to public and private investment and for this reason represents an innovative choice that makes “the insistence of some people to cancel further cubic spaces and make the future Bagnoli even greener appear irritating… The possible ‘new centrality’ for the suburbs is more a question of mental attitude, of logical deconstruction, than of material deconstruction “6.

More than the historic centre, the object of subtraction – Terranova affirms – must be “the enlarged chessboard of the existing city for which the slow-moving demolition of an obsolete modern building becomes a spectacle, and yet taboo the possibility of a positive sense of demolition for the improvement of real assets, for reconstruction according to more current and mobile images of living identity… The reflection I carry out, I would like to be unequivocal, concerns the opportunity that architecture, and the urban project (and without paradoxes, precisely the urban requalification project) do not remove the duty-pleasure of staging a violence or a tension that is in the facts”. A collage of quotations (the eulogy to the demolition pickaxe of the Milanese scapigliati and the young Arrigo Boito is missing), traces the process of virtual destruction-death-burial-reconstruction of built and inhabited contexts. Giving space to numerous passages from the text Distruggere l‘architettura (A. Cappabianca, 1979), it brings the historic centre back into the horizon of subtraction: “It is not I who is really exhorting people to ‘destroy the historic centre’. I say that destruction is taking place, in disguise. And that I would then like society to give figure, measure and meaning to the violence of that conflict. After all, conflict makes the city living. The dead city has none. It is the one preserved only from the outside, like a shell’. The (provisional) conclusion is that one must ‘belong to becoming, accept difference and multiplicity, accept restarts that begin again from the folds of the earth’, but ‘what one really cannot do is not take responsibility for the conflict … in the name of a simplifying and abstract normality of Conservation’ 7 .

The responsibility, in today’s world, could consist in the need to re-compose the preservation-demolition pair in its deepest meaning, in its relation of solidarity rather than antagonism; whereas on the contrary, since the 1950s, their separation has been determined, and each different option has given rise to opposing ideologies and practices, i.e. demolition without background and preservation without horizon: this is argued by Françoise Choay, referring to the metaphors of a famous text by Freud, The Malaise of Civilisation (1929). They may represent a reminder of that ‘seriousness of building’ so dear to Leon Battista Alberti, which should still be the hallmark of a building that can be based on the inseparable conservation/demolition binomial.

In the seminar, the theme of the void returns several times, and with different interpretations (Alessandro Anselmi): the deliberate result of subtraction, the resulting space between parts and pieces of buildings aggregated, apparently outside of a unifying logic, to portions of older unitary forms, voids can represent the instrument of reconnection, redesign, and rebalancing of the contemporary urban structure, and ‘add’ new space and opportunities to the architectural project (Carmen Andriani), as has in fact occurred historically. This is the same logic that animated the drafting of some famous town-planning instruments, such as the Detailed Plan for Pesaro (1975), recalled in its essential choices by Raffaele Panella.

The skilfully designed void can be interpreted as an antidote to the city of ‘tar and cement’ built over the last thirty years, can include, in place of the soil consumed by building, the ‘meadow grass’ of urban agriculture, and restore form and measure to public space (Aldo Aymonino).

From the reflections in the various contributions, the premises of certain positions emerge that ANCSA will specify in the following years: conservation cannot coincide with a passive attitude of renouncing the project; it cannot be separated from innovation;

Similarly, it is not possible to mark a clean break between historicity and contemporaneity;

the identity of a city does not stop at the boundaries of its oldest core, nor can it be traced back to a ‘given’ time before modernity.

It is useful to recall that in December 1994 Law No 724 was approved, containing rules for the amnesty of building abuses. The 1995 amnesty, which allows each private individual the unregulated use, outside of any responsibility towards the community, of urban and territorial resources, constitutes the real face of anti-planning.

Plan forms and projects for the ‘historical territory’.

The 1996 Gubbio Prize for “Physical interventions for the recovery of the existing building heritage and/or management and organisational initiatives that constitute strategic operations of urban regeneration” is focused around the innovative features of the project for the existing. “The impression one gets, from our observatory, is that there is a decline in interest in all that is memory, and that a strong desire for change characterised by erasure is emerging. All this is happening at a time when the reasons for preservation would have achieved their full institutional and cultural recognition, writes Gabrielli. We therefore believe there is a poison within conservation itself, a blind extremism that, in affirming the defence of stones, neglects the city of men… The testimony that ANCSA constantly reaffirms [is that] the idea of conservation cannot be separated from its cultural and civil significance… Making it vital and useful for society, in the sign of a change aimed at the valorisation of cultural heritage and its re-consideration, is the objective to which ANCSA intends to contribute‘.

Paola Falini recalls the evaluation criteria of the experiences submitted to the European Section of the Award, reiterating the requirements that each project, at the various scales, should guarantee: an “active conservation”; a recovery that is attentive to the physical, economic and social components of the contexts; a close connection between the urban and architectural sides; the joint consideration of functional, formal and management aspects.

In 1997, the ten-year redevelopment project (1989-1999) of the Internationale Bauausstellung (IBA) Emscher Park (Deutschland) was declared the winner of the Prize and the motivations explicitly refer to the lines, procedures and objectives of the strategic action that supported it, in particular the “pursuit of a quality of living conceived in terms of ecological sustainability”.

In the same edition, the project for the re-construction of the Case Di Stefano in Gibellina (authors, Roberto Collovà, Marcella Aprile, Teresa La Rocca) is awarded a prize, and the winners of the Degree, Doctorate and Postgraduate Theses section are chosen from among the best urban design studios.

ANCSA considers the XII Conference-Congress “Heritage 2000. Un progetto per il territorio storico nei prossimi decenni “8 (Modena, 1997) a fundamental stage in focusing on the themes developed by the association in the following decade.

What should ANCSA’s role be in the near future? – asks the introductory report9. The profound transformation of the urban and territorial context robs the question of much of its ritual character. Representatives of several municipalities are present at the 12th Conference-Congress, describing the steps and criticalities of existing heritage management in small and medium-sized cities such as Pesaro, Modena, Guastalla and Gubbio.

