"Out of the Dark"

Selective Memory as a Design Resource for Reclaiming Marginal Heritage in Inner Areas

Addressing the theme of “heritage cities and oblivion”, this article examines Italy’s Inner Areas as territories where demographic decline, marginalisation, and selective heritage narratives have obscured anonymous traces, minor artefacts, rural heritage, and everyday practices. Rather than interpreting this condition only as loss, the study reconsiders oblivion as a “selective void” through which overlooked values can re-emerge and inform processes of spatial reactivation. Within this framework, selective memory is understood as a design resource for reinterpreting marginal heritage beyond monumental assets.

The research applies this perspective to the municipality of Irma, in the Trompia Valley, an Inner Area in Lombardy. It adopts a mixed methodology combining a structured survey with thematic coding of open-ended responses, digital ethnography, and interpretative spatial mapping. The survey identifies places perceived as meaningful by residents and visitors, including the Parish Church of the Holy Trinity, Casa dell’Alpino, and the Sentiero dell’Acqua, while the qualitative responses reveal local priorities related to heritage preservation, shared spaces, public amenities, and continuous cultural and nature-based activities. Digital ethnography complements these findings by tracing informal narratives, recurring traditions, and seasonal rhythms that inform potential spatial and programmatic reactivation strategies.

The originality of the article lies in translating social perceptions, qualitative proposals, and digital traces into a site-specific mnemonic field capable of guiding spatial and programmatic reactivation strategies. By “spatialising” these layers, the study connects heritage anchors, community needs, digital narratives, and underrepresented practices, positioning architectural design as a mediator between memory, oblivion, and transformation. The article ultimately proposes a transferable methodology for bringing marginal and overlooked heritage “out of the dark” through situated, bottom-up, and design-oriented forms of interpretation.

This study engages with the conceptual framework of “heritage cities and oblivion” by examining marginal territories affected by demographic decline, progressive abandonment, and the degradation of the built environment. While these conditions are commonly interpreted through narratives of loss, the research adopts an architectural and cultural heritage perspective to reposition such territories as spaces of latent potential. It seeks to identify investigative tools and reactivation strategies grounded in local perceptions, everyday practices, and forms of collective memory emerging from the community. 

Across Europe, such territories are often characterised by shrinking populations, economic marginalisation, and limited access to essential services. In Italy, this condition has been addressed through national policy frameworks such as the National Strategy for Inner Areas (SNAI), aimed at reducing territorial disparities. Despite these efforts, more qualitative and place-based approaches remain limited, while prevailing interpretations continue to frame these contexts primarily in terms of fragility and decline. This study challenges such perspectives by foregrounding the persistence of cultural, social, and spatial values within conditions of marginality.

This position is also connected to recent debates on adaptive reuse and urban reactivation, which emphasise the capacity of heritage interventions to generate multidimensional cultural, economic, environmental, and social effects, and to reactivate not only physical spaces but also the relational dynamics associated with them¹. It also responds to the limits of restoration approaches focused only on officially acknowledged assets. As Caramel (2021) suggests, overlooked architectural traces and abandoned buildings can sustain local identity even when they are not formally recognised as “Cultural Heritage”. Furthermore, their gradual disappearance reveals the need for broader frameworks capable of recognising minor, fragile, and socially embedded forms of heritage².

The research therefore understands memory as dynamic and selective: it can preserve, transform, or obscure local identities and spatial meanings over time. In particular, the article investigates how overlooked or fragmented heritage elements continue to carry collective significance and can inform future spatial imaginaries.

The contribution of the article is therefore methodological and projective: it tests how bottom-up community perceptions and proposals, together with digitally mediated narratives can be integrated and “spatialised” to reveal a site-specific mnemonic field, understood as a contemporary milieu de mémoire³. Tested through a small municipality within an Inner Area, the uncovering of this mnemonic field becomes more than a representation of local memory: it operates as an intermediate design tool that connects overlooked heritage, public spaces, community practices, and areas of potential. In doing so, the article shows how minor and often obscured heritage fragments can be translated into spatial and programmatic reactivation strategies for fragile territories.

