Requalification of the Tobacco Factory in Palermo with destination to social finalities

Abstract

From the Sixties and for many years later the construction of new buildings, both public and residential, has made our cities more and more large, with a great squandering of ground, pollution and reduction of the green areas. A necessary trend reversal has implied a growing interest towards the rehabilitation and requalification of the brownfields. These, both inside the urban fabric and in suburban areas, offer complexes of buildings with great potentiality for a sustainable reuse both from the social point of view and from the environmental one. The large dimensions, the great spans and the materials usually used make these buildings suitable to a recovery which makes possible a rehabilitation in a building scale but also in a territorial scale, through the choice of a social destination which would give nourishment to a degraded area . The proposed paper aims to treat the theme of the requalification of the brownfields through the study of an emblematic case: the Tobacco factory in Palermo, a complex of buildings historically relevant, generated by the aggregation of buildings of different epochs and with different constructive techniques and materials. It also has a significative location near the sea and the urban center and could be a really important economic and social resource for the community. The conceived project for the Factory has the aim of the realization of alternative structures for detained mothers with their children and for ex prisoners who have any job o house, to help them in the rehabilitation in society. Sicily is really inadequate in these fields. This could represent a solution which would permit to use buildings currently abandoned and that are suitable spaces and structures to social aims today without a location.