Vernacular architecture offers valuable technological and typological solutions rooted in knowledge systems that connect environmental, social, economic, and cultural contexts. This paper introduces the Heritage for People Platform, a collaborative digital tool developed under the VerSus+ project (Creative Europe Program), aimed at organising and disseminating vernacular architectural knowledge with a focus on sustainable practices that are both culturally and environmentally conscious. The platform builds upon lessons learned from similar projects, offering key improvements such as the adoption of a Case-Based Reasoning methodology, which organises examples by geographic location, materials, and intervention types. A structured classification system based on sustainability principles and strategies enables cross-disciplinary research and comparison. The design process was highly participatory, incorporating user feedback at every stage to ensure the platform is accessible to a wide range of users, including designers, scholars, craftspeople, and the general public. A cross-device, user-centered approach further broadens its accessibility. The platform provides a public, web-based geospatial repository where users can create, update, and explore a dynamic collection of artefacts, design models, people, and institutions from across the globe. This tool marks a significant advance in promoting and preserving both physical and intangible heritage, with strong educational and practical applications for sustainable architecture. The paper details the theoretical framework and real-world potential of the platform as a critical resource for promoting sustainability in the built environment.

Case-based reasoning is a cognitive model developed to explain how people reason in problem solving. According to this model, a person resorts to knowledge and strategies used in the past to solve or understand a problem that is similar to the current one. Case-based reasoning applied to design is called case-based design. La conoscenza per il progetto explains the scientific reasons and why knowledge is crucial to be a good designer and proposes a method for analysing, breaking down and archiving cases of architecture and design (but not only), the typical knowledge of designers, in order to be able to consciously reuse it in a new project.