It is evident to ANCSA that its role cannot be separated from the construction and development of a network of interactive relations between the bodies, organisations and associations that are interested in the territory, from ‘a widening of the field’ that can allow a necessary turning point. Within this perspective, ’emerging phenomena and problems’ must be examined: the relationship between historic centres and the territory, between the compact city and the diffused city; the problems of ‘cities of art’ both in everyday life and in the presence of major events; the new meaning to be attributed to recovery and maintenance practices.

In this key, the policy documents proposed by public and private associations and institutions, the ‘Charters’, the ‘Declarations’ should be re-examined in terms of their topicality and effectiveness; in this framework, the policies, competences, and practices in place in the cultural heritage sector should be re-examined and, finally, the new forms of planning should be analysed.

ANCSA’s idea is that ‘the state should take on scenario planning in the field of cultural heritage and in the field of territorial government’; that ‘local autonomies can play a decisive role, provided that they are invested with adequate means’; that ‘more should be spent on heritage and at the same time there should be guiding ideas to make it bear fruit in an appropriate way, placing it in a virtuous economic cycle, not one of mere consumption’.

From the outset, an urbanistic approach to the theme of existing heritage seems to prevail in Modena, and the association’s identity themes return to the centre of reflection: historic centres, historic territory and the landscape in Italy and Europe at the end of the millennium; environmental protection, also in the light of the phenomena of land disruption – floods, landslides, earthquakes – that have devastated the country. The theme of heritage protection is intertwined with the issues of risk and the safety of populations.

Roberto Gambino’s report paints a broad picture, highlighting the nodes of the relationship between historic centres and territory. He proposes an “innovative conservation of the historical territory” that attributes to the settlements of not recent construction the function of landscape structure, or rather, of “cultural landscapes conceived as a complex, holistic and evolutionary manifestation of territorialisation processes”. While “territorial subjectivity” will have the role of driving conservation innovation “by placing at centre stage the actors and communities that inhabit and therefore build, on a daily basis, the historical territory “10.

Vittoria Calzolari outlines the steps that make it possible to read the specificities and diversities of historical territories and contemporary landscapes, peculiarities linked to geomorphological and topographical conditions, to the histories of places and their construction over time, to the history of “immaterial” characters and to the evolution of the “mentalities” specific to each settlement. The “research of the possible” stems from a work of investigation, field experimentation, and composition, to be carried out following the steps described and thinking of medium-long term scenarios.

The territory project and the subtraction project are the two main directions of work proposed by Antonino Terranova and Paola Falini, who revise in an updated key interpretative hypotheses and intervention tools historically consolidated in the culture of historic centres. Major architectural projects, with the gradient of subtraction implicit in them, reveal their strategic character in the future of the existing city.

The topics of territorial policy management, entrusted to Carlo Gasparrini and Stefano Storchi, refer to the research conducted on behalf of ANCSA ‘Effectiveness and success of urban regeneration and redevelopment policies in some case studies’.

Remarks of great interest are made by external scholars called into the discussion.

Giuseppe Roma, Director of Censis, believes that major national projects can be launched around ANCSA’s proposals, which, without expropriating the operativeness of local administrations, should place the recovery of the historic centre as central: they could coincide with the project for the south of Italy, for the culture of legality, for the economic relaunch of cities such as Palermo, Naples, Bari, Catania, for the great and unresolved issue of mobility, reception, tourism and the degradation that can be caused to historic centres. Historical heritage and social capital, networks of civic commitment, consensual convergence, should be considered within a single process capable of aggregating the care of objects and that of subjects11.

Francesco Indovina finds that ANCSA’s proposal lacks the essential reference to the relationship between the transformations of society and urban transformations, particularly in historical centres, and that, in the expansion of perspectives desired by the association, the latter seem to have lost their own specificity. As for urban peripheries, they represent ‘first of all a social product, then of town planning and building’, and the relationship between the different categories should become central again in ANCSA’s evaluations. Planning constraints should also be evaluated in their positive aspects, not only in their negative ones: ‘In this anxiety of renewal,’ Indovina observes, ‘there seemed to be an element of disempowerment of the cultural heritage, of its symbolic and also physical value, and therefore I support the need for its preservation’12.

Edoardo Benvenuto invites us to consider the centrality of the dialectical relationship between the process of knowledge inherent in conservation practices, and the project of intervention, of architecture, of subtraction.

Finally, Liliana Pittarello, an exponent of protection institutions, expresses her clear disagreement with the assertion proposed in the General Report that ‘the defence and safeguarding of historical heritage are now widespread concepts at all levels, from institutional to mass-media’ and that as a result of this, ANCSA’s role should be rethought. The association could, on the contrary, exercise an essential function in preventing the separation, even conceptual, between ‘protection’ and ‘valorisation’ from entrusting to separate institutional subjects phases that should be entirely joint and that should be implemented starting from the consultation between the various subjects: the Regions, the Provinces, the Municipalities, the Superintendencies. “I reject,” he concludes, “that conservation is not implemented through the project, that it cannot itself be one of the aims of the design process… [since there cannot] be a conceptual separation between conservation and the project, and the academic world needs to reflect on the serious risks of this separateness becoming consolidated. There is also a need for clarity on the subject of constraints, because if the constraint is not, nor could it be, an instrument of territorial government, “urban planning must have the high profile to contain, frame and direct the relatively few monumental constraints within a policy of safeguarding and enhancing the entire territorial cultural heritage “13.

2000- 2010. Historic city, contemporary city. The cultural landscape as multiple identity

The Proceedings of the Conference ‘Urban Planning and Security in Cities’ (Bergamo, 2000) and those of the Seminar ‘The Historical City and Strategic Areas in the New P.R.G. of Rome’ (Rome, 2001) have not been published.

Traces remain, however, of the Gubbio Prize 2000 and the “debate that marked the jury’s examination of two apparently contradictory projects.

