Continuity and Discontinuity in Historic Urban Landscape: Reading and Rewriting Procedures for Enhancing Nanshijie District, Ganzhou

Considering historic sites in their co-evolutionary reality, their integration in the living city cannot be limited to “presentation”, as stated by the ICOMOS Charter (2008), but rather entails a complex dialectic between continuity and discontinuity. Rewriting on an already-built text implies the synthesis of a knowledge developed through two interrelated moments, the analytical and the interpretative one. Conceiving analysis as a reading procedure, revealing the site’s morphological structures and cultural values in their diachronic and synchronic relationships, the design’s rewriting activity becomes a matter of interpretation, where analytical findings define the boundary of operational choices. Within this framework, the paper explores the dialectic between continuity and discontinuity, and the interpretative activity of design as a vital balance between preservation and transformation. The design synthesis is explored within the range of latent structures (Pezzetti) and principles imbued in the site, straddling the concepts of “space of possibilities” by assemblage thinking and the limits of interpretation. Taking Nanshijie historic district in Ganzhou City (China) as case study, the paper explores urban form’s continuity and discontinuity through historic and typomorphological analysis and design proposals, highlighting the space of possibilities disclosed by latent structures and existing fragments. Through the combined operations of reading and design interpretation, the research produced a series of interpretative mapping and design proposals, demonstrating that any interpretation should come from the site understanding and that both conservation and transformation entail a delicate balance between continuity and discontinuity, that is remembering and forgetting techniques.