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This article has been published in: Ocula 13, Architecture and Political Discourse: crossing perspectives

author: Amedeo Trezza (Università di Napoli (IT))

Remains that render texts: the role of memory in a possible risemantization of places

language: italian

abstract: Nowadays, after decades of countryside and agricultural soils abandonment, we are facing more and more some “re-functionalizing” choices. But they too often anticipate a radical loss of sense not followed by a recovery of memory and local identities.In other words, rural architecture and landscape texts are systematically replaced by paralyzing “museifications”, accompanied with an idea of “preservation” (with more or less “locked” parks and natural reserves); or by service/industrial aims, or, finally, by tourist based re-interpretations with mass consumerism intentions. Does a ‘fourth way’ exist which is able to offer a new possibility of meaning to these kinds of territorial texts, without mortifying their memory nor relegating them to a silent role or to “outdated” attitude? In this perspective of a new kind of possible recuperation, the role of Semiotics could consist in finding out emotional and cognitive valorizations of spatial articulation of sense, as well as vectorial concretions; where policy and architecture could be reciprocally
involved towards planning and managing of the territory. In this way the memory of what is left as a mark on the territory of a pre-existent order (already disappeared or disappearing) could offer suggestions to political debates about planning. In this manner a radical change of the study perspective could be achieved; for instance, manufactures should be assumed not merely as precipitates of ideologies and political strategies but in fact as expressive, material and concrete rests (concretions...) able to activate semiotic processes of recognizing identities and possibilities along with the opening of new meanings.

citation information: Amedeo Trezza, Resti che ritornano testi: il ruolo della memoria in una possibile risemantizzazione di luoghi., "Ocula", vol.13, n.13, August 2012. DOI: 10.12977/ocula17

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