The façades along the Cassaro in Palermo: historical-building characterization, degradation, restoration norms for interventions

Abstract

The good-will to operate in the old town privileging the history and the maintenance of historic buildings, is manifest in this study on the Vittorio Emanuele monumental street, the foundation axis of Palermo, and it’s architectural degraded and disfigured fronts. The search concerning sixty civil buildings is based initially on a cognitive process that includes historical analysis, geometric and dimensional survey, investigation on constituent materials and decay systems, in relation to environmental or anthropic causes. The study includes a design proposal that, according to the individuality of cases, it would represent an intervention code about some recurrent critical aspects on which it’s possible to intervene only applying codified procedures. The proposed designs show so an application to concrete cases, not abdicating to involve physical and economic urban environment: the re-qualification of building materials and architectural language would respect the historical image without depressing the market demands.