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Hesitation is a precious friend in our lives; maybe we err in chasing it away. When we have to choose between two solutions, we are assailed by doubts. Doubt is the spice of our thinking. Doubt has Adventure as a friend. Adventure means starting a path that you don’t know when or where will end. Similarly the project is like an adventure in the unknown, it comes to going beyond what we know.

An innovative policy for promoting green roofs has bring interesting results for the city of Chicago which is moving through a sustainable roadmap with a fist deadline in 2015. Also existing and historical buildings are involved into a green retrofit policies framework and the Chicago’s City Hall is the first important example.

Recently the topic of landscape is back in the spotlight. Landscape doesn’t mean simply nature. It is the most visible and tangible way through which the humans transform and adapt the world. At the same time it is the way by which they express their relationship both with the environment and nature. Besides this the landscape is something fragile, prone to degradation and consumption. This is the reason why it’s necessary “to go beyond the words”. Policy should give more attention to landscape, environment, soil and cultural heritages management. In particular where local planning and regulation are still strongly oriented to exploit land only as an economic resource. In this case the centrality of landscape defence should be reconsidered as a political priority.

The Faculty of Architecture - University of Ferrara (Degree in Architecture and Degree in Industrial Product Design), through the Research Center Architettura>Energia and the Material Design Laboratory, lead the 5th edition of the “Workshop of Architecture”, organized by the international journal OfArch as part of the MADE 2012. Within the expo, the design workshop and an exhibition presented the academic and research results, integrated with a rich program of conferences and debates. The workshop, titled “Quali(ci)ty. Redesign and energy efficiency for a sustainable quality of life”, examined a design-applicative theme. The specific case study consisted of the MAPRE (fruit and vegetable marketplace) and the CAP (Farmers’ Cooperative) of Reggio Emilia, Italy. Altogether, a medium-sized complex currently abandoned, located on the edges of the historical city and close to the main road connections. The high-density buildings are used as office facilities and date back to the Fifties. The area also contains a series of industrial and technical buildings, some of which deserve to be reclaimed to improve the city’s physical and functional organization. The MAPRE still works, but it will eventually moved elsewhere. A strategic component of the project is the improvement of the connections between the site itself and the historical centre. The topic is the “smart city”, with the different sustainable options identified by the local administration. This will lead to cultural attractions, to improve living standards and to generate wellness for the inhabitants. So, which expertise can be put to used by the Faculty of Architecture of Ferrara? And which guidelines can be elaborated for the renewal, the reconstruction and the regeneration of a city? Beside the specific project site, the workshop aimed at demonstrating: an efficient approach to the problem, focusing on multi-scales and a multi-disciplinary design contribution; an osmotic interface with the territory and with the requirements of the authorities and the local production realities; the need to control and optimize the mobility and the energy processes of the overall “life-cycle”. Preserving and refurbishing most of the existing constructions, instead of demolishing and building new ones, helped achieving the target.

Camorcanna constructive systems represent a precious architectural heritage that belongs to our historic building patrimony. The peculiarities of this type of technique and the use of traditional local materials, are the reasons why they constitute an evidence of an active culture of know-how that has to be preserved.

This article focus on the methodological and operative matters related to the rehabilitation and the conservation of this constructive heritage, aspects which have been investigated by the existing connected literature. The description of the most frequent causes of degradation and instability that can be observed in these constructive systems precedes an excursus on the main techniques of intervention and on the materials that are generally used for the rehabilitation of camorcanna systems.

The article is a call to face the intervention of conservation with the necessary critical awareness that can derive only from a deep knowledge of the historic building, awareness that cannot forget the guiding principles of the restoration project.