B0801 - RELIGIOUS CULTURAL HERITAGE. COMPREHENSION, CARE AND VALORIZATION

Learning outcomes

The first objective of the course is to increase the awarness of the future professionals about the relevance and spread, the cultural value and the peculiar nature of these assets. This will be done by analyzing some case-study of assets having lost their original function and still now waiting for new uses. On these bases, consistent, appropriate and type-specific methods to apply in defining valorization strategies and intervention models will be also provided, by studying the few best-practices of effective valorization available at European scale. DIPARTIMENTO DI ARCHITETTURA ALMA MATER STUDIORUM - UNIVERSITÀ DI BOLOGNA DIREZIONE E AMMINISTRAZIONE: VIALE DEL RISORGIMENTO 2 - 40136 BOLOGNA - ITALIA - TEL. +39 051 2093001 Pursuing these purposes, this teaching activity aims to offer theoretical reflection (on the concept of reuse, sustainability, value, and valorization of these specific assets) and disciplinary in-depth investigations (concerning Canon Law, Economics, History of Architecture intertwined with History of the Church), together with examples and key case studies. Due to the expected fast and wide process of dismission which will involve these assets in the next years, planners, architects and designers will increasingly asked to work on the cultural heritage of religious origins, which peculiar nature needs for specific knowledge, approches and practices. Aiming at this target, the present course acts as introductory to the management of architectural religious heritage, to which a relevant share of cultural built assets is still belonging in Europe, and particularly in Italy.

Course contents

This teaching proposal arises from data resulting from the most recent studies on religious cultural heritage: over the next ten years, 65% of religious communities will leave their historic homes producing an important and sudden gap in the management of churches, convents, monasteries, and movable cultural heritage.

A vast set of wide and stratified buildings will need to be managed and aimed at new uses, having particular awareness of its meaning and particular cultural stratifications, whose visible traces are often protected by the Italian Superintendency for Arts and Cultural Heritage.

The ecclesiastical cultural heritage is constituted by a recognizable and peculiar set of goods, unique and not comparable to other sets of artifacts.

It is identified by:

• Goods which are characterized by a particular unit between movable and immovable assets;
• private goods for public use and of public affection, testifying of the religious culture of a community and a territory;
• goods owned by legal entities whose main purpose is religious, and whose goals are deeply connected to ethical-moral objectives;

  - goods that, as a result of the agreements of the Italian Government with the Holy See, are mixti fori, therefore subject both to the legislation of the State and that of the Church.

  The first objective of the course is to educate professionals so that they could be able

• to understand the specific nature of these assets and know methodologically how to build correct paths to draft programs and projects for their valorization,
• to identify strategies and techniques type-specific.

Pursuing these purposes, this teaching activity aims to offer theoretical reflection (on the concept of reuse, sustainability, value, and valorization of these specific assets) and disciplinary in-depth investigations (concerning Canon Law, Economics, History of Architecture intertwined with History of the Church), together with examples and key case studies.

Since planners, architects and designers will increasingly have the opportunity to work on the cultural heritage of religious origins, its specific nature deserves an introduction and in-depth study. For this purpose, therefore, the present course is given. It can be considered an introduction to the management of architectural ecclesiastical cultural heritage, for the preponderant presence of the Church’s assets in Italian and European territory.

Moreover, due to the extraordinary and unique density that this set of goods has in our country, the promotion of its knowledge and the teaching of the main tools required for its preservation also corresponds to protecting the Italian landscape.

The fact that spaces of religious communities can be considered common goods and the fact that they are widespread in all of Europe and beyond, means that they can constitute an infrastructure for participatory labs in all of Europe with the involvement of municipalities and other institutions and the need and the urgency of involvement of all inhabitants. Intertwining the network of former monasteries with participatory action research labs means an extraordinary opportunity for the dissemination of laboratories of territorial democracy, where whole urban communities would be invited to collaborate on the definition of new compatible and sustainable uses for former monastic buildings.

There is indeed a strong bond between former monasteries and Participatory processes, since the space and places where democracy was first experimented and born, are now the places that require democracy to find a new social life, and where territorial democracy can then be taught.

Furthermore, working upon the traces of religious communities unavoidably involves integrating inputs and scoping across different communities, intertwining scientific approaches which have to be considered at the same time despite their epistemological distance (theology and architecture; law and sociology, etc…). Intertwining approaches is the only way to understand the complexity of a phenomenon to provide it with a new interpretation, to build upon it a new narration that could be able to take the traces of the ancient role and meanings and shape a new and compatible use.

