INDUSTRIAL HERITAGE AND DIGITAL ERA INTERVENTION STRATEGIES: KEEPING THE MEMORY IN THE MIDDLE OF TRANSFORMATIONS

Nowadays the urban tissue often presents mixed architectures, abandoned parts from a recent past, mostly former industrial buildings, near new saturation and developments. The city growth has included them after they lost their use, they have still a strong appeal on the collective imagination. Recovering them is not necessarily a demolition and reconstruction operation while such an intervention is at risk about causing the loss of important urban aspects and characterizations. The historical or even “popular” beliefs about them can be something to implement and/or enhance the quality of urban areas, increasing the chances of a real reintegration into productive reuse. In this complex logic of interventions, the contemporary, “digital layer” may play a strategic role. In the use of this very contemporary solution, both industrial and archaeological heritage are interesting subjects, with very different declinations. From one side there is the need for mixing old peculiar aspects with new functions, with risk about missing the chance in being fully efficient in communication. On the other there is the new, almost intangible, possibility to overlay reality with onsite or online elements, creating “new realities” where anyone should find fascinating elements coming from usual places and/or discovering new information, learning about the value of a place. To better identify strategies and proposals three “operative clusters” will be defined to group the functions and tools for the architect/built heritage expert to operate. A set of case studies, selected while consistent, thus not “compromised by an excess of popularity”, will help to put in evidence aspects that can be useful contributions in defining intervention choices: the Montemartini Museum in Rome; industrial buildings from the Beyoğlu neighborhood in Istanbul; London King’s Cross intervention, the LocHal Library, in Tilburg, Netherlands, the industrial heritage forgiveness in Tirana, Albania.