On the one hand (the De Feo project) A.N.C.S.A. rewards the courage of the project, intended to restore meaning and vitality to an urban block by bringing together, with intelligent and cultured design, the recovery of pre-existing and new architecture. On the other hand, A.N.C.S.A. rewards a project (the Botta project)14 in which this courage could not be expressed, conditioned by the urban history of a space determined as an “empty space” now indispensable for citizens. In this case, the A.N.C.S.A. rewards an urban redevelopment project of remarkable quality, the realisation of which reversibly concludes a game that has lasted too long. Almost a postponement to a future project that is impossible today, but capable of finally eliminating a black hole in the central area of a noble city such as Parma.

A contradiction, then, given that two seemingly opposing projects are awarded ‘ex-aequo’? The case is open, but there is no doubt that the prize jury wanted to highlight one of the most debated issues in the A.N.C.S.A.

The theme of memory, both ancient and recent urban memory, unites the two projects and makes them recognisable in their ability to respond qualitatively to the solution of urban problems that have a civilised history behind them. Of course, together they coexist with the undoubted restlessness of the cultural moment we are going through. The unspecified relationship between conservation and innovation, between the administration of cultural heritage, and its current ideology, and the freedom of design research is still clear”.

The Prize for the European Section is awarded to the ‘Plan Especial del Centro Histórico de Toledo’, elaborated under the direction of Joan Busquets, approved in 1997, and in the year 2000 in progress. The historic centre of Toledo is also included in the UNESCO World Heritage List. Among its multiple objectives, the Special Plan, in addition to considering the extraordinary architectural quality of the context, “gave centrality to the revitalisation of the residential uses of the old city and the consolidation of its functional diversity, reinforcing the presence of the University, tourist activities and culture, on the one hand, and leveraging the potential of the existing structure and in particular the distinctive features of its construction, on the other.

In 2003, the year of the third building amnesty (Law Decree 269/2003, converted into Law 326/2003), and of the contemporary gestation of the ‘Cultural Heritage and Landscape Code’ (approved the following year as Law Decree 42/2004), the 13th ANCSA Conference-Congress was held in Perugia in November with the theme “Contemporaneity and Territorial Identity: the Challenges of the 3°  millennium “15.

“The meeting opens in a rather uncertain climate with regard to the topics that the association has always favoured. In fact, we seem to be in the presence of transformation processes that are becoming more and more accentuated and less and less grasped and understood by insiders’. With respect to this scenario, ‘the A.N.C.S.A. intends to provide a contribution to interpreting the phenomena underway, to affirm, through a number of ‘Statements’, its own positions on various themes of Conservation and, finally, to offer some important experiences of urban interventions for evaluation’.

Looking back at its own history, ANCSA recognises two main moments: the battle for the preservation of historic centres, with the contribution of analyses, research and the elaboration of guidelines aimed at that objective; the decision to extend the design themes of redevelopment to the existing city, and then to the ‘historic territory’, “which generated the Urban Redevelopment Plan tool and, today, the theory and practice of the Urban Project”.

At the end of a cycle that coincides with the end of the 20th century, ANCSA seems to attribute precisely to the consolidation of the culture of protection those “numerous distortions” that run through the field of conservation in Italy. In the face of the emergence of new intervention strategies in many European cities, ANCSA believes that the conservation policies practised in Italy have in fact blocked “those processes of active conservation that would have allowed the valorisation of heritage and the construction of a new identity in the city and the territory”.

Curiously enough, it is still ‘passive conservation’ that is the enemy to be beaten, even though, in the writer’s opinion, it does not and could not exist in reality: after all, it is an ancient phantom that has long troubled the sleeps of planners, who, moreover, have largely exorcised it16.

In “Declaration No. 1” presented at the 13th Conference-Congress under the title “The Disposal of Cultural Heritage” ANCSA asserts the need for a project capable of combining the instances of conservation and innovation and its intention to relaunch the debate on the heritage project “placing it within the great theme of the contemporary urban project”. But the direction in which the country is moving is certainly not that of conservation, if after clarifying the legal terms of divestment, the ANCSA document concludes: “if the public heritage continues to be alienated according to the insidious deregulatory plots introduced by the Tremonti Law (L. 112/2002), the State will be left with nothing to protect and the Regions with nothing to enhance”. ANCSA emphasises the seriousness of the measures launched by the government and “mobilises itself so that the cultural heritage, on which the national identity rests, is removed from exclusively private and mercantilist logics”.

Declaration No. 2. On the Protection of the Landscape”, makes explicit reference to the European Landscape Convention adopted by the Committee of Ministers of Culture and the Environment of the Council of Europe and signed in Florence by 44 countries, including Italy, and compares its objectives to the research that ANCSA has been carrying out for some time on the contemporary landscape and the project of its valorisation.

“Challenge of contemporaneity and historical heritage” is the theme of “Declaration No. 3”, which, against the risk of the “Italian anomaly”, conservation, which inhibits design creativity, reaffirms the need to “renew the dialogue between contemporary design and historicity, as a contribution to the modernisation of the country”.

Finally, ‘Declaration No. 4’, ‘Dedicated to Local Governments’, reiterates the theme of physical, environmental, functional and cultural sustainability of urban development.

The second session of the conference is dedicated to a review of projects that are in many ways ‘exemplary’, both selected for the Gubbio Prize and referring to other Italian and foreign experiences presented by the designers themselves. The third session is dedicated to a debate with the administrators of the cities that realised the projects.

Among those attending the conference, discussing the four points of the General Report are Oriol Bohigas, Mario Manieri Elia, Aimaro d’Isola, Bruno Fortier as well as Pio Baldi and Giorgio Piccinato. Presenting the projects are Joël Batteaux (mayor of Saint-Nazaire), Bernardo Secchi, Ben Van Berkel, Bruno Fortier and Italo Rota (winners of the Gubbio prize for the foreign section), Franco Mancuso (winner of the national section) and Cesare Macchi Cassia.

