Accessibilità e inaccessibilità in Architettura fra certezze disciplinari e incertezze di valorizzazione | Accessibility and non-accessibility in Architecture, between scientific certainties and enhancement uncertainties

The present contribution critically addresses accessibility to built cultural and architectural heritage and extends the discussion to intangible heritage and collective responsibility for its safeguarding, enhancement, and restitution to communities, invoking the framework of the Faro Convention. Within the discipline of Design at national and international levels, established methodological tools are identified for promoting accessibility, including architectural surveys, virtual tours, Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality experiments, on-site and remote modes of access, and digital databases organized according to ontological architectures to render geometric and constructive data legible. These developments are characterized as a level of experimental maturity constituting a ‘disciplinary certainty’ for architectural knowledge accessibility. The contribution aims then to problematize the gap between these tools and their capacity to reach generalist audiences in contexts of pronounced inaccessibility, where traditional surveying methods and design instruments prove insufficient to achieve broad cultural valorization. It presents a case study of religious architectures in Naples historic center, focusing on the church of Santa Maria della Vita. The project envisaged embedding consolidated design outputs such as an open access virtual tour and VR experiments within widely used collaborative platforms to exponentially increase visibility, with Google Arts and Culture selected for its dissemination potential yet responding negatively to a formal request for a dedicated profile. The resulting incongruity illustrates the ongoing oscillation between disciplinary certainties and valorization uncertainties. The research intends to compile disciplinary best practices that confront methodological certainties and practical challenges for architectural heritage enhancement in the Neapolitan context.