Academic Places as Cultural Heritage: Tools for an integrated valorisation

Stefano Della Torre

The connections of university buildings with their urban contexts is a distinctive character of Italy. Universities have got a natural endowment for an integrated valorisation of their heritage, due to the presence of the multiple enabling factors. Therefore, it is obvious that they can take a leading role, also as players of urban regeneration processes. Academic Heritage however still bears the burdens of obsolete managerial practices, sometimes marked by individualism and shortsightedness.The project aims at: empowering the awareness of university structures about the making of their heritage as a resource for moreattractive and competitive policies; proposing cultural heritage as a laboratory for new multidisciplinary trends in didactics andresearch; implementing digital tools to activate relationships between the universities and their contexts.