Geographic Information System for monitoring and conservation of the cultural landscape

The contribution offers a critical synthesis of an experimental research in progress, concerning the creation of a Geographic Information System applied to a mountain area of architectural and landscape interest: Frassinetto, in the Orco Valley and Soana (Turin). The work gathers multidisciplinary competences from the restoration and geomatic branches, strongly integrated with each other in order to develop an analytical protocol for a cultural-historical territory. Frassinetto’s architectural and connective tissue – of ancient and complex origin – shapes the landscape univocally, becoming its cultural issue. The considerable critical and vulnerable conditions distinguishing this heritage – right at a time in which we are witnessing a growing social demand of “cultural landscape” – make of its systematical knowledge an urgent issue, in order to preserve its authenticities as well as to give it a full value. The interpretations of aggregation processes, permanent elements and of the condition of material documents (viewed as “documents/monuments”) have been formulated on the basis of surveys and cataloguings at different scales (landscape sites and elements, aggregated settlements, architectural manufactures, building systems and characteristics). The contextualization of acquired knowledge is conducted through the creation of databases integrated by digital cartographic mediums. Computer cartography – within a conventional coordinates system – is made on the basis of aerophotogrammetric surveys with direct integration on the spot. The case study has also been analyzed in relation to the geographic context where it is set, that is the whole area of the valley. Above all, this is an occasion to examine a possible, profitable application of computer technologies to the systems of cultural landscape and traditional building heritage, both for their integrated conservation and to give them full value. The potentialities – as we believe – are to be found both in an exhaustive scientific knowledge used for an applied case through the creation of a GIS, as well as in the possible diachronic implementation of data. This implementation - carried out in relation to planned time scannings and specific necessities identified by the “caretaker” of material and cultural resources (local administrations, protection institutions, research organs) - would allow a real monitoring of consistence and criticality conditions of the heritage. In this way the patterns of knowledge and interpretation of fragile cultural realities would not stop their knowledge function preliminary to interventions, but would record any progressive change of the structures, providing an updated support to protection policies, also in relation to an application of the new law. * This studypresents some results of a research cofinanced by the Regione Piemonte 1. THE SITE AND CULTURAL VALUES In the start-up phase of the research, the territory of the Orco Valley and Soana (Turin) has been subjected to a general survey on the consistence of the widespread traditional heritage (considering historical nuclei, aggregated hamlets, testimonies of religious housing, collective goods and the main historical routes) on municipal territories. The subsequent decision to choose Frassinetto as survey site has been determined by the identification of an extraordinary persistence of authentic historical building testimonies, still well readable both as cultural system and as main elements. Here, over the centuries, historical routes have woven a thick infrastructural network, cultivations, the exploitation of pastures and woods have marked the grounds with different uses; subdivisions of properties and canalisation of water streams, multifunctional buildings and those of collective use have formed architectural aggregated and stratified nuclei. The critical and vulnerable conditions which distinguish today this cultural landscape, real piece of the “paesaggio rudere” (tr. landscape ruin, Lanzani 2003) are the result of demographic retraction processes from upper-level settlements in favour of industrial cities, abandonment of houses marked today by decades of lack of maintenance, of some inadequate interventions conducted in time for functional reasons. Therefore, its systematic knowledge is an urgent necessity, in order to preserve its authenticities as well as to give it a full value.