REUSE AND RECYCLE IN EARLY MODERN BUILDING SITE. SOME OBSERVATIONS AND EXAMPLES

Climate Change depends primarily on the amount of greenhouse gasses emitted by our societies. Sustainable development, which includes the use of renewable materials, is crucial in reducing this impact. In a closed system, such as our planet, raw materials are finite, but present societies are acting as the resources were infinite, creating a system that endangers our existence and that of all living beings. Building sites are very revealing in this respect: raw and artificial materials are extracted and produced, used, then thrown away as rubble. But it wasn’t always like this. In pre-industrial world, construction was conformed to the maximum saving and reuse of materials. Every element was recycled as much as possible: just think of the “noble” examples of reuse of ancient ruins, of marbles, of precious spolia, but nothing was thrown away, from nails to stones, bricks, plaster, tiles, timber. Different examples of reuse and recycle, mainly from early modern Venetian context, will be illustrated. Not only building materials, but also waste derived from other productive activities, such as shipbuilding or soap, glass, and iron production, were recycled in construction. Since 2008 the European Union started to enact laws on the “End of Waste”, to transform waste in product, construction rubble included. Very recently (2022) in Italy an important law update has been enacted, establishing how to use the waste from construction and demolition as a “raw material” instead of virgin materials still extracted from quarries and mines. The subject, thus, is particularly relevant at present and those early modern case studies have much to teach to today’s societies, to make our built environment and cultural heritage a true “place of Life”.