[Strategies for] Reconstructing Lost Grounds
Group Project
The historic centre of Naples is in an uncontrolled state of decomposition. Objectives, bodies, and frameworks operating under the guise of conservation, including UNESCO, obfuscate roles and responsibilities, and even facilitate urban decay through unrealistic restoration requirements, neglect, and mismanagement. Designations assigned to numerous sites (typically religious buildings) has created a city of buildings which cannot be touched, and sites which have become abandoned. Restorations either require lost skills, impractical (or environmentally inappropriate) materials, or expensive processes. Local papers report that conservation bodies have enforced the closure of approximately 200 churches, leading to their abandonment. Some have since been looted, some never received funding, some received funding but works never started, others closed for restoration and never reopened. This has persisted for so long that that city residents are advocating for the recall of the UNESCO status to "allow the city to protect its treasures.” Reconstructing Lost Grounds identifies 27 sites in the Centro Storico most in need of repair and imagines an alternative restoration project for Naples. Framed through three voices within an architectural design agency, the Agency for a New Neapolitan Repair-Scape, these projects ask whether an indigenous architectural solution can provide a new perspective on how to revitalise historic Naples. These three voices test and develop sustainable strategies that can be applied to abandoned urban buildings. Each iteration improves this 'toolkit', providing an agile and evolving response to the uncertain state of the city.
(Right: Studiolo for the Agency for a New Neapolitan Repair-Scape)
