Un.Building. Esercizi progettuali di contrazione controllata in un paese in via di spopolamento

During the last A.Y. 2021-2022 the Master’s Thesis Laboratory Un.Building Architectural design exercises of controlled contraction in a depopulation village was held at the Faculty of Civil, En- vironmental and Architecture Engineering. The laboratory was aimed at addressing the issue of the decline of the territories and the consequent depopulation of the internal villages of Sardinia. In the last two decades the contraction of the internal areas of the island has gradually gained the attention of politics and academic research having assumed considerable dimensions and worry- ing evidence. The laboratory focused on this line of study and debate by investigating Fluminim- aggiore, a town located in the south-western area of Sardinia, using the tools of architectural and urban planning. Fluminimaggiore is representative of the condition of demographic, social and economic contraction affecting the towns and territories belonging to the internal areas. In Flu- minimaggiore depopulation took hold following the interruption of mining activities in the area, on which the town’s economy was mainly based. This has led to a phenomenon of general aban- donment of private houses in the municipality which now has to manage a significant number of disused buildings. With this, undergoes a loss not only of people, but also of all those intangible values inherent the social tissue. This contribution illustrates a didactic approach that focuses on the controlled design exercise of subtraction, mending and partial addition with the intention of redefining the rearrangement of contained urban portions with the contextual application of con- struction techniques that use the materials of the local construction tradition with innovative and high-quality processes.