Matilde Caruso. From the South to the North: Travelling in Europe for Traditional Architecture, 2019

Traditional architecture has always been bonded to local traditions, resources, needs and climate and it’s a very important part of local identity. During her life and university studies Matilde Caruso has discovered different and various styles of architecture and she became convinced about the importance of its knowledge and preservation.

Caruso is attending a Conservation post-degree Master at the University of Valencia and she came to RaumArs residency for writing her final thesis, about the town structure, the vernacular architecture and the conservation state and strategies. She’s currently a trainee at the Renovation Centre Tammela where she can do the researche and also cooperate in some of the Centre’s activities.

During the lecture different cases from Italy and Spain will be shown, according to Caruso’s personal experience. Considering the countries geography and culture it will be explained how they influenced the architecture and some of the main constructive techniques will be presented, also seeing a few concrete cases from the Italian Umbrian and Emilian region and then from Spanish Valencian and Cantabrian communities.

Finally, Matilde Caruso will explain her work in Rauma, how it is related to her studies and experience, her preliminary conclusion and she will also bring on a little comparison between these three different countries. Final thesis will be handling Old Rauma.

A small part of the lecture will be dedicated to a discussion about conservation contemporary struggles and its importance. Lecture language is English.

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Born in 1993 in Città di Castello, Italy, Matilde Caruso graduated in architecture at the University of Bologna in 2018. She’s passionate about historical and cultural architectural heritage and she’s been working on it since 2016, through her final university thesis, two traineeships and a post-degree master on Architectural Heritage Conservation course at the Polytechnical University of Valencia (Spain).

Thanks to a fellowship from the Valencian University she is now able to spend two months at Tammela Renovation centre as traineeship, for studying Old Rauma with its urban structure, the buildings and their conservation. She’s writing her master final thesis on it, following the 3dPast (European Research Project) – Living & virtual visiting European World Heritage, supported by UNESCO and ICOMOS.

Matilde Caruso finds it significant to conserve the traditional architecture and that it's important to recover the precious knowledge. She believes that it's possible to create new architecture by looking back to the past and learn from it, upgrade it with modern science, reach a good level of sustainability, comfort and also succeed to recover local identity, a real struggle in a lot of our cities.