Return to the historic centre

Macchi Cassia is entrusted with the opening report of the National Conference “Tourism and Historical Centres in Contemporary Italy” (Florence, 2005)17 , which right from the title declares the intention to reconsider the problems affecting contemporary cities starting from their historical centres. This will also be the case in the following years.

The conference is part of the “Community Project LUCUS – Safeguarding and Enhancing Sacred Woodlands in Europe “18. Created around Spoleto and its mountain, with its sacred wood and its hermit shelters, a “place of the soul”, of interiority, silence and slow times, the Lucus project intends to extend innovative forms of cultural valorisation to the “historical territory” and its heritage, in its multiple manifestations – literary parks, pilgrimage routes, sacred mountains, infrastructures of industrial, port or rural archaeology… – without compromising its character, as Stefania Nichinonni assures us.

The structure of the 2005 conference once again envisages that the invited guests will respond to the issues raised by the introductory report; that case studies of large and medium-sized cities and constellations of smaller centres will be presented; and that the issues presented will be discussed with foreign experts.

Tourism is undoubtedly one of Italy’s great sources of wealth, yet it invests the country’s territory in completely unequal forms. While some municipalities try to stimulate visitor numbers through cultural initiatives rather than by including their communities in food and wine itineraries, in other cases an attempt is made to curb mass tourism, especially ‘hit-and-run’ tourism, which can result in a serious distortion of the cities that are its preferred destination.

‘The positive significance of tourism as a cultural exchange risks being completely overturned by modes of use that debase heritage and endanger it. It is necessary to define and implement a policy for tourism that allows the recovery of the cultural significance and cultural enhancement of our country’s historical and artistic heritage,’ is ANCSA’s thesis.

Tourist flows from the world’s most populous areas, the increase in visitors from China in particular, would risk overwhelming medium-sized ‘cities of art’ such as Venice and Florence, and completely distort the perception of civilisation and the most authentic characteristics of Italy’s regional cultures. The introductory report proposes to diversify and broaden the offer beyond the best known and most celebrated centres, including localities and settlements that are interrelated in terms of history, traditions and culture. The further challenge would then be to bring to the attention of tourists, and consequently of citizens, the contemporary city with its new landscapes, an expression of the hybridisation of cultures that has redesigned its current identity. Furthermore, new cultural tools should raise the perception and demands of the visiting public.

Each city attracts a specific type of tourism: work must therefore be done on each of the forms of relationship created there. Tourists preferentially visit the historic centre, and tend to concentrate abnormally in the ancient core of cities of art; these in turn tend to conform to the demand of low-cost tourism, the demand for local colour and typical products to the point of becoming cities of tourists much more than of residents, ‘peripheries of those that give rise to the tourist market. They go so far as to incorporate their most elementary tastes… The exodus of the local population eliminates the social surveillance of artefacts and sites, reduces cities to monocultural environments, which leads to the decay of the tourist experience itself”, explains Franco Mancuso describing the situation of Venice, a city that should be defended from tourism, from the consumption of the physical context, of monuments, and from the transfer to foreign buyers of the existing and newly formed residential fabric19.

But tourism does not only have a negative face and, for example, ‘Florence itself is not (only) a tourist city’. In Florence there is not a homogeneous historic centre, but a world of worlds that are very composite in terms of formation and use, of places that are more different from each other than from the suburbs that present much more uniform characters. Tourism itself is in reality a composite good, and even a one-day tourist can activate positive effects on the economic system: it is up to the public operator to govern the consequences by composing the imbalances that are determined daily and over time20.

In order to reverse the negative trends, one could focus on several solutions. For example, on the definition of a new figure, that of the ‘philosophic practitioner’, who could be entrusted with the task of ‘transforming folklore-ridden historic centres into magnets for the new international middle class’ in order to successfully decline the concept of the ‘hospitable city’, is the opinion of Nicolò Costa, professor of ‘Tourism Sciences’21.

A decisive focus should be placed on the renovation of urban centres, which would thus be given a more properly historical dimension, instead of the purely archaeological one underlying the notion of conservation, while at the same time emphasising the value of places: higher access costs would make it possible to select the public of visitors, argues Philippe Daverio22.

The concept – explored as early as the 1950s – of the city as a work of art could be proposed in a new meaning: the ‘themed’ streets and squares that have built up at different times the unique physiognomy and endowment of beauty of every city, large and small, mean that each of them can be considered a work of art, and as such, says Marco Romano, be explained to the public and constitute the destination of a journey. The updating of traditional guides for visitors should aim to do this, combining artistic indications with more generally cultural ones, for example, relating to quality catering linked to the territory.

If the region represents ‘the most pertinent expression of a cultural stratification that over the centuries has defined its character and specificity’, a shrewd territorial ‘marketing’ should promote European regions as tourist destinations, thus relieving the pressure on cities of art’23.

Again, a conscious policy can only start from the knowledge of places, of their historical and cultural depth. The research carried out for the Region of Sicily, coordinated by Teresa Cannarozzo, is a possible demonstration of this. The survey, the data collected and their interpretation are aimed at identifying areas on which to concentrate funding and foster the local economy and development, particularly in the smaller towns and inland areas of the region. The identification of potential ‘cultural districts’ starts from the analysis of the peculiar characteristics of each of the areas examined. After highlighting the critical points and considering the parameters of accessibility and territorial connections, the research concludes with a careful evaluation of the resources and their interrelationships. The historic centres appear as the primary resource, but the map drawn highlights other essential components of the revitalisation process: the diffuse historic settlements, archaeological areas, areas of landscape, environmental and natural interest, as well as typical productions, cultural events and institutions, tourist accommodation24

The case of the careful recovery of the Kolymbetra garden in the Valley of the Temples in Agrigento, cleared of rubbish and infesting vegetation, replanted with native essences, restored in its canalization and irrigation systems, designed in its paths, contemplation and resting places and furnishing elements, is presented as an example of the valorisation of a “rediscovered” resource with a great impact on the landscape25.

