A Methodological Contribution to Landscape Design and Improvement

The main themes of this study are based on the observation that in most rural areas, landscape has undergone deep structural, morphological, social and economic changes. This is in part due to the criteria of extreme functional and technological rationalization adopted for the design of rural service buildings, which are usually precast concrete structures, and thus prove incongruous with the rural landscape and with territorial traditions. The study, which is part of a broader research project undertaken in collaboration with the Emilia-Romagna Region and the Province of Bologna, sought to define a methodology for assessing the visual impact caused by the rural built system and for evaluating the mitigation potential of different typologies of solutions that may be found. The definition of reproducible models for designing vegetational systems to mitigate the visual impact of inadequate rural buildings, which also represents a goal of the broader regional research project, is only outlined in this paper, with the in-depth analysis of some study cases. Full discussion of the definition of these models will be the subject of future work.