Knowledge for the recovery of industrial heritage. sugar factories In Basilicata (Italy)

The Second Industrial Revolution, since the end of the XIX century, has represented for Europe a process of technological, typological and constructive innovations, which have found application and experimentation in several architectures of that period. The science, called “Industrial Archeology”, reflects the need to recovery and valorize the products of these ferments of innovation and experimentation of new construction techniques and materials, that have occurred through the realization of buildings, strongly characterized for technology and constructive aspects. The study, in fact, highlight a methodology for the conservation and restoration of these buildings; it was based on a comparative analysis between the similar buildings that becomes an operational instrument for the preservation of original characters and of the values expressed by each building. This methodological approach finds its validation in the cognitive analysis of two industrial buildings, two sugar factories, realized in the same period but made in two different geographical areas of Basilicata (Italy) and significantly different for typological and constructive aspects, despite both afferent to the same industrial function. In particular, the study cases are the sugar factory of Policoro, on the Ionic coast, built in 1955, and that of the Rendina in Melfi, in Apennine area of the Region, esigned and realized in the same years. Both have assumed a strong socioindustrial value for productive systems; today, they are a significant “Industrial Cathedrals” for which it is essential to identify significant values for a preservation of historical memory and for a renewed function and building requalification.