A Sequence of Urban Rooms. Public Space as a Regenerative Structure

Public space in historic urban landscape needs to be read and enhanced as a layered palimpsest of signs, memories, and overwriting. Long-duration in time and meaning is the proper category to address public space in historic contexts, as it enables present and future resiliency and thus sustainable regeneration. Design enhancement is the text of a cognitive research about place identity that is understood not just as the site where incidental demands and goals has to be achieved but as the very subject of research. The paper focuses on an Italian historic context where the author’s designs have enhanced public space as a continuous, articulated and integrated system of “urban rooms”, shaping a regenerated “urban landscape section” within the spatial organization of the living city. Public space has been enhanced as a regenerative structure integrating urban fabric, heritage and landscape as an entirety and in a long-duration approach, which is culturally, economically, and environmentally sustainable.