Recovery and reuse of the architectural and urban heritage of Carbonia, a 20th-century company town, materials for a handbook

The policies and strategies put in place in 2001 for the requalification of the architectural heritage of the company town of Carbonia, and for the recovery of the “Great Mine of Serbariu” (that won the Landscape Award of the Council of Europe in 2010-2011), was based on a close collaboration between the University of Cagliari and the municipal administration of Carbonia.“The Handbook for the recovery” whose construction is still underway, fits this framework and coincides with an operational tool that regulates the action on the built heritage. It does not provide a catalogue of standardized solutions, but merely defines a knowledge base to guide the designers towards the recognition of the buildings’ invariant aspects and towards the understanding of the original architectural expression