PROCEDURA PER IL RICONOSCIMENTO DELLE UNITA’ ELEMENTARI NEGLI AGGREGATI URBANI ATTRAVERSO LA COMPRENSIONE DEI PROCESSI TIPOLOGICI

Seismic events in recent years have caused heavy damage to historic city centers. This calls for an effective planning aimed at reaching an adequate decrease of the vulnerability of city centers buildings. A deep knowledge of the structure of the urban environment ‐ and, to a lesser extent, of the buildings the urban environment is made up of ‐ is the essential precondition for effectively intervening on the urban fabric. Currently, the most used means of knowledge are Vulnerability Assessment Forms, whose goal is to assess not only the damage suffered by a building in the aftermath of an earthquake, but also its habitability standards. These forms, which are supposed to assess the buildings as a whole, in most cases only analyzes single buildings or cadastral units, since there is no well‐defined procedure on how to identify single units within the urban fabric. The identification of an Elementary Unit (i.e. the smallest independent unit within the fabric) is the crucial point of this delicate process. This identification process, though, is based on weak and misleading definitions, e.g. those that have been used up to today to fill in the Assessment Forms. This work of research aims at clearly defining both the idea itself of Elementary Unit and a procedure to identify it. This procedure could be extensively used not only in emergency situations, but also for the regular preventive territory management. This goal can be reached through a constant phenomenological examination of the urban fabric buildings carried out using Muratori‐inspired typological analysis tools. By studying the transformation process of the basic building types, it is possible to identify the Elementary Units the urban fabric is made up of. Once the urban fabric structure has been comprehended, this work will present a clear and most valid definition of Elementary Unit, which will simplify any later examination of the urban fabric – from the identification of “subjects” for AeDES Forms, to the drafting of Reconstruction Plans. The case study of Ferrara offers a chance to verify the validity of the process of identification of buildings within the urban fabric, designed on a real example. This will, in turn, prove the validity of the term “Elementary Unit” and its strong connection with the concept of building type and the typological development.