Urban transitions. The city in the former Ophelia Asylum in Potenza

The emerging themes related to the ecological, social and urban transition, necessary to “re-inhabit the earth”, are closely intertwined with the project of regeneration of the built environment. How to improve the existing while preserving the memory and identity of places? How to innovate the tools of the urban design in relation to the existing to be adapted to new needs? How to reconsider the interactions environment, society, economy, to compose regenerative forms and processes between ecosystems and communities? In Italy there are millions of service spaces, forgotten, fallen into disuse, or never come into operation. In many cases the regeneration of these places is supported by a cultural-based reactivation. This theme is explored here in a paradigmatic research case: the former “Ophelia” Asylum in Potenza, designed by Marcello Piacentini and Giuseppe Quaroni in 1905. It is a mental hospital complex that, right from the start, has undergone an urban transition process that has transformed it into a real part of the city. However, inside, there are some fragments, built spaces and urban voids, on which it is possible to support a punctual and, at the same time, general regenerative project of the city. The historic gallery “Covo degli Arditi” is rethought as a powerful urban relational device, part of a wider system of possible public spaces that connect existing urban centralities with potential future ones.