The themes that ANCSA has been proposing in recent years, which are closely interrelated, outline a path centred on problems that are only apparently circumscribed, and which in reality maintain, in their approach and references, the breadth of horizon and general values that have always been characteristic of the association.

After the issue of tourism, examined from the observatory of one of the cities of art par excellence, it is Bergamo that is the venue of the International Conference that the association dedicates in May 2006 to “Open Spaces in Historical Contexts “26. Roberto Bruni, mayor of the city and President of ANCSA since 2005, invites us to pick up “the thread of a tradition” while aiming at “an updating of the themes and problems related to a more coherent reuse of ancient urban areas”.

The topics covered in the 2006 meeting are divided into three sections, the first of which is devoted not surprisingly to a re-discussion of the ‘Notion of Heritage’, and are presented by Roberto Spagnolo (Milan Polytechnic). The concept of heritage has changed many times over time. Contemporaneity has altered to the point of subverting the hierarchies and relationships within the city and the anthropised territory; consequently, it appears necessary “to act in many historical centres marked by peripheral characteristics not only with the recovery of building organisms, but above all with a design vision aimed at the redevelopment of open spaces, and therefore of the private and public functions installed in them”. It is starting from the analysis and redefinition of collective spaces that the process of regeneration of urbanised contexts can take shape, and “it is in the specific aspect of the ‘ground attack’ that the buildings of history seem to indicate to contemporary design not repeatable models, but relational potentialities”, explains Spagnolo. The cultural role of design and its practices must become prevalent again, just as it becomes essential to discuss the “relationship between ancient and contemporary, between true and false, between identity and mimesis… both in terms of building organisms and the structure and use of open spaces “27.

“The relationship between the historic centre and the periphery has completely changed,” Gabrielli echoes him, “and is connoted by an ever-increasing specialisation… from the conditions of degradation of the 1960s and 1970s we have now moved on to conditions of privilege… to a widespread European model of polished antiquarian value, which is in fact a new form of destruction of its traditional values… of its social, economic and even morpho-typological diversification. ANCSA believes that the identity of Italy’s historic centres lies, on the contrary, in their being places of exchange, differences, vitality, conflict and integration. Public intervention is therefore again and more necessary than ever.

If for Gabrielli it is necessary to restart from the re-reading of the policies of the 1970s, for Gambino the debate should start again from the New Gubbio Charter of 1990 and its founding concepts. In fact, the extension of the field from the historical centre to the historical territory did not propose ‘a mere change of scale; but a new philosophy of behaviour towards the historical and natural heritage and its relations with contemporary territories’28. After 16 years, it is necessary to question the relevance of the Charter and the positions advocated in it.

The landscape, considered under the 2004 Protection Act as part of the cultural heritage, has in reality been plundered and degraded for 50 years. In his report, Gambino summarises the times and ways of the devastation, right up to the recent building amnesties and the selling off of the public heritage, tracing in parallel the studies that over time have identified the characters and meanings of landscapes, right up to the innovative contents proposed by the European Convention, or, more locally, the recent projects for ‘environmental infrastructures’, aimed at bringing nature back into the city (greening the city). “It is in this framework that the great theme of relational spaces in the historic city should be placed… the river furrows that often cross it and the urban greenery that allows it to breathe “31. Rather than going down the road of dividing fields and isolating privileged sectors or places, the answer may lie in affirming a logic of relationships, in declining it in a design sense in favour of the extensive notion of ‘cultural landscapes’.

Among the case studies brought to the attention of the conference, Pasquale Culotta presented the projects for the historic centre of Cefalù, Sicily, where the focus was precisely on the relationship between the reuse of ancient palaces and convent structures adapted to house public activities and services and the reinterpretation/design of open spaces. The route that, following the circuit of the megalithic walls with its restored sections, skirts the edge of the sea for 1,300 metres, becomes “a pretext for connecting soil, urban spaces and the geography of places… to give rise to geometries, materials, measurements, dislocations of elements in the points, lines and surfaces that make up the architecture of the urban landscape” 30.

Documents, material traces and the history of places form the basis of the redevelopment project for Piazza Grande, the heart of the famous Palmanova founded at the end of the 16th century to reinforce the eastern borders of the Serenissima. ‘Once the work was completed,’ writes the author, Franco Mancuso, ‘people immediately took possession of the square again, in a more intense way than could have been hoped for. Moving away from the cars, they now encounter the statues of the Provveditori, once again protagonists of the urban scene, or the triangular obelisk, arranged in such a way as to reveal the originality of its design, restored and used as a kiosk for tourist information’31.

Antonino Terranova contrasts the ‘new planning of reuse’ claimed by ANCSA in the 1980s and still to be explored, with the fate of desertification that, with a different sign, A work for which perhaps the socio-spatial characteristics of the historic centre (mainly its open spaces, so varied, multiform, hospitable or symbolic) could constitute a lesson in design – I am thinking of Le Corbusier, Quaroni, Samonà, Scarpa, and others… – rather than a merely nostalgic poetic memory. – rather than a merely nostalgic poetic memory “32.

The third section of the conference presents, illustrated by authors and scholars, significant cases of redevelopment of urban spaces realised or proposed in various cities: in the Historic Centre of Buenos Aires (S. Bossio), in the Ortigia district of Syracuse (T. Cannarozzo), in the historic centre of Genoa with the exhibition “Arti&Architettura 1900-2000” (A. Costantini), in the project for the urban landscapes of historic Bergamo (GL. Della Mea, A. Frosio), with the Promenade plantée, the East-West green route through the 12th°  arrondissement in Paris (P. Micheloni), with the residential spaces and the Piazzale San Francesco and Naviglio area in Parma (S. Storchi), with the Integrated Linear Park of the Walls in Rome (P. Falini).

The 2006 Gubbio Prize is awarded (Gubbio, 13-14 October) for the European Section, with equal merit to the ‘Plan Territorial Insular de Menorca’ (Spain) directed by José Maria Ezquiaga Dominguez, and to the project for the Arc de Triomphe Quarter in Saintes (France) drawn up by Thibaud Babled, Armand Nouvet and Marc Reynard.

