The permanence of form. A methodological proposal for the re-signification of depopulated small towns of Sardinia

The process of abandonment of Sardinian villages is a topic of great interest nowadays, not only in various research fields, but also in political debate and in public opinion. The evolution of the Sardinian settlement system has been studied since the 1960s. But only recently these studies are turning, in a multidisciplinary way, towards the analysis of the current phenomenon, in order to understand the contemporary role of these villages, which are at the same time a fundamental component of landscape and cultural heritage. In this framework, the historic design and conservation group of the Department of civil engineering and architecture of the University of Cagliari has started a collaboration with the Department of political and social sciences of the same University. The aim is the development of an interdisciplinary research focused on a deeper knowledge of depopulated villages as a premise to find new meanings for them, analyzing their tangible and intangible characters. This team work constitutes the foundations for a shared methodological approach, based in particular on the definition of a common glossary and taxonomy aimed at the potential reuse of this historical-architectural heritage, and on the proposal of synoptic visions of the phenomenon. At the moment, this interdisciplinary research might be directed towards different objectives, ranging from the deepening of knowledge up to the definition of intervention strategies, both on a territorial and architectural scale. This work covers the preliminary phase of this analysis, exploring the issue of values in architecture as an interpretative method aimed at supporting programs and plans of reuse or re-signification actions for small towns in Sardinia. The recognition of the historical, architectural and landscape qualities of these villages, supported by the analysis of socio-psychological values, allows to define the cultural significance of the individual nodes of the villages settlement network, paying also particular attention to their current or potential importance for the communities that live and use them, in a stable, temporary or marginal way. The methodological protocol, already tested on other categories of heritage characterized by a systemic distribution on the territory, is therefore aimed at interpreting the representations of the Sardinian settlement system offered by different fields of study. It is based on matrices that relate values of different nature, linked to architecture, history, psychology, sociology, economics etc., in order to translate the deep meanings of the small towns system into a holistic, composite and univocal representation, and thus to define strategies for their enhancement. As part of this contribution, the application of the method focuses specifically on two categories of values: the material ones which include architectural, historical, environmental values, and the immaterial features, linked instead to socio-psychological issues. The collaboration between the two disciplinary areas allows to identify, on the one hand, those values immediately connected to historic conservation and design, and on the other, the strategies for detecting the different degrees of knowledge, perception and representation of cultural heritage by local populations: this allows to consider also the importance of depopulated villages for the local close communities, and to perceive the architectural fullness, that is the relationship between forms and people which (re)live this places. The identified values, brought back to the two material and immaterial categories, become elements of a matrix capable of making them comparable and, finally, useful for the definition of enhancement strategies not limited to a mono-disciplinary perspective.