Prisons of the Gaze. Cinematographic Experiments for the Reuse Project of San Sebastiano Historical Prison in Sassari

Abstract

The complexities of the design process for restoration require knowledge paths capable of integrating, in the methods of urban studies, alternative tools aimed at favoring the recognition and re-signification of the architectural heritage in the contemporary world.
The importance of a multidisciplinary approach for reading and writing the architectural text takes on particular relevance in contexts in which the material component and the spiritual presence establish a deep relationship; in this regard, prison factories represent emblematic places where the intimate link between the physical entity of the building and the immaterial substance generated by the feelings and emotions of those who have lived it is strongly perceived.
The intangible dimension of these architectures, with its cultural, symbolic, ethical and aesthetic connotations, can only be told through the experimentation of methodologies capable of going beyond the mere physicality of the place.
In such scenario, cinematographic tools play a strategic role in ‘sensitive’ cognitive approaches; the peculiar perceptive structure and the expressive possibilities of audiovisual languages and technologies make them devices for critical observation, able to grasp and tell the identity of places as a product of the intimate interaction between their visible dimension and their invisible dimension.