RE-heritage Studio Trip: Developing Architecture Students’ Global Citizenship through Knowledge Building and Knowledge Exchange Abroad
RE-heritage, ArCHIAM-led BA3 studio, has recently piloted a full-immersion learning experience in Buddusò (Italy) exposing the students to culturally unfamiliar settings with the aim to foster the development of cross-cultural sensibilities and an international outlook as global citizens and design professionals.
A shrinking historic rural town un inland Sardinia, Buddusò, like most traditional built environments worldwide, faces demographic shifts and rural-urban migration causing economic, social and infrastructural marginalization as well as loss of cultural heritage. The town has been chosen as the site of the second semester project: the adaptive reuse of dilapidated vernacular buildings and outdoor spaces into a heritage training and interpretation centre, complemented by temporary accommodation. In the centre, people will learn about and experience the natural and cultural heritage of Buddusò, Bitti and their surroundings through creative interpretive responses, and will develop heritage-related skills. Capitalising on the local white granite quarries, unique pre-historic archaeological sites and canto a tenore, a Sardinian form of polyphonic, male-only guttural singing inscribed on UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, the centre will support the valorisation, practice and transmission of local craft, gastronomic and performing art traditions, with a view to enhancing the attractiveness of the area, fostering economic growth and jobs creation, and eventually stimulating the settlement’s re-occupation and re-inhabitation.