125 research outputs found
Matera Countrymen Capital
No full textIn the 1950s, Italy recovered from the trauma of the Second World War. However, in the deep South of the country, a city remained alien to this progress. Indeed, isolated for a long time, it was unable to challenge new immigration movements and ended up exceeding its saturation limit. That town was Matera, the ‘Shame of Italy’. In a country projected towards the new millennium, it was unacceptable that almost 20.000 people were living together with animals in dirty and cramped caves. Matera seemed to blame the national political class for not having taken steps to eradicate this age-old misery. The city had to be decongested, so to move part of its population and allow the caves to regain the human scale they always had. However, it did generalize: all the caves had to be cleared and the delicate countrymen life had to be transferred to a galaxy of model rural villages. In the end, few of these were made, none properly. Those same people who lived in poverty were moved to modern dormitory districts, which yet had all the comforts allowed by modern times, but which were not suitable to hosting a community shaped by consolidated urban and interpersonal relationships. Only in the 1990s, it was realized that that life, those people, could not survive outside of those same narrow caves. The human and the architectural and natural components were inseparable. They did begin to realize what should have been done long before: restoring the architectural value of the caves, which today is even beginning to attract mass tourism.AR2A011Architecture, Urbanism and Building Science
A Hidden Water-Harvesting System: The Sassi de Matera
No full textThe water-harvesting system of the ancient Sassi di Matera, in the Basilicata region of southern Italy, represents a clever way of living with water in an arid climate. The terrain, with its soft rocks (Calcarenite di Gravina), provided the foundation for the water-harvesting system that shaped the cave dwellings of Sassi physically, socially and culturally. People caught, guided and stored water in private and public spaces, mostly underground, ensuring its availability for all. In 1993 UNESCO declared the cave village a World Heritage Site. Unfortunately, the water-harvesting system of Sassi di Matera is no longer functioning. Its historic ingenuity is not as visible as the system deserves and its cultural and social values are almost forgotten. Using layered visual analysis – the illustrative method – knowledge can be collected and communicated in drawings to get insight regarding more resilient, circular, and people-related approaches (Bobbink, Chourairi and Di Nicola 2022). This article and the included drawings focus on the water system’s value, from which we can learn today.Landscape Architectur
From ''Stone City'' to ''Hidden Water Region'': Visualize and value the invisible water flows in Matera
No full textThis thesis explores the traditional water system of Sassi di Matera and finds out that water plays an important role as a sustainable resource, the social center, and the chance for green space. In addition, by exploring the overall history and culture of Matera, different symbolic elements of water (public fountains, grabiglioni, WWTP) are chosen as the representations of water in different landscapes. The water wisdom and representation become the design strategies to optimize Matera’s water circulation, improve the network of public space, and enhance the blue-green network. Ultimately, the sustainable development goals of the region can be achieved by using a landscape approach as the start.Architecture, Urbanism and Building Sciences | Landscape Architectur
Cultural Innovation and Local development: Matera as a Cultural District
No full textAbstractIs culture a strategic tool for local development? Cultural resources do foster physical, economic and social renewal? We have attempted to answer yes through the analysis of the Matera 2019 cultural capital project, using some fundamental drivers like: quality of cultural supply, development of local talent and attraction of external talent, capability building, education of the local community and internal or external networking. The Matera case study configure an extremely articulated aggregation of Universities, Research Centres, Associations and Enterprise and, more importantly, a strong social mobilitation in the field of cultural production. This aspect occur in the wide use of open data and in the networking of cultural circles, films archives as well as history archives with the aim to invent and re-invent forms of collaborative memory. Above all here culture is a system of coordination among local actors within a social learning activity
Mapping urban diversity: Vernacular, modernist and contemporary Matera
No full textThis thesis takes the Southern Italian city of Matera as a case study to analyse the role urban diversity plays in the growth of cities. The analysis focuses on tracking changes in intensity and distribution of urban diversity in representative moments of Matera’s development, from the expansion of the vernacular neighbourhood of the Sassi with the 1950s introduction of modernist architecture, through the present-day. Whilst the historic center of the city, dating back to the Neolithic, has experienced remarkable economic growth and continues to thrive under the impulse of international recognition, the more peripheral modernist neighbourhoods are in decline, despite their widely acknowledged architectural and cultural value. Provided as a political answer to the lack of suitable and affordable housing after World War II, these often forgotten neighbourhoods are representative of the Italian re-construction efforts, guided