Design the Rural-Architectural Intensification as a strategy for sustainable growth of countryside

The aim of this Paper it is to present a research project which derives from Italian National Research Framework PRIN2009: “Regeneration and renewal of rural landscape. Building strategies in the surroundings of new urban centres”. This issue aims to the regeneration of the rural landscape, with particular focus on architectural design, which can become the instrument for promoting the value, the memory, the identity and the environmental quality of the rural landscape as cultural heritage. The awareness of the fact that the categories “rural” and “urban” appear meaningless, where it is a question of marking out the boundary that do not have a well-defined specific function and that are increasingly characterised by mixed complexity – economic, functional, social and cultural – leads to reviewing the strategic guidelines of managing the landscape and draws increased attention to the qualitative aspects of the landscape development and the human-environment relationship. A second very important aspect to point out is the resilience of the architecture in this concept of rural intensification: in landscape construction, every measure involves the subject of shape and space. From the building of a small footbridge to the renovation of the banks of a large stretch of river, from a project for a fountain to one for a roof garden or a park, it is difficult to tell the difference between a region’s natural and man-made structures, since they should be always connected and interrelated.