Designing for the Built Heritage: the Art as a trigger of urban regeneration process. From the inside to the outside

Abandoned buildings in our cities today represent a great problem: these have lost stable functions, doomed to progressive decay and often cause of social tensions. Abandoned areas are urban and architectural breaking points not encouraging the social use of spaces, becom-ing a denied resource to the community. Often, besides the difficult environment, a high so-cio-cultural mix makes this complexity even more difficult to face. This unused built heritage and great diversity can represent an extraordinary opportunity, where proper reactivation strategies can be a trigger of new relational systems. While an abandoned building is waiting to be reintegrated in urban lifecycle, it is possible to act with temporary initiatives able to trigger the re-appropriation processes. In the territory, there are many stratifications with intrinsic cultural and symbolic value, able to define the place and the identity. Art represents an interpretative practice of local identity factors, able to promote inclusiveness and to generate recognition of abandoned places. Art triggers tem-porary transformations, thanks to collective performances able to transform abandoned spac-es in enhanced places, giving them new and innovative inhabited dimensions. Artistic actions are the opportunity to rehabilitate the perception of community, where the sharing experiences strengthen the link with the territory, becoming the trigger of re-appropriation process and the filter for the re-colonization of places. The paper wants to retrace some of the most interesting experiences, national and interna-tional, that have used the Art as element of regeneration, comparing goals and results.