Knowledge and conservation of Mediterranean spontaneous architecture: some of the villages of the northern Tyrrhenian coast of Calabria

Abstract

[EN] The paper proposes a reading of the rural architectures of the northern Tyrrhenian coast of Calabria, where structures linked to the agricultural activities and residential buildings coexist side by side. Knowledge about local constructive culture and the conservation of rural emergencies allows to highlight variations of base principles of Mediterranean architecture, in which specific typologies are created spontaneously as a solution to constructive problems and in which anthropic and geomorphologic values are entwined creating deep relationships with the environment and the identity of local communities. The paper analyses the residential types that, through the variety of architectural responses, reveal a sensitivity that can be reconnected to an attitude common to the entire geographical area, related to the place, to its morphological and environmental characters, produced by plans based on rational and geometric principles. All this finds validation in a landscape designed by almost spontaneous buildings that are placed in a scattered but rational way among the territory. Therefore, the paper proposes the understanding of rural architectures, nowadays often abandoned, that can give birth to actions of recovery and to the conservation of ancient knowledge.