The reclamation of marginal territories requires a shift in how memory and oblivion are conceptualised within architectural heritage discourse, moving beyond static preservation toward a more relational understanding of territorial and cultural transformation. This study addresses the dialectic between forgetting and remembering as a strategic framework for heritage reinterpretation, reframing obscurity not as loss but as a “selective void.” Drawing on Jorge Luis Borges, the “selective void” allows the complexity of the past to be filtered, suspending dominant value hierarchies and enabling certain elements to re-emerge as meaningful fragments of contemporary contexts⁴.  The interplay between selective remembering and forgetting thus becomes an operative mechanism through which latent social and cultural values can be identified and translated into design decisions.

To operationalise this perspective, the study extends Walter Benjamin’s notion of the “memory of the nameless” to the built environment. Architectural heritage is thereby reframed beyond monumental and officially recognised artefacts, engaging instead with anonymous traces, minor architectures, and recurring spatial practices that have shaped local identities⁵. This shift from monumental heritage to vernacular and rural heritage can uncover fragments of the built environment that continue to hold shared significance and value within local communities.

This approach is further grounded in Maurice Halbwachs’ theory of collective memory, which emphasises its spatial and social embedding, and the relationship between individual and collective experience. Built space operates as a repository of shared meanings, where memory is continuously produced and negotiated⁶. Consequently, spatial transformation and oblivion do not merely alter the physical environment but actively reshape the structure of collective memory itself, reconfiguring embedded relationships and identities.

Building on the concept of collective memory, Coraiola et al. define mnemonic fields as “network relations that are created, maintained, and changed through processes of collective remembering”⁷. These fields provide a useful analytical framework for interpreting marginal territories, particularly in contexts where the social fabric is fragile and in flux. Within such contexts, local traditions and contemporary practices intersect, producing dynamic spatial conditions that reflect the temporal “pulse” of a community.

This understanding of mnemonic fields makes the “selective void” operative in spatial terms. In marginal areas, the void is not only metaphorical: it may also appear as underused buildings, discontinuous public spaces, declining cultural sites, or vanishing local practices that hold strong meaning for local communities. Reading these “spatial anchors” as part of a mnemonic field allows design to move beyond physical restoration proposals toward selective reconnection, translating emergent memory-values into reuse scenarios, spatial interventions, cultural activities, and locally grounded actions. In this way, the interplay between memory and oblivion becomes central to the reactivation of marginal heritage, offering a pathway toward community-oriented spatial futures.

This section situates the research within the Italian context of “Inner Areas” and introduces the selected case study through which the article addresses a key gap in existing research: the limited integration of qualitative, bottom-up perspectives within territorial regeneration strategies.

The Italian institutional framework addresses the challenges faced by Inner Areas through the National Strategy for Inner Areas (SNAI, 2014–2020) and the National Strategic Plan (PSNAI, 2021–2027), defining these territories mainly by their distance from urban service centres and from essential services related to education, healthcare, and mobility. Beyond narratives of decline, the strategy recognises their territorial capital, including underused building stock and locally embedded knowledge, pursuing both improved access to services and local development through existing resources⁸.

However, scholars such as Rossitti et al. (2021) have highlighted limitations and complexities in the SNAI framework particularly in relation to context-sensitive decision-making and the definition of locally grounded strategies. They suggest that integrating quantitative data with local value systems could transform the strategy into a more place-based decision-support tool⁹.

In response to these concerns, this research develops a methodology aimed at capturing locally grounded perspectives and needs. The research model is applied to the Trompia Valley, a pre-alpine Inner Area in the Province of Brescia (Lombardy), with the municipality of Irma selected as a pilot case study. The valley has been included in the 2021–2027 SNAI funding cycle. Despite ongoing local challenges, several factors indicate potential for regeneration, particularly in emerging sectors such as organic farming, ecotourism, and youth-led initiatives. This inclusion in the SNAI provides financial support and strategic guidance, building on previous regional programs that aimed at reducing territorial isolation¹⁰. In addition, the valley benefits from the operational role of the in-house company of the Mountain Community of the Trompia Valley, which offers an institutional and operative framework for the development and management of infrastructure, heritage reuse, landscape, and architectural projects¹¹.

