Symbiosis between artistic production and built heritage maintenance. Permanent Lab in Praiano (Sa).

The New Agenda for Culture published in May 2018 by the European Commission provides a framework for action on heritage, outlining new commitments between cultural production and participation for a cohesive and sustainable future. The paper reports the first results from the 2018 European Creative Europe project, involving the Architecture Department of the Naples University Federico II, with the Bruxelles Bozar Museum and the Barcellona Mies van Der Rohe foundation. The paper is based on the theoretical debate and procedural implications that mark the EU commitment for historic Urban landscape sustainability and management ( from the 2010 Toledo informal Ministerial meeting on urban development declaration, EU Ministers, the 2011 UNESCO Paris Declaration on heritage as a driver of development, the 2011 Unesco Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape, the Icomos 2018 EU - Cherishing Heritage - Quality principles for intervention on cultural Heritage). The traditional concept of “open air museum” is investigated through the description of an heritage – led process started in Praiano (UNESCO site of the Amalfi Coast). The paper focuses on the following thesis: by reconnecting communities to territories, culture, heritage and art, declined on an urban scale, can accelerate the potential for contexts’ maintenance. Through the involvement of local ceramic artists, Praiano promotes an urban adaptive reuse for seven ancient pedestrian paths, originally conceived to make cultivated areas accessible, nowadays pivotal for landscape maintenance. The installation of 150 works gives the opportunity to activate a permanent heritage lab, educational and inclusive, where the aesthetic experience is linked to heritage fruition and protection, through the creation of new jobs. Faced with the disappearance of the co-evolutionary dynamics, which for centuries linked communities and places, art empowers the community, increasing past attitudes to be custodians of heritage and intermediaries of innovation.