L’architettura vernacolare e i suoi linguaggi: verso un’ontologia dei centri storici minori | The Vernacular Architecture and its Languages: Towards an Ontology of the Minor Historic Centres.

The multifaced nature of the historic centres is the result of heterogeneous aspects that reflect environmental and human circumstances, such as the orography of the terrain, the socio-economics conditions related to the historic period, the evolution of techniques and construction technologies starting from the empiric knowledge, the long-term use and the change of intended use of the settlements. This nature represents an added value, which characterizes and make historical centres unique, but it can be also an issue in the managing and the organization of the operations aimed at their conservation. It is known that to protect the heritage, whether it be an individual object or a complex organism such as a hamlet, it is necessary to start from the knowledge and so from the data deriving from multidisciplinary analyses. Therefore, it is important to find some common ground that may lie in defining the systemic architecture and standardizing the data acquisition. The research discussed is aimed at studying historic centres at different scales, considering their deconstruction in single buildings, architectural complexes, historic centre, homogeneous territorial areas, and finally, distant centres matched by common characteristics.