During the twentieth century, the urbanization and settlement growth processes that have affected the alpine areas have irreversibly transformed the morphology of the historical rural territory, grafting onto the stratification process that has produced the anthropized mountain environment. In particular, on the slopes, the most widespread settlement development and the new enhancement land processes have changed the forms and matrices of the historical landscape following different logics and methods. The historical agrarian pattern - built according to certain scale ratios and shaped by cadastral and productive logics - has been profoundly altered and transformed into a new multi-scale landscape with new spatial relationships, new hierarchies, new polarities that have redesigned the settlement architectures of the alpine valleys. To a more careful observation of the western areas of the Alps, different forms of rewriting and modification of the historical agrarian pattern appear and show how the settlement processes of modernity always meet resistance and “inertias” on the consolidated palimpsest. This has produced morphologies not simply attributable to a “tabula rasa” but rather to “hybrid landscape” in which elements of continuity and discontinuity between the rural and urban dimension are part of the genetic code of the territory. Let us think about, for example, the interruptions caused by the construction of railway or road lines for regional traffic, but also to the “semantic translations” of the parcel system that become verbatim building areas. Or even the processes of levelling off the ground in the case of enhancement land measures (or in the case of construction of ski areas) and the phenomena of abandonment and wilderness of some remote areas, but also the new grafts of vegetation species as in the case of intensive crops like vineyards and orchards. On the one hand, there was also the creation of new polarizations that redefined the settlements for breeding and, on the other hand, the diffusion of building transformations that produced the metamorphosis of the existing architectural heritage. Finally yet importantly, the theme of architectural imaginary that, through the mystification of fetishes and simulacra of the rural tradition of the alpine world, have created reference models for the diffusion of the kitsch style so-called “neo-vernacular”. The paper wants to investigate the morphological and constitutive aspects of these mutations, in order to understand how the traces of the rural palimpsest in the Alps can still be considered an essential part of the framework of the contemporary settlement processes, both at the territorial or architectural and constructive scale.

Fragments of rurality. Mutations of the alpine rural landscape and architecture in the twentieth century / Dini, R.. - STAMPA. - (2019). (Intervento presentato al convegno Rural History 2019 tenutosi a Parigi nel 10-13 settembre 2019).

Fragments of rurality. Mutations of the alpine rural landscape and architecture in the twentieth century

Dini R.
2019

Abstract

During the twentieth century, the urbanization and settlement growth processes that have affected the alpine areas have irreversibly transformed the morphology of the historical rural territory, grafting onto the stratification process that has produced the anthropized mountain environment. In particular, on the slopes, the most widespread settlement development and the new enhancement land processes have changed the forms and matrices of the historical landscape following different logics and methods. The historical agrarian pattern - built according to certain scale ratios and shaped by cadastral and productive logics - has been profoundly altered and transformed into a new multi-scale landscape with new spatial relationships, new hierarchies, new polarities that have redesigned the settlement architectures of the alpine valleys. To a more careful observation of the western areas of the Alps, different forms of rewriting and modification of the historical agrarian pattern appear and show how the settlement processes of modernity always meet resistance and “inertias” on the consolidated palimpsest. This has produced morphologies not simply attributable to a “tabula rasa” but rather to “hybrid landscape” in which elements of continuity and discontinuity between the rural and urban dimension are part of the genetic code of the territory. Let us think about, for example, the interruptions caused by the construction of railway or road lines for regional traffic, but also to the “semantic translations” of the parcel system that become verbatim building areas. Or even the processes of levelling off the ground in the case of enhancement land measures (or in the case of construction of ski areas) and the phenomena of abandonment and wilderness of some remote areas, but also the new grafts of vegetation species as in the case of intensive crops like vineyards and orchards. On the one hand, there was also the creation of new polarizations that redefined the settlements for breeding and, on the other hand, the diffusion of building transformations that produced the metamorphosis of the existing architectural heritage. Finally yet importantly, the theme of architectural imaginary that, through the mystification of fetishes and simulacra of the rural tradition of the alpine world, have created reference models for the diffusion of the kitsch style so-called “neo-vernacular”. The paper wants to investigate the morphological and constitutive aspects of these mutations, in order to understand how the traces of the rural palimpsest in the Alps can still be considered an essential part of the framework of the contemporary settlement processes, both at the territorial or architectural and constructive scale.
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11583/2753372
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