RICERCA ITALIANA     

Military buildings: from abandon to reusing

Università degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza"

Abstract

Abstract of the research Program

The research program faces the problematic of the re-development of military building not anymore in use due to the rationalization of the public finance and the military logistics reconfiguration in connection with the change of the "assumed model of defence from Italy".
Reference is made, in particular, to the dismissing program of the real estates of the Defense that has taken place with the approval of the provision connected to the Financial Law institution for 1997, that disciplined the performance to codicil 112 of article 3 and to successive codicil 113, for how it concerns the pre-emptive right of the local agencies.
Such a patrimony is distributed in all the regions and is constituted by one real estate varieties of unit and complexes beyond that of areas, as it is evidenced from the data assumed from lists predisposed from the Prime Minister's Office

Among all the real estates listed above, the program of national research will refer to the barracks,
preferentially, also not excluding some meant complex located in every regional context that will be developed in programs of Local Units.
The program is finalized to the proposition of guide lines finalized to the re-development of building organisms that, in some cases, have meaningful historical-environmental valences and, in others, inserted in city contexts to high social problematic.
The time in which surveying is placed is that one comprised between the formation of the unitary State and the beginning of second world-wide conflict, period in which have been realizes military complex ad hoc and therefore equipped with specific characteristics consequent to a planning that obeyed to precise typological and functional requests beyond that technical-building.
The research program means to develop following the phases listed below:

Recognition
Comparison
Analysis of the use potentialities
Analysis of the original building characters
Analysis of the functional and technological degradation.
Interpretation of the sustainability of re-development operations
Formulation of guides lines for the re-development and re-development operations

The program will be concluded with a document that could be put to disposition of the local administrations of the regions interested from the phenomenon. <<<

Principal Investigator

Franco STORELLI Università degli Studi di ROMA "La Sapienza"

Research Objectives

Objective of the search program

Objective of the program is the valorisation of military building not in use anymore, through the predisposition of project and technical operative methodologies useful for the re-introduction in a use circuit.
The occasion of the re-search is given from the process of progressive dismissing of huge amounts of the real estate of the Defence Ministry, due to problematic of rationalization of the public finance, and evidently, to epochal events that have redesigned, on the of 900s and first years of 2000, relationships between the European and not European states, consequent to the changed geopolitical order of the East States.
Such changes, not only in Italy but also in other European nations, have involved in particular the change of the defence model, with deep repercussions on the entire organizational system of the Armed Forces and, in directed derivation, on that logistic one. Reference is made, in particular to the program of dismissing of real estates of the Defence that has started with the approval of the provision connected to the Financial Law institution for 1997, that disciplined the performance to codicil 112 of article 3 and to successive codicil 113, for what it concerns the pre-emptive right of the local agencies.
The complete realization of the program demanded a wide range of technical-trained implementations that have involved for the single phase of start a complex engagement that lasted for more than a year.
Such implementations, of the Defence Administration competence, have regarded the location of the pieces of real estate to insert in the program of dismissing and its approval with the Prime Minister's decree of August, the 11th 1997, on proposal of the Minister of the Defence consulting the Ministers of the Treasure and Finances.
The first directory of 302 pieces of real estate, predisposed in 1997, has followed by modernizations in 2000 and 2005.
This last directory, predisposed within February, the 28th 2005, has not been still become public in the presentation date of this program, but it will be in a short time.
It is achieved:
• Director general's office of the Jobs and the Federal property stipulates of the regulating convention the relationships between the Defence Ministry and Society CONSAP, responsible for the management of dismissing program, for what concerns the conduction of the dismissing program. In short, today the activity of the dismissing has involved the sale of beyond 100 complexes on approximately 300 characterizes.
• the finalization of numerous program agreements directed substantially to rationalize the military presence in determined areas (Modena, Piacenza and Bologna) and to stipulate of various protocols of understanding with the Local Agencies (Rome, Trento, Pisa, Viterbo, Turin, Naples, Florence etc.) that will have to be developed on the technical plan;
• the free donation of the real estate to Aosta, Trentino Alto Adige and the Friuli Venice Julia and the census of the real estates to yield to the Sicily and the Sardinia;
• the delivery of real estates funds connected to the Ministry of Finances.