As for the National Section, “two projects, very different in scale and operational criteria, were deemed equally deserving of recognition: the ‘microinterventions’ project

the redevelopment of open and public spaces on the island of Ortigia in Syracuse, an exemplary cultured and refined operation carried out by the technicians of the Municipality’s Special Technical Office, aimed above all at the minute and domestic spaces of a particularly articulated and rich historical fabric, and

the one for the Park between Caltagirone and Piazza Armerina, where a contemporary interpretation of the historical identity of the Sicilian agricultural territory is poetically declined on the landscape scale‘.

In addition, on the occasion of the sixth edition of the Gubbio Prize ‘ANCSA intended to inaugurate the Prize named after Giulio Carlo Argan, which, starting from the memory of the illustrious art critic, intends to offer, at each edition, an award to scholars, architects, critics who have particularly distinguished themselves for their cultural and scientific commitment in the field of studies on the city and historical heritage.

The awarding of the first edition of the Argan Prize to Giancarlo De Carlo is, without doubt, a very authoritative and promising start for the new initiative‘.

Again in 2006, ANCSA promoted in Rome the Seminar ‘Historic Centres/Peripheries. New metropolitan deserts “33.

The National Conference ‘Geometry and Nature’, held again in Bergamo, in October 2007, constitutes, compared to the conference on open spaces, a form of continuation and connection to the problems of the redevelopment of urban and extra-urban landscapes 34.

The thirtieth anniversary of the institution of the Park of the Hills is an opportunity to open up, with respect to the continuum of the diffuse city, new questions on the relationship between places of protection, oases within the historic territory that in Europe have undergone a 25-30% increase in surface area, and places assaulted by urbanisation without a plan. But it is also a moment to reconsider the theme of the relationship between historic centres of ancient sedimentation and recent settlements, to which new ‘centrality’ is to be conferred through the decisive contribution of the project, understood both in the political and administrative sense with strong social requirements, and in the sense of an architectural project attentive to the culture of places, dense with interpretative capacities and poietic qualities.

The geometry-nature binomial evokes the image of ‘Italian-style’, then ‘French-style’ gardens, with the studied architecture of design and symmetries drawn by architectural components and plant essences. Conversely, the ‘English garden’ of the 18th century, which broke the mould, the rigidity, the possibility of an overall and immediate vision, introduced, in the succession of pictures and surprises, in the alternation of nature and artifice, the principles of the aesthetics of the sublime. But these were limited spaces, physically confined by fences and removed from ‘naturalness’, even if, in some larger cases, the outermost area tended to merge with the natural zones.

Often, contemporary landscapes, which have overwhelmed and partly encompassed the agrarian landscape, breaking its different codes, making its multiple expressions homogeneous, have no perceptible limits as such. They constitute a context that, in some stretches of recent transformation, could be described by transposing the eighteenth-century categories of the sublime to the built context: the monstrous, the chaotic, the oversized (out-of-scale), the wild…, and in other stretches be brought back to the definition of ordinary landscapes, therefore unrelated to any expression of exceptionality.

In this current context, planned forms of landscape construction should be based on a skilful reading of the territorial palimpsest, to be recognised by means of analytical and heuristic tools, and proposed to the public as knowledge that itself represents a collective heritage. Then, “it is up to the project – more or less implicitly or consciously – to make sense of the landscape and the diffuse heritage, to signal the diversity of local identities, to contribute to the structuring of urban territories by reading the value of centrality in repetition. In this design horizon, the relationship between nature and human culture changes, the “geometries” with which we have measured ourselves against the world, continually redesigning it. But architecture will in turn have to express new qualities, “going beyond the logic of domestication and simulation that have guided the confrontation with nature until now, in favour of an authentic collaboration with its processes “35.

The project will have to rethink the relationship between ‘green’ areas, natural and agricultural landscapes, with new forms of settlement and with cities.

In this sense, the theme of open spaces becomes essential once again, and the question of centrality can be re-proposed, starting – as Macchi Cassia proposes – from two moves: “to give the historic centre a role that goes beyond that played within the single urban place, the single municipality… To place side by side with the historic centrality a new type of centrality, already glimpsed today in the reality of the more developed territories, made up of a different urban material. It is from the dialogue between these two systems of centrality – the one historical, the other contemporary – that a contribution to the structuring of urban territories can arise, a support to their design, an attempt at their spatial prefiguration “36.

‘The physical form is certainly not to be underestimated,’ Gambino argues, ‘but I would not like us to ignore the fact that behind these physical changes lies the incessant enlargement of the ecological footprint of the contemporary urban over ever more extensive spaces… what is certain is that today we are faced with a globalisation… of the relationship between urbanity and naturalness… the urban has moved out of its traditional boundaries… and at the same time there is a great modification of naturalness… of how contemporary society organises and proposes the natural world to itself. In this sense, the “shift of the reasons for the project from urban spaces to open spaces… reflects the recognition of a new centrality, which alternates and mixes with the traditional centrality… “. In order to design it, it is necessary “to think beyond traditional geometries… to network and stage local resources and identities, to ‘collaborate with the land’… creating new integrated systems – new architectures – that are more ramified and complex “37.

In addition to cultural changes, “I would also like to insist on structural changes, those induced by economic, financial and technological globalisation, which then lead to a fragmentation of spaces, since every place can connect with any other place on earth,” proposes geographer Giuseppe Dematteis. These changes give rise to ‘a general weakening of the ties of proximity that gave meaning to the organisation of the territory, but also to the shape of territories, to landscapes: hence… the formation of geometries that we perceive as chaotic, with no apparent relationship either with the urban orders of the past… or with the orders with which we represent natural territories… unstable geometries devoid of differences, specificities, and patrimonialities accumulated over time… and above all devoid of the identity that still constitutes the value of the historical city’. Thus, in Dematteis’s opinion, the project of new centralities can only be anchored to the territories “seen as deposits, historical sediments of potential inherited from the past… as a genetic heritage that has been incorporated… and that has led the territory to follow diversified paths… [since] just as there is a problem of conserving biodiversity there is a problem of conserving the diversity of territories “38: this is precisely the objective, certainly a problematic one, that constitutes the greatest challenge for the project.