According to the latest available ISTAT data for 2026, Irma has 135 inhabitants distributed across five square kilometres. The municipality is situated in an elevated basin beneath Mount Ario and constitutes the smallest and least populous municipality in the valley (fig. 1). Its name likely derives from the Latin eremus (“isolated place”), reflecting a condition of remoteness that continues to characterize the area¹². Historically associated with forest resources and high-quality water, these features still influence and shape the landscape and local memory today. The history, artistic heritage, landscape, and traditions of Irma have been comprehensively documented in a volume published in 2014 by the Mountain Community of the Trompia Valley¹³.

At present, the village stands at a critical juncture, where signs of abandonment, including vacant and market-available buildings, coexist with emerging regeneration initiatives such as the restoration of Casa Corsini as a future tourism hub (figg. 2 and 3). At the same time, seasonal activities such as summer schools organised by the National Alpine Association at Casa dell’Alpino, along with recurring events, generate periodic inflows of visitors and encourage seasonal residents to return, sustaining a fragile yet tangible form of local vitality. Irma is therefore not treated as an exceptional case, but as a small-scale test field where minor heritage, social memory, landscape practices, civic and Alpine identities, and discontinuous forms of activation can be read together through a design-oriented research methodology.

The research adopts a mixed-methods case study design aimed at investigating how mnemonic fields emerge within obscured and marginal territories and how they can inform spatial readings of heritage. The study does not replace traditional research and field mapping, but builds on bibliographic and archival research, fieldwork, and mapping of the current built fabric as a baseline for understanding Irma’s historical, spatial, and material conditions. Its contribution lies in extending this baseline through a sequential framework that combines social survey data, qualitative responses, digital ethnography, and interpretative spatialisation, translating them into preliminary spatial and programmatic proposals. An analogous evidence-based orientation is found in recent public-space research that combines survey data, field observation, spatial analysis, and environmental psychology tools to relate perceived uses, temporality, and spatial characteristics to design criteria¹⁴.

The inclusion of digital environments as a research domain is grounded in scholarship highlighting their role in the co-construction of heritage. 

Scholars suggest that online communities actively contribute to shaping meanings of everyday landscapes and reinforcing collective memory processes¹⁵. Additionally, in contexts where formal documentation is limited, digital platforms and community-led networks provide access to informal narratives and situated perceptions of place, making them a relevant field for the scope of this research.

The framework is applied to the municipality of Irma through three sequential phases. The first phase consists of a structured social survey designed to capture locally grounded perceptions of cultural, natural, and built heritage. The survey engages residents, former residents, seasonal visitors, and individuals with varying degrees of attachment to the territory. 

Data collection was conducted over a two-month period aligned with seasonal population fluctuations, including holiday periods and the temporary return of seasonal inhabitants. A mixed distribution strategy combined printed questionnaires administered in situ with digital forms disseminated through social media channels. The dataset was collected and processed using Microsoft Forms and Microsoft Excel, employing descriptive statistical analysis for structured responses and inductive thematic coding for open-ended questions.

The second phase analyses, through digital ethnography, how the area is represented across municipal channels, regional tourism platforms, and related social media groups. The material was selected through purposive sampling and coded by theme, spatial reference, temporal distribution, and source type, enabling the identification of recurring narratives, representational patterns, and gaps in visibility.

The final phase integrates findings from the survey and digital ethnography through a comparative process aimed at constructing a mnemonic field, understood as a relational configuration where spatial practices, collective perceptions, and digital narratives intersect. This phase was not limited to comparing datasets; it also spatialised the coded results by associating recurring heritage values, narratives, and events with specific points of interest, routes, buildings, public spaces, and seasonal practices in Irma. This spatialisation provides the basis for the interpretative diagrammatic map discussed later in the article.

