The Measured Opening: Enclosure, Permeability, and Urban Quietness

Abstract

This contribution investigates fitting as an operative paradigm through the regeneration of abandoned intra muros areas, focusing on former military complexes of monastic origin. Rather than addressing the building itself as the primary object of intervention, the research shifts attention to the enclosed open spaces that often characterize these sites. Due to their scale, location, and physical enclosure, these spaces frequently assume the spatial and symbolic qualities of the Hortus Conclusus: introverted, protected, and detached from the surrounding urban dynamics.

Within this framework, fitting is interpreted as a process of recalibration between closure and accessibility. Through the study of external references—particularly the Flemish Béguinages—the research explores how minimal and carefully positioned openings in the perimeter walls can generate new forms of permeability without dissolving the spatial identity of the enclosure. These interventions do not aim at full integration, but rather at a controlled negotiation between inside and outside.

The requalification of the internal open space thus becomes central: not as residual land, but as a spatial resource capable of hosting forms of collective quietness and urban pause within increasingly dense and accelerated environments. In this sense, the project engages with fitting as a practice of measure, where subtraction, limi- tation, and spatial specificity become design tools.

This approach is applied to the case of the former convent of Santa Maria della Ripa in Forlì, currently undergoing a process of transformation, positioning it as a testing ground for rethinking the relationship between enclosure, permeability, and inhabitation.