Ruins of Memory: A Sustainable Conservation for the Material and Immaterial Values of the Former Psychiatric Hospitals in Italy

In Italy the Provincial Psychiatric Hospitals were closed by the law enforcement n. 180 (1978) promoted by the psychiatrist Franco Basaglia. From 1996 these structures were definitively abandoned. They were built with a strong relationship between the cultural and social idea of the significance of mental illness and a specific architectural form, the ‘small-village’ model, because this was intended to play an important therapeutic role. Now they reveal multiple identities as cities-fragments, architectural models and places of amnesia. Because of this link between material and immaterial memories, sustainable conservation strategies involve a new interpretation of the conservation project as a ‘memoir’.