Sustainable Reuse Indicators for Ecclesiastic Built Heritage Regeneration

Abstract

AbstractIn the context of anthropogenic impacts on pollution and global warming scenarios, reject from the construction sector accounts for 36% of European waste. This waste percentage includes disused and abandoned buildings that have lost the value of their function over time. In order to reduce the ecological footprint they generate, the paper rethinks Recovery in its circular meaning to put these buildings back into a normal circuit of usability, improving the creation of resilient urban habitats. In particular, decommissioned ecclesiastical buildings constitute a huge quantity and significant quality heritage, as by cultural, perceptive, morphological and material values. The sustainable reuse of this heritage must act on its double impacting value: the tangible one linked to the material culture of the buildings and the intangible one, linked to the identity values of sediment instances. Through a comparison desk research of more than 140 cases of reuse on a European scale, the contribution arrives at a system of indicators that allow evaluating the reuse sustainable compatibility of these buildings, able to promote prosperity, inclusiveness and social equity. These indicators make it possible to assess the appropriateness of design actions aimed at mediating between the conservation of the built heritage and the transformative needs of contemporary instances. The results provide scenarios tool of sustainable recovery, capable of transforming waste into a resource, extending the life cycle of the ecclesiastical heritage and thus mitigating its environmental impact, as well as the cost related to the loss of cultural values and identity for the community.