Material culture and design effort for the recovery: Living Lab in the Park of Cilento

Central issue in the debate about settlements’ recovery is today, the definition of the relationships between pre-existing and new design intents, between managing transitions, on the one hand, and promoting socio-economic development dynamics, on the other. The paper describes the experience of Living Lab, activated in Sassano, in the Park of Cilento and Vallo of Diano, by the Maintenance and Recovery Laboratory, DiARC, part of the interdisciplinary research project Cilento LabScape (Faro Funding, 2013-2015). Within an 18-month trial, the built environment identity and the settled community values were the focal points of a meta-design arena, which brought together citizens, construction companies, administrators and researchers