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 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, to understand the contemporary role of these villages, which are at the same time a fundamental component of landscape and cultural heritage. Within wider research carried out by the Department of civil engineering and architecture and the Department of political and social sciences of the University of Cagliari on the topic of depopulated villages, this work aims at exploring the issue of values in architecture as an interpretative method aimed to support programs and plans of reuse or re-signification actions for small towns in Sardinia. The recognition of their historical, architectural and landscape qualities, supported by the analysis of social and psychological values, allows defining 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. Values are determined through, on the one hand, an in situ survey, in order to understand historical and architectural values and, on the other, a socio-psychological survey. Thus, these are related through matrices, to translate the deep meanings of the system of the small towns into a holistic, composite and univocal representation, also to define strategies for their enhancement.