Spazi del lavoro e della conoscenza: conservazione e valorizzazione dell'ex-Vetreria Ricciardi a Vietri sul Mare

The Italian industrial heritage comprehends factories installed - generally during the nineteenth century - into preexisting edifices of different use too, as ancient noble palaces or monasteries. Especially in the countryside, no far from urban settlements, close to rivers or other energy sources, these last ones indeed sometimes represented useful buildings to the first development of the industrial activity. Vietri’s ex-plant known as “Cantilena’s Monastery” or “Vetreria Ricciardi” as well, from one of its many historic different uses, paradigmatically illustrates the depicted modalities, additionally, within the “outstanding value” cultural landscape of Amalfi’s Coast, inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 1997. Born as a female Franciscan monastery in the second half of the eighteenth century, since 1819 the building was assigned to manufacture through a composite series of fabric enlargements, additions and adaptations carried out overtime on its former structures. It housed different production lines (glass, bottles, paper, textile, pottery, plastic, etc.), up to the almost complete state of abandon in which today it is. Despite advanced degradation phenomena and no negligible static-decay effects are damaging Vietri’s factory, now it still reveals high-quality features and main cultural values. Hence, any further fabric adaptation must be planned based on a proper methodological approach, specifically aimed at architectural restoration criteria. The project – an M.D. thesis in Architecture (sup. Ph.D. prof. arch. M. D’Aprile), then further developed – establishes the fabric preservation and enhancement as its main objectives. The new use, as well as every operating technique being aimed at consequent adaptations, originates from the deepened understanding process of the artifact. Thanks to the urban, architectural, historical, material and stratigraphic analysis supported by the complete survey of Vietri’s factory, its relevant features, and present vulnerabilities have been thus ascertained, while any physical innovation has been planned assuring the “compatibility” and the “distinguishability” with the preexisting. Dismantling has been limited to any incompatible physical addition only. Finally, new insertions and lacuna reinstatements have been addressed to the “minimum intervention” criterion as well, distinguishing additions from the former forms by adopting clear contemporary configurations