From the complexity of architecture to the knowledge of the construction of Siracusa

To comprehend the complexity of Ortigia's architecture, a place rich in history, means creating an interconnection with the foundations of knowledge, which can grasp the context, the site of interest, by investigating its fragmentary stratification. The systemic recognition of such architectures, strongly articulated in their structural and formal skeleton, involves recourse to methods and approaches of cognitive interventions that may pinpoint regenerative models, which rekindle the human sensory faculty. The systemic complex of understanding the heritage of Ortigia, intended as an integral part of “contemporaneity in the making”, must furnish the raw materials for the Knowledge Factory and constitute an effective driving force that can spark, in the user of that facility, a full sense of responsibility. This concerns gearing the research for the comprehension of Ortigia towards the creation of a model of cultured knowledge, capable of educating in everyone the respect for the environment in which we live, which in turn is able to change the needs of people and their lifestyle. In brief, the aim is to create a virtuous circle in which knowledge determines a conscious and therefore responsible use. This in turn steers the necessary transformations that are bound to the needs of contemporary living and also to the respect for the identity of place, which thus does not lose out in vitality, but gains in intrinsic and economic value at the same time.