Palestrina – Castel San Pietro Romano 2016
The first edition of the HULBriC training in situ course (27 August- 4 September 2016), has finished successfully
Considering the HUL (Historic Urban Landscape UNESCO recommendation) as an approach aiming to overcome the contraposition between conservation and transformation – while promoting conservation as management of change – the training was structured and built on the best experiences of Italian conservation history and legislation as exemplified through three major keywords: physical urban and architectural conservation, integrated management, local participation. A nine days’ full immersion course was organized aiming to bridge conservation, planning, valorization and management issues relative to small historic towns, across different cultures, in an interdisciplinary and comparative way.
The aims of the course were:
– to offer a highly qualified and professionalized training to both Chinese and Italian participants disseminating Italian expertise on the subject;
– to bring the issue of small historic towns up in the heritage conservation agenda, worldwide;
– to have a positive impact on the host cities and the citizens local identity.
They were achieved by:
– selecting participants with high professional profiles, able to become the direct disseminators of the HUL approach implemented to small historic towns;
– organizing an in situ training. That is, by offering the opportunity to the participants to touch, see, breath, be immerged experience the qualities of space, urban life, landscape and of the hosting of small historic towns;
– training to sense without maps the space and feel the materials, to appreciate the context and see with the other’s eyes;
– an intercultural (China –Italy) and interdisciplinary approach: architectural history and restoration, urban planning history and conservation, archaeology, planning, communication, ICT, management, are some of the disciplines involved in the teaching program;
– bringing together professionals and academics, students and practitioners;
– en charrette studios: introducing intensive studios on case studies and problem solving;
– involving citizens and local stakeholders in the whole training process, both as hosts and as evaluators.
The course will be annually promoted in Italian small historic cities and hopefully soon also in Chinese traditional towns with the aim to:
1) define an inedited training format able to become a part of the HUL toolkit and therefore a useful tool worldwide;
2) offer to participants a deeper understanding of urban conservation; skills for digital valorization and communication; a critical approach to integrated solutions incorporating public participation in heritage development and to promote cultural exchanges while bridging cultures.
However, its ultimate goal is to impact also on small historic towns’ development and conservation by enhancing local identity and prestige, economic valorization and tourist flows, while promoting inedited solutions to the urban conservation/valorization issues that local communities had identified as crucial and offered as case studies for theen charrette studios.
