Industrial areas, “fragmentary” spaces that turn on and off, that are populated and depopulated according to the rhythms of production, and that dot the entire national territory, are among the most extensive “species of space” on the Italian peninsula. Often left on the margins and connoted with mostly negative meanings, they assume a significant role, not only for the economy but also because for all intents and purposes, they can be assumed, for a large number of people, as a second city.
Nowadays, social, environmental, and climatic crises require a rethinking of these places in a new “adaptive” conception; a “species of space” that knows how to evolve with the envi- ronment that surrounds it and how to establish a mutually beneficial relationship with it, giving importance and space to the movements, flows, gestures and habits of its inhabitants and not only to the stationary physicality of the industries that compose it.
Following these premises, the paper, based on the real case study of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, describes possible architectural experiments that aim at sustainable social innovation in production areas.
