The objective of the  First Underground4value Training School was to realize a one-week intensive programme in Underground Built Heritage conservation and management. The event intended to develop and to make available new skills for planners, decision-makers, promoters and local development facilitators.

Methodology: The Training School works with approximately twenty professors and tutors; they come from different European countries. It deals with innovative approaches to surveys, analyses, monitoring and testing, in regards to Historic Urban Landscape (HUL), integrating multi-disciplinary knowledge about the underground heritage in a planning framework based on HUL itself. The purpose is advancing tools for empowering local communities, as well as for supporting planners and decision-makers, boosting new job profiles on cultural planning, strategic spatial and transition planning and management. These new profiles will guarantee interaction with local communities, dissemination of innovative thinking and methodologies, supporting the research of social trajectories in an adaptive, forward-looking manner. Lessons and teamwork modules are developed around four topics:

• Underground Built Heritage (UBH) knowledge base development and management
• Technologies for UBH conservation and monitoring
• UBH reuse and valorisation strategies
• UBH Planning approaches and community empowerment

The training is based on scientific approaches. It is open to humanities and to the cultural issues, as well as to the strategies and the tools for urban/rural regeneration policies, the sustainable tourism, the community empowerment, and the UBH conservation. It intends to produce a training toolkit for decision-makers, practitioners, stakeholders and local communities and integrates a procedure for checking training and learning methods. In particular, the training expands HUL framework by developing modules about UBH and introducing Strategic Transition Practices (STP). It provides the participants with tools for elaborating real-life experiments (Living Labs) in a goal-oriented modulation, for shaping strategic dialogue, co-evolution and co-creation.

Trainers and trainees work together on topics related to case studies in an open confrontation. Applying the STP approach, students interactively learn how to facilitate communities’ dialogue, and develop new social, economic and cultural behaviours from the opportunities offered by the UBH reuse also in terms of new lifestyles.

The Lectures

Day 1 Lectures: Case Studies Storytelling: The first 4 experiences

• Naples: Juan Valle Robles (ES) and Elisa Bellato (IT)
• Murcia: Susana Martinez Rodriguez (ES)
• Göreme: Daniela De Gregorio (IT) and Muge Akkar (TR)
• Postojna: Luisa Errichiello (IT)

Day 2 Lectures: Developing and managing a Knowledge base on UBH

• The construction of meaning: semantisation and re-semantisation of urban spaces. The historical perspective, Renata Salvarani (IT)
• A methodological framework for the UBH classification, Roberta Varriale (IT)
• Documentation of underground heritage, resilience, heritage at risk, Sorin Hermon (CY)
• Unstructured data (texts) analysis for UBH knowledge base, Pinar Karagoz (TR)
• New Museology and Design Thinking methodology, Tony Cassar (MT)

Day 3 Lectures: Technologies for UBH conservation and monitoring

• Developing a participatory platform, Alfonso Bahillo (ES)
• Underground energy structures for space heating and cooling, Rao Singh (University of Surrey, UK)
• Infrared thermal imaging – principles and applications for civil engineering inspection, Robert Olbrycht, Lodz University of Technology (PL)
• The use of innovative SLAM solution for a fast acquisition of UBH, Roberto Pierdicca, Università Politecnica delle Marche (IT)
• Security issues (stability, firefighting, air supply/circulation, surface weathering/deterioration due to air and/or some gases) for underground built heritage sites, Kerim Aydiner (TR)

Day 4 Lectures: Strategies for UBH reuse and valorisation

• Underground Heritage in – prehistory to 20th century – management and valorisation, Shirley Cefai (MT)
• Valorisation of rural heritage and touristic bias. Potential benefits to local community – a private public partnership case on central Italy, the Camerano’s underground heritage, Ernesto Marcheggiani, Andrea Galli (IT)
• Strategies of conservation and valorisation of cultural heritage in hazards zones: a case on earthquake area in central Italy, Antonello Alici (IT)
• Developing Business Models for creative tourism of Underground Heritage, Alvaro Dias (PT)
• The Underground Cultural Landscape (UCL) as an essential component of local identity: an implementation solution of the UNESCO Recommendation of Historic Urban Landscape, Laura Genovese (IT)

Day 5 Lectures: UBH Planning approaches

• Planning the invisible: the sustainable use of the underground spaces and places, Pietro Elisei (RO)
• Co-creation and inclusiveness of public spaces with heritage, Tatiana Ruchinskaya (UK)
• Informal Planning Approaches for activating UBH valorisation, Carlos Smaniotto Costa (PT)
• Partnerships and community empowerment: Tools for Living Labs, Giuseppe Pace (IT)

CA18110 Training School final programme <download>

CA18110 Training School Research Groups <download>

Research Group 1: Creative tourism: connecting Fontanelle Cemetery to a larger touristic route (Tutor: Juan Valle Robles) – Final poster <download>

Research Group 2: Heritagisation of a place of worship: frictions and solutions (Tutor: Elisa Bellato) – Final poster <download>

Research Group 3: Business Model Canvas for developing Eco-Tourism Project in Karaya (Tutor: Daniela De Gregorio) – Final poster <download>

Research Group 4: Approaches for developing knowledge, meaning, and community identity in Karaya (Tutor: Muge Akkar) – Final poster <download>

Research Group 5: Strategies for the re-use and valorisation of the underground military heritage in the Green Kaarst Region (Slovenia) (Tutor: Luisa Errichiello) – Final poster <download>

Research Group 6: Developing creative activities and a new branding for the Mining Park of la Union (Tutor: Susana Martinez-Rodriguez) – Final poster <download>