The building heritage of a territory - that is, everything that has been built in the course of centuries or millenniums - is the result of three interacting elements: man, environment and culture. Man is considered as a thread in a tissue of relations, in a long history which has seen moments of cooperation and confrontation, of fruitful peace and hard conflict. Climate has played a major role in determining how roofs were conceived of and planned, or how the proportion between solid and void was thought of (with the use of loggias, porches, arches, etcetera). Culture is to be considered not only as the expression of contemporary art forms, but rather as an expression of the manifold activities of man (both material and intellectual); therefore it also includes the various ways houses were conceived of and devised - and in the Upper Adriatic the house has always represented a value both for individuals and the community. The project thus envisages the cataloguing of the historical buildings having a productive function, which can be found on the territory at issue: mills, tobacco dryers, brick furnaces, cellars, saltworks, oil mills, port structures and warehouses, blacksmiths workshops, hydraulic structures (for example in the Theresian reclamation area), farms with important lodges. A digital database collects a detailed graphic and/or photographic documentation about the building heritage considered. The results will be divulged through the publication of a catalogue formed by cards, a documentary travelling exhibition and a series of symposiums.