Now, therefore, exists a huge patrimony in areas and pieces of real estate of most various nature and context, more not used or quite abandoned, for which it is proposed a study to characterize, to the inside of the general context, those complexes or those building units equipped of such typological characteristic particular from being able to stimulate operations of valorisation finalized to a re-introduction in a circuit of "civil" use, guided by appropriate methodologies or praxis.
In such a way it agrees to offer general project models but also intrinsically oriented to the inside of the specific categories acquired from the critical analysis of the real estate in examination; punctual indications on technologies of reference and of materials and building solutions will be related to project models, in derivation and priority observance of the techniques and the original building materials.
The vastness and the variety of the patrimony in examination, recalled from the data listed below in table, and acquired from predisposed list but not still complete, imposes to the national group to limit the choices to significant cases but however diffuse on all the national territory, and particularly important inside their natural or urban contexts.
Special attention will have the building complexes or the building considered as a local element in a system of territorial extension and such elements will be able to be studied inside of homogenous analyses categories.
Among all of them, it is evident the case of barracks.
The choices will be operated from the local centres, with critical appraisal of the whole national group


__________________________________________________
The typologies of the state property patrimony and its numerical consistency.
The data are acquired from list supplied in 1997 and 2000. D.P.C.M. 11/08/1997 (G.U. 7 October 1997, n. 234. and D.P.C.M. 12/09/2000,G.U. 29 September 2000, n. 228)


Real estate typology : airport areas
unit: 6
regions: Emilia Romagna - Lazio - Veneto

Real estate typology : railway areas
unit: 11
regions: Emilia Romagna - Puglia - Toscana

Real estate typology : batteries and forts
unit: 29
regions: Basilicata - Lazio - Liguria - Marche - Puglia - Veneto

Real estate typology : live athletic fields
unit: 2
regions: Emilia Romagna - Lombardia

Real estate typology : barracks
unit: 68
regions: Basilicata - Emilia Romagna - Lazio - Liguria -Lombardia - Marche - Piemonte - Puglia – Toscana - Umbria - Veneto

Real estate typology : radio canters
unit: 5
regions: Abruzzo - Basilicata - Emilia Romagna- Puglia - Veneto

Real estate typology : residential buildings
unit: 12
regions: Emilia Romagna - Lazio - Liguria - Puglia - Veneto

Real estate typology : depots
unit: 57
regions: Abruzzo - Basilicata - Emilia Romagna - Lazio - Liguria - Lombardia - Marche - Piemonte – Puglia - Toscana - Umbria - Veneto

Real estate typology : lighthouses
unit: 3
regions: Basilicata - Puglia

Real estate typology : Electric plant and TLC
unit: 6
regions: Abruzzo - Basilicata - Puglia - Veneto

Real estate typology : military hospitals
unit: 1
regions: Emilia Romagna

Real estate typology : public squares
unit: 4
regions: Basilicata - Piemonte - Umbria

Real estate typology : Polygons of shooting
unit: 60
regions: Basilicata - Emilia Romagna - Lazio - Liguria - Lombardia –Marche - Piemonte - Puglia - Toscana - Umbria - Veneto

Real estate typology : Ammunitions depot
unit: 10
regions: Emilia Romagna - Lombardia - Marche - Veneto

Real estate typology : lands
unit: 21
regions: Basilicata - Emilia Romagna - Lazio - Liguria – Lombardia- Marche - Puglia - Toscana - Veneto

Real estate typology : others
unit: 36
regions: Basilicata - Emilia Romagna - Lazio - Liguria -Lombardia - Marche - Puglia - Umbria - Veneto <<<

Timescale

24 months

National and international background

National or international scientific starting point

The Italian school of the re-development
Scientific starting point is the complex of the analysis methodologies and operation on the building patrimony existence without characteristics of monument, which has been asserting in the last few decades of the 900s and that has characterized and characterizes now the "Italian school of the re-development".
Such a school, born from the consequences of the destructions deriving from the natural calamities that periodically have taken place on the Italian territory, progressively has consolidated on initiatives of administrations and formative institutions, as well as on illuminated entrepreneurs, that have had as a target the safeguard of the original characters of the existing building patrimony, also in the necessary transformations demanded from the changed requirements of the user.

The episodes pointed out previously, catastrophic destructions and substitutions of comfortable and maturing of a civil conscience in the comparisons of the "technical
value" of our building patrimony, allow us to complete the passage from the "things" and from "targets" to the "institutions" and to the "operating ones" that act variously it on those "things" and those targets.
The next reflection concerns on the potentialities that emerge, on the favourable and possible co-ordinations between those that share the motion of refusal in the comparisons of materials and
procedures thought for the "new " but incautiously adopted in the "old ", and hope in a rediscovery of the traditions building still so close in time but nearly forgotten for the decline of the "master" of traditions and, with them, of the transfer of their technical acquaintances.