The methodology is conceived as a transferable interpretive tool for “reading” marginal and obscured territories, where heritage emerges from the interaction between everyday practices, collective memory, and digitally mediated representations. Within this framework, mnemonic fields operate as both an analytical construct and an interface between empirical observation and spatial interpretation.

The survey was administered through a structured questionnaire and collected 157 responses from a heterogeneous group comprising residents, former residents, seasonal visitors, and individuals with varying degrees of attachment to the territory, between mid-December 2025 and mid-February 2026. Although the dataset is numerically limited, it is meaningful in relation to the small scale of Irma’s population. The number of respondents who were permanent residents or domiciled in Irma corresponds to approximately one fifth of the municipality’s official population, while former residents, seasonal visitors, and tourists reflect the wider network of attachment that periodically sustains the village. The questionnaire results were also complemented by informal interviews and feedback collected during the research process, which supported the interpretation of the data. This section presents a selected subset of results focused on heritage perceptions, local aspirations for historic buildings, and engagement with cultural and communal activities.

In relation to spatial and heritage preferences, participants were asked to identify up to three places in Irma considered most significant. The Sentiero dell’ Acqua emerges as the most frequently selected site, followed by the Parish Church of the Holy Trinity and Casa dell’Alpino (figg. 4, 5 and 6). The results should be interpreted with caution due to some overlap between functional and symbolic site categories, which introduces limited interpretative ambiguity. Nevertheless, the overall pattern clearly prioritises environmental and socially meaningful places rooted in the cultural landscape.

Responses concerning local events indicate that cultural and communal activities are concentrated in a limited number of annual occurrences, typically two to three per year. Participation patterns closely follow this seasonal rhythm, suggesting that local social life is structured around periodic rather than continuous forms of engagement. Despite their limited frequency, such events are perceived as important mechanisms for reinforcing local visibility and sustaining connections with former residents and visitors from surrounding areas. Preferences expressed by participants highlight a strong orientation towards outdoor, cultural, and artisanal activities, indicating potential for the diversification and expansion of existing programming.

The optional open-ended questions added an important qualitative layer to the structured results, allowing participants to express proposals and concerns beyond predefined answer options. The responses were analysed through thematic coding and grouped into categories concerning landscape, built heritage, public amenities, services, infrastructure, tourism, governance, and events. The strongest recurring themes concerned the creation of commercial and shared spaces, landscape and natural environment protection, enhancement of public areas and amenities, and the development of year-round events, activities, and training courses. These responses show that local priorities are not limited to the preservation of individual heritage assets, but concern the creation of multifunctional spaces capable of supporting everyday services, social interaction and seasonal activities.

A subset of responses addressing built heritage further highlights a preference for preservation understood as active transformation rather than static conservation. Participants emphasise the restoration and reuse of existing structures, particularly abandoned residential buildings in the historic nucleus. This orientation is accompanied by proposals for the rehabilitation of both inhabited and abandoned buildings, supported by incentives and institutional measures capable of enabling long-term maintenance. In some limited cases, attention also extends beyond the village core to surrounding rural and alpine landscapes, including farmsteads, meadows, and alpine huts, indicating a multi-scalar conception of local identity. Civic and public spaces are also identified as key areas for intervention, alongside proposals to enhance the visibility of local history through interpretive tools and signage.

Overall, the survey identifies not only what is remembered as meaningful, but also what types of spatial and programmatic support are needed for reactivation. The results point to accessible public spaces, multifunctional civic nodes, landscape-based routes, reuse of existing buildings, and activities capable of extending collective life beyond occasional events. In this sense, the open-ended responses operate as an intermediate layer between heritage perception and spatial strategy, translating collective memory and local needs into preliminary proposals for reactivation.

