Drawing for the Future: Micro-cities, Villages and Landscapes of Abruzzo

For decades Abruzzo has been living a seemingly unstoppable phenomenon of depopulation and subsequent cancellation of some of the most beautiful villages scattered within its territory. This research starts from the need to take a snapshot of what now remains of historical and anthropic memory concerning those forgotten places. Through the means of representation, we want to trigger processes of documentation and communication of that heritage at this very period of reality in which the sense of places and belongings lives conflicting drives between who defend their spaces and those seeking new opportunities of life in other lands. The study and survey of these micro-cities, once active and vital, allows us to see them as tangible footprints of an evolutionary process in constant transformation where physical traces of walls, streets and squares reflect locally social, economic, geopolitical and global changes. These spaces are a warning to those who are wedded to defend an idealized present forgetting how much our history, and our urban landscape, is always subjected to an unstoppable change. This essay is the first act of a research involving more teachers in the area of representation in the Department of Architecture in Pescara, engaged in parallel but synergistic paths useful for the story of those forgotten spaces. In this essay, in particular, a case study is presented highlighting the methodology and the used tools of representation. © Springer International Publishing AG 2018.