The papers presented at the conference focus on the theme of unbuilt space, its destiny, and its great potential; on the possibilities of connection between the context of ancient sedimentation and recent construction that the design of “voids” could highlight and exploit; on the way of designing in/on the landscape – which can be profoundly conditioned and transformed not only by large transnational routes, but also by small-scale intervention on the building scale; starting from the monumental complex of Valmarina (Paolo Belloni), in the Parco dei Colli di Bergamo, which should be reconnected with a series of shrewd planning actions to the vast area to which it belongs (Roberto Spagnolo), they illustrate stories, situations, proposals and interventions relating to different territorial contexts: from the Alptransit Ticino project – a fast railway line crossing Switzerland -, to the construction of a house on the island of Paros, in Greece (Aurelio Galfetti); from the project for the coastal landscapes of the Dutch Randstadt (Emanuela Bartolini), to the strategic lines of action envisaged for the system of parks of the Savoy residences and greenery that constitutes the “Corona di Delizie” around Turin (Paolo Castelnovi); from the Adige Park Plan in Verona (Alessandro Tutino), to the solutions within Bergamo’s PGT for the ‘green corridor’, i.e. the linear park that reconnects and redesigns the city’s urban voids (Bruno Gabrielli, Aurelio Galfetti).

In October 2007, the ANCSA Seminar “The Management of Historical Centres” was held in Parma and Guastalla. Continuing the series of initiatives and comparisons underway at an international level, it developed the assumption that the design of the city and the historical landscape cannot be separated from the management project of territorial transformations, which should in turn be traced back to a unitary governance strategy and implementation subject to constant control over time.

The 2009 Gubbio Prize – the proposed theme being ‘Interventions on the built heritage and/or management and organisational initiatives within the framework of urban or territorial redevelopment strategies’ – instituted an International Section for Latin America and the Caribbean, to sanction a collaborative relationship that has been underway for some years with cultural bodies and scholars from the cities of Buenos Aires and Havana.

The Prize for the Latin America and the Caribbean Section, is awarded to ‘Integral redevelopment of the ‘La Ronda’ route and conservation of the indigenous Tulipe Centre’, designed and presented by the Arcadia Metropolitana of Quito (Ecuador), and considered of great relevance ‘for the recovery of the original residential significance of the neighbourhood and the public use of the commercial, cultural and service spaces’.

Winner of the Prize for the European Section is the project “Les abords de la Basique de Saint Denis” (France), by Franco Zagari, Jean-Louis Fulcrand, Faouzi Doukh, presented by Plaine Commune, France and “an essential reference for those involved in the design of open spaces in historic centres”.

Honourable mentions went respectively to the Camara Municipal do Porto for the Porto Antica Management Plan, inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 1996, and to the Oxford Preservation Trust for the ‘Oxford Castle Project’, which converted the medieval building long used as a prison into a hotel.

The Prize for the National Section is awarded to the Spazio Vedova alle Zattere project by Renzo Piano, presented by the Fondazione Emilio ed Annabianca Vedova and built inside the Magazzini del Sale. In this case too, the motivation, enunciated by Tommaso Giura Longo, reflects the association’s positions, referring to the buildings “restored with absolute respect for the space and materiality of the pre-existence, within which the works stacked on the bottom can slide on a central track by means of shuttles equipped with electronically controlled extendible arms that pick up the works to place them in the planned spot”. A happy relationship between pre-existences and new technologies also characterises the project receiving the Honourable Mention, “City of the Other Economy” at the former Slaughterhouse of Testaccio, in Rome, where “in addition to the conservative restoration and structural rehabilitation carried out in an exemplary manner”, the author, Luciano Capelloni, invents “a further space… a new structure in steel and glass, independent, but strongly integrated with the existing one”.

The Giulio Carlo Argan Prize, attended by Raffaele Panella and Paolo Desideri, is awarded to Carlo Ajmonino, a prestigious master of Italian architecture and town planning.

Historic Centres. Managing Transformation is the title of the volume edited by Silvia Bossio and Stefano Storchi under the patronage of the Dirección General del Casco Histórico of Buenos Aires, ANCSA, and the Oficina del Historiador de la Ciudad de La Habana39.

The comparison, which has already taken place through exhibitions and seminars, thus arrives at the publication, which, while accepting a certain degree of incompleteness, aligns experiences of great interest conducted in various Italian, Spanish and South American cities40 in the conviction that, beyond the specific cultural contexts, a global dimension regarding the themes of intervention in the historic centre and in the contemporary city unites the countries of the world. The synthetic reading that is proposed is made homogeneous by the entries of a specially prepared card that serves as a common layout. This unfolds following, partly ideally, partly actually, the phases of strategic plans and management plans focused on the vision of the issues related to the historic centre, and articulates the contents and results of government action in a series of preordained fields the forms of management, with the operational structures, the methods, the strategies of intervention; the management models, with the mechanisms and actors of consultation; the tasks of the management structure, with the definition of the possible operational scenarios with respect to the expectations and reactions of the citizens; the positive and negative factors influencing the management activity; the economic, public and private resources supporting the intervention; the outcomes achieved and the future objectives.

This description of the process of governance of urban transformations makes the comparison between the cases presented effective, giving rise to a series of reflections on Italian and Spanish cities and cities in Latin America and the Caribbean; it also highlights the processes of fragmentation of bureaucratic competences that have occurred in some administrative structures which, after the years of the ‘offices for historic centres’ set up in many cities, have compromised the possibilities of managing the territory in an integrated way, considering aesthetic, functional, economic and social values in a unified way on a political and operational level. Finally, the comparison allows us to identify the many similarities found in the experiences proposed “an analogy of problems, to which, however, different answers have been given [but] that leads to the conclusion that cities and their historic centres face similar questions, although in very different and physically distant contexts “41.

