Alexandra Kingwell

Serenalla Iovino describes Naples as a body, “a mineral-vegetal-animal aggregate of porous bodies,” an amalgam of “mythical bodies” and “living human bodies.” In/Intra/Post Murum extends this reading of the city-as-body to the ecologies of the contemporary body-landscape, in which the sites of illegal dumping are increasingly associated with reduced life expectancy and respiratory problems. It proposes a series of ‘laboratories’ along the line of the city wall to re-connect the city and landscape through the body. Recalling the frescoes above the city gates which marked the end of the plague in 1656, and drawing a line between the belief in miasmas and contemporary respiratory illnesses, the first of these laboratories explores treatments for the respiring body-landscape. It sits within the former Stazione di Napoli al Carmine, adjacent to Porta Nolana station. Amenities serve commuters (a launderette, a garden to shelter, a café to wait for trains) and a respiratory clinic above a garden promotes 'good air'. A workshop manufactures panels from sheeps' wool to be used as an insulant and air filter. A second 'laboratory' gathers food testing facilities and a market for a seasonal sheep fair within Piazza Mancini. Both connect architectural gestures and anatomical features. New skins parallel the city wall, acting as membranes through which people and goods might pass. Softer grafts patch the old station and re-surface Piazza Garibaldi. Breathing spaces protected from wind-driven pollutants form sheltered gardens, with water systems generating humidity. Architecture becomes part of the body-landscape, cleaning, tending for, and repairing that landscape.