Creating Distinctive Open Spaces in Historic Environment to Achieve Temporality of Urban Form

The aim of this paper is to illustrate how the enhancement of open spaces in historic environment can create attractive and fully accessible new urban environments. The re-design of existing inner spaces and courtyards of former building stock according to the micro-climate adaptation can generate specific places for people to walk and enjoy and to encourage preservation of heritage values. To re-define old spaces and to re-organise new public ones, new ways of spatial planning and design are proposed including all aspects of sustainability (spatial, environmental and social). Though, spatial design must recognise transformation of a place and the existing layers of history carefully analysed to develop new methods for evaluation and inclusion into the regeneration of an urban context. However, it is important to take into account the evidence of transformation, the diachronical codes of transformation, the real deprivation of site, the perception of place in terms of chronos and the real scale of intervention.The paper illustrates proposals regarding the transformation of some selected urban spaces within the old barracks in Florence in order to re-define new sustainable scenarios, It shows how it is important to describe adaptive and dynamic approaches to masterplanning in the way they can be used to identify the urban form and potentiality