Approcci di economia circolare applicati agli stadi: dalle antiche campagne di spoglio alla demolizione con recupero di frazioni. Il caso dello stadio sant'Elia

The practice of stripping monuments always allowed optimizing building processes, often following abandoning policies of the previous periods. Pope Gregory the Great in the 7th Century introduced the practice of stripping monuments for building Christian churches: the Colosseum has been a witness of such practice, as well as other Roman amphitheaters as those of Aquileia, Tivoli, Cagliari and Catania. The practice of stripping older building started fading with the raise of conservation of the urban heritage according to the principle of collecting. If preserving and taking care of old monuments maintains the historical heritage through its architecture, on the other side it causes losing the habit of the old practice of stripping and reusing, in particular stones. Fordism as a construction method is applied to project and construction until the end of the ‘modern age’, while environmental sustainability represents a building block in the postmodern debate. The shapes of the public cities of stadiums and arenas represent a testbed for reinterpreting building stripping in contemporary times, by means of selective demolitions and materials recycling as concrete. Examples of this can be found in the sport plants of Turin 2006 and London 2012 Olympics, as well as in FIFA World Cup Russia 2018. In this wide overview of cases typical of the new circular economy, we would like to stress the attention on MEISAR (2014-2020), a project of “cluster of top-down materials”, that coupled with the project of the New Cagliari Arena is aimed at providing technical support enterprises willing to reuse concrete as raw and second-hand materials for new constructions.