The memory of places: the survey, reinvention and reconstruction of a small agricultural artefact in the mountain village of Quota, Casentino, Italy

The "history" of places exists as a stratification process of events that have occurred over time in a specific place, leaving more or less appreciable physical traces. The "memory" of the places, instead, is the result of a conscious choice of events to be handed down to future generations constructing the identity of a community and a recognisable image of places. It is in this sense that the project conducted in Quota, a mountain village in central Tuscany, Italy should be interpreted and set. The urban redevelopment process led to the design and reconstruction of a small agricultural artefact, particularly important to the local community given its location near a public fountain. Initially identified as the subject of an exercise to be conducted as part of the Thematic Seminar "Survey, redevelopment and redesign of architecture and environment", the redesign offered an opportunity to "re-invent" a neglected corner of the village taking as reference the traces of the ancient village fountains to create the plot of a new "story" involving the small local community. The reconstruction was carried out using traditional techniques with stone ashlars and cement mortar. To complete it, a corten steel staircase designed with reverse engineering methods and modelled using experimental 3D photo-modelling was created. The "Quota chestnut dryer" proved to be a virtuous process involving various subjects to enable the recovery of a degraded area, a possible model for the preservation of villages in the Apennines of central Italy, authentic sites of collective memory.