Mountains in Motion, Visions in Nutshells. The Alpine Way for Common Living

Abstract

Architectural research is defined as community practice and for communities. Architecture has always been constituted as an action of territorial settlement and domestication for the community liveability of places.This article, referring to the concepts of resilience and transformability of mountain systems, proposes to reflect on how rural mountain areas have always been able to adapt to changes thanks to the ability of communities to conceive common and shared design directions.The paper reflects on the conceptualization of commons and how they can be a model for resilient development in socially inclusive contexts. For this reason, an extensive review of historical palimpsests was conducted to understand how to start from the roots of the operating models.The article includes a field approach in Trentino’s valleys. The results are exploratory, as the process cannot be concluded and requires a long time for validation. From it, some working hypotheses are derived to be explored in further studies, such as reintroducing the commons into projects and societies in transformation.Architectural research in these contexts contributes to orienting knowledge through fundamental collaboration with other disciplines, which is helpful in defining regenerative processes consistent with specific environmental contexts.