Materials and innovative technologies; entrepreneurs and workers more and more distant from the
"tradition" and less and less in a position to operating on it in "technically picked" way, less than the relocated institutions to the formation and the management of the common good do not succeed, so to speak, to evidence, in the entrepreneurs and the customers then, the necessity and the possibility to propose and to lead operations less invasive and destroyable of the values of "built".
Unless, in other words, a developed more critical conscience does not place to the
centre of the attention the affirmation of the "cultural value" of the building traditions and derived building typologies, the cognitive deepening of the tight links that have always correlated the building traditions to the intelligent use of the resources of the environment.

In recent years some meant episodes have marked and mark, exactly, the stages of progressive but slow development of a critical conscience in operating in a more aware way on buildings and, in particular, on those ones that sum-up stratification of memories.
These episodes are related to phenomena of modification of the university formative institutions, to the birth to their inside of "germs" of laboratories willing to lead studies and experimentations on the pre-modern techniques; to the fruitful formative job of collaboration between entrepreneurs and social forces; to the sensibility and preparation of some Public Administration; to intelligence of some illuminates entrepreneurial groups.

The cognitive and operative instruments: The Handbook of the Re-development and the Pratical codes

The address experiences, that is those experiences that, born for disciplinary interest of some, for the objective urgency of giving operating answers to compromised situations, for the availability of some local administrations, have had as outcome instruments of great potential importance on the plan of the information and formation known as "Handbook of the Re-development" and "Pratical codes"
For the firsts, chronological, of the " Handbook of the Restoration" in 1977 in the within
of the laboratory of the "Associazione pesarese intercomunale", predisposed from Francesco Doglioni and Raffaele Panella (1), followed by the "Manuale del Recupero del Comunhe di Roma" of 1989 (2), by the "Manuale del Recupero del Comunhe di Citta di Castello" (3) of 1992, by the "Manuale del Recupero delle antiche tecniche costruttive napoletane" (4) ,
For the seconds, the researches by Antonino Giuffrè on the problem of the antisismic operations in the buildings of the historical centres, and of the conduct experiences in order to verify the static behaviour of masonries,
Such practical experiences are testified in a series of contributions in which detaches that published in 1993 as "Emergency and conservation of the historical centres. The Ortigia case. Code of practical for the antisismic operations in the historical centre ", and the "Handbook of the Re-development of the city of Palermo" of 1999

The Handbook for the re-development
In the last few decades it has been assisted to the re-discovery, by citizens, of the cultural patrimony constituted by "buildings"; beside this cultural ferment a change of the market conditions is
recorded, not anymore projected towards the "new", but opened to the purchase and "the pre-existing " re-development.
The legitimate fear is that these interests and operations can carry to the loss of the qualities of the historical building patrimony, meant not like monumental emergencies, nearly always protected from the State or the Common , but like the very urban texture, the relation spaces, typologies and building materials of the buildings.
Unfortunately in the operations on the smaller historical building the tendency has been to accredit them to the new ones and, by that, to use same standards, materials, building technologies of these, all carried to the conscious destruction of the architectonic values in historical buildings.
In parallel with the impulse given from this new sensitivity in regards of "how to act" on the
buildings have been, beginning from seventies, recurrent and catastrophic earthquakes.
In this atmosphere, due, as we have seen, to a series of circumstances and events, it is matured, in the sphere of Laboratorio Urbanistico dell' Associazione intercomunale di Pesaro, the idea to use a guide for the re-development of the smaller historical building.
The "Handbook for the restoration" of the historical centre of Pesaro was based on the cognitive process of the buildings standardisation , process that was put into effect by means of a estimate critical relief of them.
The acquaintance of such buildings was the premise to the definition of homogenous requirement of their restoration, indispensable deduction after the appraisal of the operations that the earthquake in Friuli had determined.
The successive experience in the within of the Handbook of the Re-development comes from an happy collaboration between the "Ufficio speciale per gli interventi nel centro storico" of the roman municipality, directed by Carlo Aymonino, and the University "La Sapienza", and it is the "Handbook of the Re-development of the Common one of Rome".
Concerning the laboratory of "Theory and Technique of the Re-development", instituted in 1982, many experiences from agencies institutes and, in a general, from experts were collected; in this first phase the ICIAP of the province of Rome the Soprintendenza per i Beni Ambinetali e Architettonici of Rome, the research office of Ministero per i Beni Culturali and the Main Institute for restoration collaborated actively.
The Handbook for the Re-development is presented as a repertory of materials and building techniques and its target is to improve the operations in this subject, supplying to the administrative structures and the possibilities to better understand the realization of historical buildings and therefore the ability to act in the most opportune way.
Moreover, it offers a "catalogue' ' of models for the acquaintance of the building elements and the pre-modern techniques that, in the processes of maintenance and modernization, risk mainly the destruction; it lacks, however, the guiding phase containing the practical suggestions concerning who to take part in a restoration site, also considering technological innovations.