This qualitative study employs digital ethnography to complement and cross-check the findings of the social survey through a thematic analysis of digital content produced between January and December 2025¹⁶. The selected timeframe captures a complete annual cycle and provides an up-to-date reading of Irma’s recent digital presence, enabling the interpretation of seasonal rhythms, recurring narratives, and representations of the territory that are not always recorded in official publications or historical sources.

The dataset comprises approximately 100 digital traces, including YouTube videos, articles, photographs, and social media posts from institutional and community platforms. Each item was classified according to source type, temporal and spatial reference, and thematic content. Given the very small scale of the municipality, the digital traces for one year were limited. Furthermore, the dataset was not intended to produce statistical representativeness or to exhaust all available digital traces. Rather, it was used as a qualitative and indicative sample to test the complementary methodological role of digital ethnography in identifying recurring narratives, seasonal concentrations, spatial references, and gaps in visibility. In this sense, the scarcity or absence of traces was also treated as a meaningful indicator of what remains weakly represented in the public narrative of the territory.

The material was then synthesised into four interpretive outputs: a catalogue of collected material, an asset synthesis, a gap–challenge synthesis identifying representational deficits, and a map connecting digital narratives, visual material, events, and activities to specific places and routes in Irma. Together, these outputs informed the relational and spatial reading developed in the following section.

The analysis indicates that Irma is represented less as a declining mountain settlement than as a territory where local traditions, civic identity, landscape practices, and emerging forms of socio-technical innovation coexist. Outdoor activities and environmental qualities are frequently associated with landscape routes and broader connections with the Maniva area and Mount Ario, while seasonal events and Alpine culture are strongly linked to Casa dell’Alpino through commemorative practices, school camps, and activities organised by the National Alpine Association. Civic and institutional communication, including initiatives promoted through the local library, further contributes to this image by introducing workshops and educational activities for children, students, and families.

When associated with specific places and routes, these traces also reveal asymmetries. Visibility is concentrated around recurring spatial anchors, including landscape routes, the Casa dell’Alpino, the Parish Church, the local library, and valley-scale slow-tourism networks. These traces also point to the informal or occasional use of public and civic spaces during events, commemorations, school camps, and seasonal gatherings. Conversely, local productive systems, artisanal practices, everyday services, and built heritage spaces remain less visible. Posts on infrastructural maintenance, particularly forestry management and roadworks, interrupt the promotional image but are significant because they document everyday territorial management, accessibility issues, and service conditions. These materials therefore help identify not only visible assets, but also temporary uses, operational needs, and underrepresented practices.

The synthesis of the asset and gap–challenge analyses reveals seasonal variation. Digital traces peak during structured events such as summer camps and holiday celebrations, while declining during the rest of the year. 

This fluctuation highlights the need to move beyond periodic visibility toward a more continuous representation and local promotion capable of sustaining engagement across seasons. At the same time, the prominence of nature-based experiences points to opportunities for strengthening Irma’s connection with wider eco-cultural and slow tourism networks, including the Eco-Museum of the Trompia Valley, the Greenway cycling routes, and the Maniva mountain area.

Overall, digital ethnography contributes not only to documenting how Irma is represented in the digital space, but also to identifying potential directions for reactivation. By connecting recurring narratives, spatial anchors, and temporary practices, the analysis supports strategies that link Alpine heritage, local traditions, landscape engagement, and social initiatives.

The findings of the research are translated here into spatial terms. In Irma, minor heritage is read as a relational system composed of landscape routes, civic spaces, seasonal practices, and underused buildings. Within this perspective, the built environment is understood not only as material inheritance, but also as a spatial repository of collective memory. 

The mnemonic field reconstructed through the methodology is therefore used as an active design resource: a spatial and relational configuration through which memory is distributed across the territory and can inform future reactivation strategies.

