The Social Identity of a Place: The Analysis of the Environment and Its Quality for a Cultural Regeneration

The man makes his way through the centuries armed with pencil: any mean capable of leaving a mark on a surface becomes the trace to be followed from generation to generation in order to know and explain the world. From the engraving on the stone to the digital image the line remains the instrument of comprehension par excellence. Graphic representation is the basis for cognitive processes and for social, cultural and sustainable redrawing of the places. The interaction between environmental psychology and architecture is configured in this sense as the best disciplinary framework in which to develop newmodels of representation of complex and contradictory realities, that put the human dimension at the centre. The integrated survey project “The sports locations in Tuscany”, born following an agreement between the Department of Architecture of Florence and ANCI Tuscany (National Association of Italian Municipalities), opens the way to an examination of sports environments and to an interpretation that starts from the graphic sign. Problems of various nature emerge from the architectural survey, which have to be read together with the typology and the use of these centers. Their inclusive type nature is not in accordance with the current built-up forms in which they are forced: the expected educational, formative and identitarian environment is obscured by architectural inattention and insufficient maintenance [1]. The aim is to investigate the origins of this contradiction in order to retrieve a necessary balance between the contents and the container.