Riabitare i conventi

Because of the rapid changing social structure that have occurred in recent decades in Italy and Europe and the consequent crisis of the traditional typological structure and housing problems that developed, this paper focuses on the question of re-use of existing buildings in consolidated urban part, to propose an alternative housing solution for new user groups. Italy grows in demand from atypical consumers increasingly diversified and affected by processes of social mobility. These are groups of users that require different spaces from the traditional house and their need is moving more and more towards the formation of new models of collective living. Also today, in historic cities, there is a large presence of little used disused or abandoned buildings, and a particular case is offered by the monasteries and convents, who, despite having enough space to large groups of people, are inhabited by small groups of religious , or even completely uninhabited. The building of the monastery offers, among other things, the ability to reason on the special version of the theme of today living, taken in the various concepts of cohousing and social housing, in the presence of common areas as well as private spaces, spaces of sharing , in the logic of the constitution of a wider community. The need for reuse of these buildings, in their intrinsic spontaneous process of evolution, their natural vocation to accommodate collective ways of living, the big existing housing question and the changes taking place on issues of contemporary living, put in place a set of interwoven relationships, enough to warrant a discussion of these complex topics, but absolutely present nowadays, to give an answer that links the two issues. The contribution deals with such issues through the analysis of some case studies. First deals with the case of the convents of the historical center of Naples. Then explores the system of Portuguese Pousadas.