 

Readings/Bibliography

Congregazione per gli Istituti di vita consacrata e le Società di vita apostolica, Economia a servizio del carisma e della missione: Boni dispensatores multiformis gratiae Dei (1 Petr. 4, 10). Orientamenti, Città del Vaticano: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2018

ACRI : Commissione per le attività e i beni culturali, Beni ecclesiastici di interesse culturale : ordinamento, conservazione, valorizzazione, Bologna : Il mulino, 2021

Fabrizio Capanni (a cura di), Dio non abita più qui? : dismissione di luoghi di culto e gestione integrata dei beni culturali ecclesiastici, Roma : Artemide, 2019

Thomas Coomans, Life inside the cloister : understanding monastic architecture : tradition, reformation, adaptive reuse, Leuven : Leuven University Press, 2018

Davide Dimodugno, I beni culturali ecclesiali dal Codice del 1917 al Pontificio Consiglio della Cultura, in Michelangelo De Donà , Olimpia Niglio ( a cura di) Arte, diritto e storia: la valorizzazione del patrimonio culturale. Aprilia: Aracne editrice, 2018

Maria Chiara Giorda, Alfonso Marini e Francesca Sbardella, Prospettive Cristiane. 2, Abiti monastici, Roma: Edizioni Nuova Cultura, 2007

Maria Chiara Giorda e Francesca Sbardella ( a cura di), Famiglia Monastica. Prassi aggregative di isolamento, Bologna: Patron, 2012

Andrea Longhi, Storie di chiese, storie di comunità : progetti, cantieri, architetture, Roma : Gangemi, 2017

Michele Madonna (a cura di), Patrimonio culturale di interesse religioso in Italia : la tutela dopo l'Intesa del 26 gennaio 2005, Venezia : Marcianum press, 2007

Francesco Pertegato, Vestiarium. Le vesti per la liturgia nella storia della Chiesa. Antichità e Medioevo, Firenze: goWare edizioni, 2019.

Giancarlo Santi, I beni culturali ecclesiastici: sistemi di gestione, Milano : EDUCatt, 2012

Jean-Sébastien Sauvé, Thomas Coomans (sous la direction de) Le devenir des églises : patrimonialisation ou disparition, Québec : Presses de l'Université du Québec, 2014

Carlo Tosco, Andare per le abbazie cistercensi, Bologna : Il mulino, 2017

Carlo Tosco, Il paesaggio come storia, Bologna : Il mulino, 2017

Luigi Bartolomei, “Prime intersezioni tra ‘Partecipatory Research’ e ’Partecipatio Actuosa’. Percorsi di progettazione partecipata per la realizzazione di edifici di culto,” in Jacopo Benedetti (a cura di) Comunità e progettazione: atti della Giornata nazionale comunità e progettazione, dai Progetti pilota alla progettazione pastorale organizzata dall'Ufficio nazionale per i beni culturali ecclesiastici e l'edilizia di culto della Conferenza Episcopale italiana : Viareggio, 17-18 giugno 2019, Roma: Giangemi international, 2021

Luigi Bartolomei, “Signum consolationis: la costruzione dello spazio sacro e il paesaggio,” in Goffredo Boselli ( a cura di) Abitare, celebrare trasformare. Processi partecipativi tra liturgia e architettura, Atti del 15. Convegno liturgico internazionale, Bose, 1–3 giugno 2017, Bose: Edizioni Qiqajon, 2021

Luigi Bartolomei, “Dai santuari alle Rogazioni. La connotazione sacrale e particolarmente mariana del Paesaggio. Esempi dall’Arcidiocesi di Bologna e dall’Emilia-Romagna” in Maria Stella Calò Mariani e Anna Trono (a cura di) Le vie della Misericordia. Arte, cultura e percorsi mariani tra Oriente e Occidente, Galatina: Mario Congedo Editore, 2017

Luigi Bartolomei (a cura di) Il futuro degli edifici di culto, vol. 7 n. 10 e vol. 8 n. 11 di “in_bo. Ricerche e progetti per il territorio, la città, l’architettura”. Bologna: Università di Bologna, 2016-2017, https://in-bo.unibo.it/

Luigi Bartolomei e Sofia Nannini (a cura di), La casa comune: nuovi scenari per patrimoni monastici dismessi: atti della Summer School Nuovi scenari per patrimoni monastici dismessi : Lucca, 25 luglio-3 agosto 2019, Bologna: Università di Bologna, 2021, https://in-bo.unibo.it/

Teaching methods

• Frontal communications
• Interactions and interviews
• Roleplay in order to understand other lifestyles and lihe choises
• Group work and debate
• Onsite visits
• partecipatory approaches for learning and planning

Assessment methods

• Students, divided into little groups, will be asked to analyze and discuss two cases of study: one already realized and the other one to be realized. In the first case, they will be asked to present the history of the valorization process and to develop a critical judgment of its results. In the second case, they will be asked to analyze the history of a building, its landscape, and peculiar landscape stakeholders trying to propose specific reuse and a sustainable process for its valorization.

 

 

Teaching tools

- slides

- articles to comment

- common critics to valorization plan

- methods to exchange opinions, news, ideas among different students groups 

- informal moments to share contents. 

 

Office hours

See the website of Luigi Bartolomei