Vivifying secluded areas. Sustainable revitalisation of the Solovetsky archipelago

The contemporary globalised world model is gradually causing the rural regions to shrink and diminish their power to compete with big cities. One of these regions is the Solovetsky archipelago in the White Sea in Russia where local villages are shrinking and young people are moving to bigger cities either to study or to find work. However, the archipelago is still visited by tens of thousands of people who come here to admire its diversified natural and cultural heritage. The aim of this thesis was to determine how the archipelago can be sustainably revitalised by landscaping and architectural interventions. The goal was to build up a strategic redevelopment plan that has the magnitude to reverse the on-going degradation of the local quality of life and move it towards a positive state of vitality. We found out that in order to revitalise the archipelago it was essential to carry out strategically determined interventions in specific areas of the archipelago that integrate a diversified inventory of details which can simultaneously entertain miscellaneous user groups. The analysis, and the result of the thesis are compatible to be used as guidance to architects, landscape designers, municipalities and small businesses that are seeking for revitalisation strategies for analogous rural areas. Daria Olovyannikova In 2014 she completed her Master's degree in Politecnico di Milano with a thesis about secluded areas of the northern territories of Russia. She was inspired by the topic while volunteering for a project by Moscow International Film School in the Solovetsky Monastery. In 2014 she was selected by Architecture for Culture organisation to take part in the workshop "Dying villages of Serbia". Winning participant of the international Summer School "Architecture and Ecological landscapes" in Piacenza. Karl Kiisel An international architect and sustainability engineer who graduated from Politecnico di Milano in 2014. He has previously studied in VIA University in Aarhus, Denmark. He is specialising in sustainable design of energy-efficient buildings and has conducted research projects about nearly-Zero-Energy buildings in northern dimate conditions. Two-time participant in the international workshop and exhibition of "Designing shrinking cities" in Friesland, the Netherlands. Lavinia C. Tagliabue Adjunct Professor of Building Physics at the Architecture, Built environment and Construction Engineering Department (ABC), Politecnico di Milano, Italy. She researches at University of Brescia on technical and economic optimization of the envelope energy performance for nearly-Zero-Energy Buildings in intelligent energy networks. She received a PhD in 2005 in Technology and Design of Environmental Quality at Building and Urban scale at Politecnico di Milano. She works on rating systems for sustainability of the buildings and solar systems since 2001. Author of publications in journals. "O-n" is a collection of master thesis which I oversaw as supervisor at Politecnico di Milano. These books are a platform of heterogeneity, which find their common field in the theory of weakness, as imperfect and manifold way of knowledge. The aim is to experience an alternative method for contemporary spaces, able to regenerate the sta bilized ideas of design. They are more experimental and vital texts/tests than verification procedures: this attitude brings them away from a strictly educational approach. They can be read according to two levels of meaning: in their specific contexts and as open platforms for contemporary researches. Almost all of them are focused on processual values and on project transdisciplinary, in order to promote a cognitive space before a real one. I provided the students with fews thematic lines (a sense of shortcircuit, trial, process of meaning), which were underlining an interpretation of knowledge in a horizontal sense, as Gilles Deleuze had defined. These topics have been independently developed by the...