Designing with Residues. Architectural Strategies for the Reactivation of Military Infrastructures in Lessinia

This paper investigates the architectural and territorial potential of decommissioned NATO military infrastructures in Lessinia, north of Verona. Rather than treating them as ruins, military heritage, or brownfield sites awaiting reuse, it frames them as “spatial residues”: robust, silent, and highly specialized structures produced by Cold War geopolitical logics, yet still capable of supporting new public, ecological, and productive uses. The study focuses on Site T in Sant’Anna d’Alfaedo, a former HF transmitting radio center connected to the Landsouth communication network and to Sites R, W, and B. Drawing on a master’s thesis developed at Politecnico di Milano, the research combines fieldwork, surveys, interviews with former military personnel, and collaboration with local institutions and stakeholders. Site T, composed of meadows, bunkers, logistical buildings, fences, plinths, antenna traces, and technical infrastructures, is interpreted as a latent framework for rural regeneration. The design proposal follows three main trajectories: the reactivation of the bunker system through community, archival, and agricultural research functions, with targeted interventions in the reinforced concrete structures; the transformation of the former antenna park into an open-air archive of traces, accessible and compatible with agricultural, pastoral, and temporary cultural uses; and the physical and symbolic reconnection of the site with the nearby village through a new pedestrian link to the town square. The project shows how Cold War residues can be transformed without restoration or monumentalization, using their robustness, isolation, and spatial clarity as operative resources. At a broader scale, the paper argues for a systemic and landscape-based reading of these sites, where access points, thresholds, boundaries, and paths become the basis for incremental regeneration. In fragile rural contexts affected by demographic instability, ecological pressure, and limited resources, such infrastructures can become platforms for research, climate adaptation, circular economies, community tourism, and new forms of territorial stewardship. The paper ultimately claims that working with military residues requires a critical rewriting of memory and land use: acknowledging the military legacy without being constrained by it, and transforming infrastructures that are too specialized for conventional reuse, too solid to demolish, and too politically charged for traditional heritage frameworks into networked catalysts for socio-ecological regeneration.