Protection and Reuse of Masserie and Rural Dwellings in Puglia

The masseria and rural dwellings in general, are the most significant examples of vernacular architecture in Puglia. They represent a vast heritage sufficiently investigated and documented both from a quantitative as well as qualitative aspect. However the problem concerning their preservation and reuse (except for cases of extraordinary architectural relevance), has never been completely tackled. The reduction of agricultural activity during the last two decades on the one hand and new techniques brought into farming on the other have caused a complete upheaval with serious consequences for these structures. The consequences have been either the complete abandonment and their increasing decay or reorganisation and/or extension which have considerably altered their original character and their value as architectural and historical evidence. However the transformation that the territory has undergone in the past decade or so has also remarkably compromised the environmental context which has existed through the ages together with these constructions. The environmental context deals with a natural environment where the results of the careful, steadfast work of the Apulian peasants and farmers. had become an integral part, contributing in a determining way to create the singular and distinguished countryside.

Today the conservation, protection and reuse of this heritage and its environmental context is a challenge that technicians and managers have to face up to through future decades. The problems that this challenge carries are various and they concern not only these technical aspects, but the social-economic field as well and are part of a wider and more general problem of sustainable development. The traditional technical and professional competencies of architects have to be completed necessarily by research and cultural knowhow in order to understand and interpret the significance of this heritage.

In the past five years the rediscovery of traditional building materials and building techniques by architects and engineers and the availability of skilled workers able to operate with these types of structures demonstrating remarkable knowledge and ability, offers a far greater possibility to solve the problems that this challenge carries.

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