Cultural Resilience: Circularity as Duration and Memory Tool

The essay aims to explore the relationship between reuse and memory, associated with the “reduce, reuse, recycle” paradigm, inherent the Circular Economy (Ellen MacArthur Founda- tion), in which the theme of ruin is treated in its propensity to be open to re-habitation and new life cycles. This is achieved firstly by reasoning on the concept of duration, framing the importance of the reuse as a regeneration tool. Then the circularity is shown from a historical perspective, interpreting significant architectural experiences from the Middle Age, using the Theatre of Marcellus (transforming a ruin) and the Arles Amphitheatre (temporal reuse) to highlight the tension between modification and permanence. Therefore, the project is portrayed through the implications of the nowadays regeneration of abandoned cultural heritage, focusing on the concept of duration and adaptability linked to the urgency of framing the reuse as an act of sustainability and cultural resiliency. Accordingly, the ruin is not intended as an artefact-waste of urban metabolism, but as an active resource for designing social and spatial relations. Thus, the action of reuse is signified by the combination of modification (Gregotti V., 1984, Casabella n. 498) and interpretation of the physical memory of the artefact, where the renewed dwelling is seen as a strategy of preservation of the future.