Constructed through the integration of survey data, open-ended responses, digital ethnography, and interpretative mapping, this field identifies where heritage values, local needs, and reactivation potentials intersect. The spatial map representing it operates as the main interpretative bridge between the empirical analysis and the design-oriented reading of Irma (fig. 7). It does not reproduce all the material collected, nor does it aim to provide an exhaustive cartographic survey. Rather, it selectively spatialises the main traces associated with key anchors such as the Sentiero dell’Acqua, the Parish Church of the Holy Trinity, Casa dell’Alpino, the village nucleus, informal public spaces, landscape routes, and abandoned buildings. In this way, the map functions as a site-specific interpretative tool, showing where collective memory, community practices, digital narratives, and spatial reactivation potentials overlap.

The integration of these layers clarifies how empirical evidence is translated into spatial interpretation. The structured survey identifies the Sentiero dell’Acqua, the Parish Church of the Holy Trinity, and Casa dell’Alpino as the main perceived spatial anchors. Open-ended responses refine this reading by highlighting priorities related to shared spaces, public amenities, environmental care, and more continuous cultural and educational activities. Digital ethnography adds a complementary layer, revealing how Alpine identity, institutional events, library activities, seasonal gatherings, and valley-scale tourism networks circulate through digital narratives.

Grounded in this spatialised reading, the three anchors inform preliminary design directions (fig. 8). The Sentiero dell’Acqua can be strengthened as a continuous ecological and cultural corridor conceived as a “line of water”, connecting the settlement nucleus with the surrounding landscape. Its reactivation could link the trail, watercourse, village fountains, and viewpoints through light infrastructure, interpretative signage, resting points, and low-impact amenities. In this way, the route would operate as both a walking path and a spatial connection between natural heritage, everyday village spaces, and the historical narratives associated with Irma’s water resources.

The area surrounding the Parish Church of the Holy Trinity can be interpreted as a civic and cultural node. The streets and small piazzas near the church are already occasionally activated during events, celebrations, and seasonal gatherings, but their everyday use remains limited. Public furniture, improved paving, shade, lighting, and small-scale design interventions could support more permanent forms of encounter, orientation, and collective use, without undermining their flexible character during temporary events. 

This would transform residual or parking-dominated spaces into a more continuous civic infrastructure.

Casa dell’Alpino can be reinterpreted as a hybrid social, educational, and landscape-related node. Rather than functioning mainly through periodic events, its programme could be extended through stronger spatial and functional connections with nearby underused facilities, including the adjoining park, the sports court, and the local library with its terrace, which already hosts occasional evening events and community activities. This cluster could support educational programmes, outdoor activities, cultural events, and intergenerational uses, connecting Alpine identity with everyday civic life and landscape-based recreation. Additional directions include the conservation and reuse of abandoned buildings for social, commercial, and creative purposes, the reactivation of local productive practices, the development of year-round programming to reduce seasonal dependency, and stronger connections with broader eco-cultural and slow tourism initiatives such as the Eco-Museum of the Trompia Valley and the Greenway project.

At the same time, these directions should be understood as preliminary spatial and programmatic strategies rather than final design solutions. 

Their implementation would require further assessment of financing opportunities, local capacity, community interest, managerial structures, and the long-term maintenance of interventions. Future development should also evaluate the material and immaterial impacts of these strategies, including their effects on everyday use, social cohesion, heritage perception, and possible “spillover” effects across the territory¹⁷. In this sense, the methodology does not replace design development, but provides a grounded framework through which communities, institutions, and designers can identify interventions which may produce meaningful and locally grounded forms of reactivation.

The spatial implications of this approach lie in targeted interventions that can generate wider local effects when they derive from a relational and evidence-based reading of the territory. In Irma, the application of the methodology translates research findings and interpretative mapping into design directions: reinforcing landscape routes as connective infrastructures between the village core and its surrounding environment; reconfiguring streets and piazzas as civic spaces for everyday encounter and temporary events; extending existing community facilities into multifunctional clusters; and recognising underused buildings as resources for future activation. 

The article therefore shows how selective and collective memory can bring marginal heritage “out of the dark”, transforming overlooked traces into operative resources for spatial design.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 101126643.

This research forms part of Anastasia Psoma’s doctoral studies, which are funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the authors only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the Research Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.