Learning from the traditional mediterranean architecture: microclimatic and liveability conditions in intermediate outdoor spaces

The "vernacular" architecture, with its techniques, makes the built environment work in synergy with climatic conditions and local natural resources. Reducing consumptions and at the same time safeguarding local potential can represent an example of sustainability, from which it’s possible to deduce lessons for improving the delicate relationship between building and living in urban and rural environments, by now compromised by the low construction quality and widespread environmental decay. A good example of vernacular architecture is represented by the architectural tradition of the countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea. Its basic characteristics are: the use of masonry with high thermal inertia, the adoption of suitable strategies of natural ventilation and solar radiation protection, the aggregation of buildings aimed at forming compact settlements, characterized by a sequence of intermediate spaces that, besides acting like comfort regulators, are also places of social relationship: they represent, in what Rudofsky defined "architecture without architects", the repositioning on the outside of the atrium idea of the Roman domus, around which the family and social life orbited.The paper presents a research that starts from a study for a PhD Thesis in Sustainable Urban Design carried out at Roma Tre University. Through direct instrumental measurements and graphic simulations, the thesis analysed the micro-climatic behaviour and the level of environmental sustainability of some spaces in the historical centre of a town in southern Italy: Altamura, in Puglia. The research investigates the possibility to enable processes for urban and rural regeneration through both the environmental requalification of these spaces, and their subsequent reuse by the community, and the economic upgrading, obtainable triggering tourism in general and, in particular, the wine and food one. The research goal is to define which are the limits and possibilities of application, in similar or different climate and constructive contexts, such as e.g. the case of the Balkan architecture, to be drawn from the environmental sustainability lessons thus learned.