Gli strumenti della storia per l’interpretazione del territorio

Territorialist approach and bio-regionalist vision are already reflected in the well-known and successful definition of architecture, formulated by William Morris at the end of the nineteenth century, as “the moulding and altering to human needs of the very face of the earth itself, except in the outermost desert”. From this perspective, dealing with the history of architecture, the city and the territory therefore means taking an interest not only in places - in the physical and geographical meaning of the term - and in buildings, but above all in the processes and interactions that, daily or in the long lasting, generate the main transformations. This contribution aims to analyze the tools available to the historian for an investigation of the territory, concived not as a simple acquisition of data and knowledge growth, but as an indispensable preliminary critical moment for any reflection of a design nature. The overall framework of these tools and of their usefulness in the study of a territory, as a bio-region, is accompanied by examples linked to concrete case studies, relating to the Sicilian regional context, which give an effective demonstration.