The association’s most recent activities include the national conference “Identity/Transformation” (Florence, May 2008), and the conference “Historical Centres and the Contemporary City. Public Policies and Intervention Strategies” (Palermo, February 2010) organised by Teresa Cannarozzo with CIRCES (Interdepartmental Research Centre on Historical Centres of the University of Palermo) and the PhD in Urban and Territorial Planning. The conference, held in partnership with ANCSA and INU, takes up and synthesises the themes explored by the association in the second half of the decade. The meeting is aimed at identifying the most suitable public policies and the best operational strategies for the recovery and revitalisation of historic cities, and focuses attention on the concepts of urban identity, permanence, change, innovation, on economic and social issues, on the public and private actors involved in the recovery/rehabilitation processes, and on the quality of design interventions

The recovery process of Palermo’s historic city centre, discussed with Teresa Cannarozzo by Pierluigi Cervellati, Bernardo Rossi Doria, Giuseppe Trombino, Maurizio Carta and Giuliano Leone, is compared with cases of exemplary reuse of the historic building heritage and with urban redevelopment projects illustrated by Franco Zagari (Saint Denis, France), Gianluca Della Mea (Bergamo), Stefano Storchi (Parma); Francesco Gastaldi (Genoa), Franco Mancuso (Venice) and Francesco Cellini (Rome).

1 See on the association’s website the general events chosen to frame ANCSA’s activities (www.ancsa.org). The sentences in italics in the text are taken from the documents on the site, which can also be found in the brochures that ANCSA published on the occasion of the awarding of the Gubbio Prize.

2 The question was put forward in the Seminar “The Gubbio Charter 1990: problems and operational guidelines for local and territorial authorities”. Ferrara, 7-8 June 1990.

3 The Proceedings, supplemented by further contributions on the subject, were published by A. Terranova in ‘Groma Quaderni’ 3, 1997.

4 Ib., p. 103.

5 Ib. pp. 43-44.

6 Ib., p. 41.

7 Ib., citations on pp. 9-17.

8 A. De Andreis, G. Polo( edited by), Patrimonio del 2000. Un progetto per il territorio storico nei prossimi decenni, Atti del XII Convegno-Congresso Nazionale ANCSA, Modena, 24-26 ottobre1997, sd.

9 This will be the central theme of the conference ‘Perspectives on ANCSA Issues and the Future Role of the Association’ to be held in Lucca in October 1998.

10

11

12 Ib., quotations on pp. 62-63.

13 Ib., citations on pp.71-73.

14 These are, respectively: Vittorio De Feo and others, Progetto per la nuova sede dell’Amministrazione provinciale di Pordenone; M. Botta, Progetto per la sistemazione del Piazzale della Pace, a Parma.

15 Cf. Pre-Acts of the 13th ANCSA National Conference-Congress “Contemporaneity and territorial identity: the challenges of the 3°  millennium”, Perugia, 7-8 November 2003.

16 ‘Active’ conservation, long before it was reinvented by ANCSA, is a product of the culture of restoration, which is aware that any intervention, even the smallest one, modifies its object, and that, consequently, it constitutes a form of renewal: in the academic sphere, but not only, the concept of conservation as ‘government of transformations’ has long been shared.

17 S. Carullo (ed.), Turismo e Centri Storici nell’Italia contemporanea, Atti del Convegno di Studi, Firenze, 29 aprile 2005, Bergamo, 2005

18 See also the International Conference ‘Sacred Woodlands in Europe, Valorisation and Safeguarding’, Valladolid, 7-8-9 April – Spoleto, 13-14 May 2005.

19 Ib.,citations on pp. 57-61.

20 S. Casini Benvenuti, ib., pp. 74-76.

21 Ib., pp.16-22

22 Ib., (pp.28-34).

23 B. Gabrielli, Foreword to the Conference, p. 8.

24 Ib., citations on pp. 42-53.

25 M. Leone, ib., pp. 54-55.

26 Open Spaces in Historical Contexts, Proceedings of the ANCSA National Conference, Bergamo 13 May 2006, Bergamo 2007.

27 Ib., p. 15.

28 Ib., p. 23

31 Ib., p. 28.

30 Ib., p. 40.

31 Ib., p. 47.

32 Ib., p. 53.

33 It is worth mentioning, although outside the ANCSA, the initiative promoted in May 2008 in Rome by the Faculties of Architecture ‘Ludovico Quaroni’, Communication Sciences, Humanities and Oriental Studies, with the conference entitled ‘Rome, Contemporary Landscapes’, the proceedings of which were published in 2009 by Marina Righetti, Alessandro Cosma, Roberta Cerone, and during which, according to different disciplinary perspectives, the theme of the contemporary city was confronted with the reality of Rome, the ‘eternal city’, but at the same time changing from an anthropological, architectural, cultural, economic and media perspective. Figures of Architecture for the City in Bubbles and Cracks, is the title of the contribution presented by A. Terranova, Vice President of ANCSA.

34 S. Carullo (ed.), Geometry and Nature, Proceedings of the ANCSA National Conference, Bergamo 13 October 2007, Bergamo 2008.

35 C. Macchi Cassia, R. Gambino, “Le ragioni di un convegno”, ib., p. 9.

36 Ib., p. 24.

37 Ib. citations on pp. 31-35.

38 Ib., quotations on pp. 39-41.

39 S. Bossio, S. Storchi (eds.), Historic Centres. Managing transformation / Centros Historicós. Gestionar la transformación, Cremona, 2009.

40 These are the historical centres of the cities of Arequipa, Asunción, Bergamo, Bogotá, Bologna, Buenos Aires, Florence, Florianópolis, Genoa, La Habana, Madrid, Malaga, Mantua, Milan, Montevideo, Naples, Pachuca, Parma, Quito, Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Santa Tecla, Santiago de Chile, Valencia, Venice.

41 Historical Centres. Managing the transformation Historic Centres…, cit., p. 7.