This gap is overwhelmed from the experience lead for Città di Castello, where the analogous Handbook of the Re-development acquires a more operating dimension; in fact it is in this context that they are studied and above all proposed models of structural operation, and specifically the antisismic ones, that may be adopted to by communal administration and other subjects of the re-development process.
But the Handbook is not only an atlas of the types, materials and the pre-modern building techniques; in fact even in the development of drawings it can be possible to notice a particular
attention to the "masonry rules", to the repairing and improving operations for building
elements, to the static behaviour and the reaction that many components have had to the earthquake solicitations.
Moreover in the second part, if therefore it can be defined, those executive indications are reported all those indications to obtain the adaptation to safety and comfort standards of new buildings and to catch up such a structural improvement to comply with the demand determined from the application of norms for the antisismic prevention.
It is evident that new materials and new structures inserted in buildings of the pre-modern architecture, in order to reinforce and to consolidate, hardly coexist with the original structures, that in these operations result to work improperly.
The technical culture of the reinforced concrete is badly adapted to interpret the structural behaviour of the "masonry" building, therefore it must be addressed towards the study of the pre-modern apparatuses.
In this context the Handbook faces the problematic, very much delicate, of a proposal phase of practical criteria to operate for the recovery of structures and, in particular, for the antisismic adaptation.
An evolutionary aspect, that in the Handbook of the re-development links the building to the city
context, appears more explicitly in Palermo where the Handbook "extended to elements of the city decorum, proposes, in the proper context of an operative urban instrument, the executive detailed plan, that has mainly acquired the concept of the restoration of the historical centre like organism "

The practical codes

In the methodological approach of the handbook of the re-development the "practical codes" are considered to be "that help that national technical norm would have to demand in
order to allow the detailed development of its prescription to the local contexts."
The problem that is present in the formulation of these codes is to adapt the historical buildings to the standards of safety and comfort of present time trying maintain the characteristics of the historical building on which we operate; therefore, the first step, in this way, has to move in the direction of a re-development of the building techniques that originated them, in order to being able to operate in adequate way.
The practical code, just for its operating aspect and its innovative factor, proposes a series of verifications, of examples, of building details, of solutions that the planner will have to adapt to
the specific situations in which he will operate.
Differently from the first handbook of the re-development and beyond proposing one operation methodology, it supplies to the planner indications on surveying, on the types of verification, on the choices to operate, on the criteria to follow in order to acquire the target that is being able to have the antisismic safety of an historical building equal to modern buildings projected according to the actual norms.
It proposes also, to support the definition of innovative operations, in some cases, the realization of real size models of the building elements that can involve, like already seen in the experiences of Ancona, the re-learning of a building art by now forgotten and with it the re-education of workers, extremely useful, if not indispensable, in the operations on the existing building patrimony.

Conclusions
The reference to the methodological instruments and acts for the operations on the building patrimony existing, at the very end of XX century, constitutes for the present program of research, an essential base of formulation and development.
All concepts already described, in fact, have had, as exclusive reference, "civil" building patrimony; anything has been never said or made for "military" building patrimony, if not in the case of coincidence with historical-monumental character (fortresses, castles fortify to you, etc.).
In the moment in which a huge patrimony of pieces of real estate, many of them answering to project pre-ordered from appropriate and quite unknown handbooks, has to found a new position and use, there is a consistent of loosing typological and building testimonies of equal value to those for which, in the last few decades, have been promoted meaningful actions of safeguard and
protection.
In this logic, the program of research described wants to inquire, with the scientific premises already presented and in their context, the building units and the building complexes of military
origin in the belongings systems.
=================================================
note
1) cf. R. Panella, Per un contenuto conservativo del recupero, in Manuale del Recupero di Città di castello, Edizioni DEI, Roma 1992
2) P. Marconi, F. Giovanetti, E. Pallottino ( edited by) Manuale del Recupero del Comune di Roma, DEI, Roma, 1989
3) F. Giovannetti ( edited by) Manuale del Recupero del comune di Città di Castello, DEI, Roma, 1992
4) B. De Sivo, R. Iovino (edited by), Manuale del recupero delle antiche tecniche costruttive napoletane, CUEN, Napoli, 1993
5) cf. Sicurezza e conservazione dei centri storici. Il caso Ortigia. Codice di pratica per gli interventi antisismici nel centro storico. A cura di Antonino Giuffrè. Bari, Laterza, 1993
6 ) cf. A. Giuffré, C. Carocci , Codice di pratica per la sicurezza e la conservazione del centro storico di Palermo, Laterza , Bari 1999 <<<