Preservation and promotion of the cultural heritage through University, public administration and community engagement

Universities have long been asked to become promoters of actions aimed at increasing society's general level of well-being through interventions with cultural, social, and educational implications via technology transfer and knowledge sharing. Therefore, a mutual collaboration between different researchers of the Politecnico di Torino and local Public Administrations has been consolidated over the last few years in the context of educational and research activities on the conservation and enhancement of cultural heritage, focusing on vernacular architecture. To provide a proactive contribution in proposing projects to preserve both the cultural heritage and social and economic development of the territories, a new educational methodology with a direct and mutual collaboration of teachers and students with local communities and policymakers was tested. Its primary purposes are recognising local identities, identifying resources and detractors, and defining possible trajectories of sustainable development of case studies. Moreover, the projects propose their conservation and enhancement to improve the inhabitants' quality of life and the protection of the local resources through technically and economically sustainable interventions that pay specific attention to vernacular architecture's characters, local traditions, territory's peculiarities, potentialities, and critical issues. The results show the central role of establishing an open engagement of the local community and policymakers in complex and sustainable development projects implicating a mediator such as an architect. To do so, it is necessary to reinterpret the "symbolic" values identified by the territorial studies and to signify them (keying) into a restoration project able to frame how the local community identifies itself (framing) towards a model of a sustainable and compatible development project (modelling) for the future recovery of the sites. The case studies confirmed the pivotal role of the universities in educating the students through a multi-disciplinary approach towards the complex systems of cultural heritage, engaging and moderating local community instances and the vision of the policymakers.