Pre-Existences and Environmental Sustainability

Building recovery plays a leading role to identify existing resources and support their preservation, improvement and development, respecting both the cultural and environmental context and, moreover, building’s typological and constructive features. Through some case-studies, this paper faces the subject of eco-friendly building recovery intended both as an opportunity for energetic and environmental renovation and as a moment of cultural reacquisition. After focusing on sustainability issues in recovery intervention, this paper addresses the point of disused and obsolete railway building heritage. In particular the intervention applies methodologic approach to an abandoned housing complex that lends itself to the new allocation for halls of residence in the service of Kore University of Enna, a young growing research hub settled in the middle of Sicily and Mediterranean Basin. Belonging to the Nineteenth-century railway station, this complex was originally intended as dorm and support structure to be used by the train crew and turns out to be a strategic place both for its position, a few miles from the University, and for its possible links through the nearby station, included in high-speed rail program.