by Adriano Olivetti’s Community Movement and designed by a team of architects, lead by Ludovico Quaroni and Luigi Piccinato, under the theoretical framework of Friedrich G. Friedmann. Initially intended to recreate the forms of aggregations and social ties of the Sassi in modern forms of living, neighbourhoods such as La Martella, Borgo Venusio and Spine Bianche have experienced progressive decline, whilst the historic center of Matera has been object of public investment and continues to be a sought destination. This research will enquire the role urban diversity has played in this discrepancy in order to derive conclusions that might inform present and future urban planning policies. The Diversity Index Method developed by Dan C. Baciu and Callum Birchall (Baciu, Birchall, 2021) applied to primary historic records will be used alongside secondary literature to analyse the different urban configurations to find patterns that lead to urban density or isolation. The preliminary argument is that diversity of both building uses and outdoor public infrastructure leads to growth and urban vitality, whereas mono-functional developments lead to isolation and decline.AR2A011Architectural History ThesisArchitecture, Urbanism and Building Science
“Biochemical and physical correlates of DNA contamination in archaeological human bones and teeth excavated at Matera, Italy”
No full textResults of DNA studies of early medieval human skeletons from an early medieval cemetery site excavated by the author Paul Arthur at S. Lucia alle Malve, Matera. The study regards particularly the problems of contamination and validity of genetic analysis
Protocol to assess engulfment and degradation of synaptosomes by murine microglia in vitro
No full textMicroglia, the innate immune cells of the central nervous system, refine neuronal circuitries both during brain development and in neurodegenerative diseases. Here, we present a protocol to independently assess the engulfment and degradation of synaptosomes by murine microglia, both in fixed and live samples, using confocal imaging. We describe steps for isolating primary microglia, preparing and conjugating synaptosomes with pHrodo, and performing an uptake and degradation assay. We then detail procedures for analyzing synaptosome uptake and degradation using ImageJ software. For complete details on the use and execution of this protocol, please refer to Matera, Compagnion, et al.1.
Copyright © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved
Advanced interaction paradigms to define smart visit experiences in the internet of things era
No full textThe growing spread of smart objects is changing the way humans interact with technologies since the interaction they propose is more and more physical and less virtual. From an HCI perspective, one of the most interesting aspects regards how non-technical end users can program the behavior of such smart objects. This poster presents an ongoing project on three novel interaction paradigms that support the creation of smart visit experiences. Copyright is held by the author/owner(s)
Italian Guidelines for Energy Performance of Cultural Heritage and Historical Buildings: The Case Study of the Sassi of Matera
No full textThe Sassi of Matera are a unique example in the world of rock settlements, developed from natural caves carved into the rock and molded into increasingly complex structures inside two large natural amphitheaters. Research focuses on the compatibility of the energy efficiency measures applied in Sassi buildings with the recent MiBACT guidelines on "Energy efficiency improvements in cultural heritage" and AiCARR guidelines on "Energy efficiency of historical buildings". The paper aims to analyze energy and environmental performance of different building typologies and monuments of the Sassi site
The South from elsewhere: Place-telling and narrative crossings in Matera, European Capital of Culture 2019
No full textInternational audienceThis communication is based on the fieldwork I did in Matera, in the South of Italy, about the European Capital of Culture 2019. This event developed a place-telling (Pollice, 2017) which crossed the European dimension, presented as a source of modernization and innovation, and the Mediterranean one, evoked as a magic and archaic world and becoming an inspiring source for the future.From a cultural point of view rather than from a scientific perspective, this contemporary place-telling accounts for multiple crossings (as well as missed ones) that has contributed to elaborate a narrative of Matera after 2nd World War : Italian anthropological tradition in the South of the peninsula (whose most representative author is Ernesto De Martino), American sociological approach (mainly represented by Friedrich Friedmann, within the larger context of the European and American interest for the South of Italy), artistic attention (e.g. Carlo Levi in literature ; Henri Cartier-Bresson and Mario Cresci in photography). European Capital of Culture is presented as the accomplishment of a process of redemption started with the attribution of the status of UNESCO heritage site in 1993: Matera is a symbol of “Mezzogiorno”, taken as a synonymous of backwardness within the Italian framework, that bypasses a collective feeling of “shame” (as stated by the national leader of the Communist Party in 1948) for attaining honour and proudness – all Mediterranean typical categories of analysis (Peristiany 1966, Herzfeld 1980).This contribution aims at presenting this dialectic construction from an analytical and critical perspective, while observing the different shapes it assumed in political, social and cultural discourse on heritagization of the Southern dimension
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