The Identity Value of Vernacular Productive Architecture Knowledge, Recovery and Enhancement of the Val D’Agri Water Mills

The Industrial Heritage (I.H) is made of rests of the industrial culture with its historical, technological, social, architectural and scientific elements – parts of buildings, machinery, laboratories, firms, mines and locations where pro- cessing and refining procedures took place, warehouses and shops, energy produc- tion and transfer sites. Such electricity is used for transport and all its infrastructure as it occurs for places where social activities take place such as accomodation, training or religion worship facilities. The patrimonialisation process of the I.H. is essential as it recognises a com- munity heritage made of memories and identity. The research is based on the Italian productive and vernacular patrimony, especially in the south of Italy, by taking into consideration the proto-industrial period – from the second half of the17th century to the second half of the 19th century – and analyses the organisa- tion of the industrial system before the real industrialisation Era starting in the19th century. Italy is rich in working places, in fact, in southern Italy agribusiness has a great impact with its range of productive activities connected to agricultural products processing. Indeed, the milling vernacular industry represented an economical development source between the 17th and the first half of 20th century, this is the reason why there are lots of mills and bakeries for bread. The study deeply analyses the economic and social impact of water mills – vernacular and productive architectures of rural areas used to process wheat into flour. The “Val D’Agri” presents a large number of water mills and is located in the south-west part of Basilicata region. Its name comes from the river crossing the area. This analysis considers the functional recovery of watermills with a multidisciplinar criterion.