Reconnecting N AP LE S Back to Nature
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reconnecting NAPLES Archis RSVP#12A post-industrial fringes of the city, the spatial and the social program Naples - 15-18 February 2008 - open research/editorial event with VOLUME and DOMUS Naples: a porous modernity Participation in Naples? Reprogramming Diary From a Scarred City Under the Volcano ...is participatory planning a serious the Outskirts ..a 31 days journey splashed with in- ...To speak in and of Naples is to feel option to get things going in Naples?... ..Smith and Barracco won’t rely on timacy and real news by novelist bound to a overwhelmingly historici- Maria Palestino has some doubts, large-scale reconversion. Instead they Riccardo Brun and his breaking por- zed place.... Francesco Ceci believes in the poten- propose a tactics of ‘micro-systems’. trait of Napoli.. Iain Chambers on page 6 tials. read more on page 10 read more on page 11 read more on page 3/15 Back to Nature Domus Editor-in-Chief Flavio Albanese advocates total abandonment of the Naples East area for the next 50 years. Mr Albanese suggested that all attempts to convert the area into a nice and prosperous housing district, better be stopped. “Let nature do its work” Read more on page 8/9 ph. Danilo Capasso, ph. >> 02#intro coastline, although both make a more a future beyond the disparate condi- ‘sun city’, Naples as ‘transport hub’ operation with a number of specialists have a chance of succeeding. That also viding insight into current develop- substantial contribution to the city’s tions of oil storage and abandoned for the Mediterranean. at his university demonstrates that the makes N.EST an interesting organiza- ments in urban space and urban economy. industrial complexes interspersed The necessary massive infrastruc- ability to come up with an integral vi- tion for others. conditions via this kind of explora- with half-demolished apartments tural transformations, the revision of sion at the urban and regional levels N.EST’s invitation to Volume and tion, as far as Volume is concerned For all that, Naples’ transformation and old villages. These areas could water management, and tackling soil is not the problem. Likewise, local Domus to come to the city for an this makes especially clear that the from a trade and industry city to a serve to relieve the city center’s over- and air pollution are assignments debate about participatory planning open editorial meeting has resulted city is too important to leave to the service and knowledge-based econo- crowding. The space is there, but for which can only be effectively han- shows that administrative reform and in this journal. It represents perspec- professionals alone. my has taken place only in dribs and the time being it is occupied by an dled centrally. That does not mean the search for effective implementa- tives on (principally) the eastern part drabs. It’s no wonder that they are extensive, polluting, irritating and that small-scale, local, even personal tion strategies is also under discussion of Naples by Neapolitans themselves. Arjen Oosterman is Editor in Chief striving to boost touristic and busi- even dangerous industry. Invest- initiatives – one’s that make a differ- in Naples. Where there is a fundamen- In addition to the importance of pro- and Publisher of Volume ness traffic. Having been awarded the ing in creative industries, which are ence – aren’t possible. If something tal lack is in the ability to cultivate 2013 UNESCO Culture Forum, they always thirsty for unconventional is pressing then show that an idea support and enthusiasm via execu- are now seeking to set in motion an locations and accommodation, is a and initiative can also be actualized, tion. Doing by making. ph. Massimiliano Rianna, MADRE Project Room during the Volume vs. Domus event Olympic Games-style economic im- seductive possibility here in order can also have practical effect. In that regard N.EST (Napoli East) pulse directed principally at the west- to stimulate transformation. This is There is an enormous amount of is a promising initiative. As a cultural ting ern part of the city (where the steel the formula which has been put in knowledge, insight and experience art collective and with the ‘project Diary From a Scarred City reconnec EDITORIAL industry was based). They expect to place all across old Europe in order available locally in municipal servic- room’ in the contemporary art mu- P L ES be able to develop a leisure coast with to give formerly urban industrial ar- es, at the university and among pri- seum Madre as its base, N.EST can Riccardo Brun N A A conference centers and a cultural pro- eas a second life. Yet more is needed vate groups. The urban architectural work on consciousness-raising and Archis RSVP#12 Connecting Naples file. The prospects for the eastern part for this transformation than a few research and design (Econeapolis) creating dialogue as well as develop 1-7th January: Pianura on fire Arjen Oosterman of the city, the focus of this journal, is empty factory complexes. One can done in the 1980s by professor of ideas which by virtue of its non-insti- I wake up on the 1st of January, at four in the afternoon, cut my hair far less clear. They are searching for think of other scenarios: Naples as architecture Aldo Loris Rossi in co- tutional background and marginality down to zero, to trim, to define, cut my beard too, I drink lots of water, Colophon In a globalized world Europe is of- look out of the window of my house in Fuorigrotta, and I’m confronted ten seen as a homogeneous block. Yet by the so-called Rubbish Emergency in display in full bloom. The foreign within the continent there are amaz- press is beginning to get interested, probably because of its strong sym- ingly large contrasts and differences. Reconnecting Naples: Moreover, this is not just true regard- bolic charge: the south of Italy is drowning in its own rubbish. For years Archis RSVP#12 A ing the newcomers to the ‘European actually, factories from the North of Italy and other Europeans country, Is a supplement to VOLUME #15 family’. Worlds of difference exist have been dumping their industrial waste around Naples, and this gives us This publication is a co-production of even among the oldest occupants of the feeling of being citizens of the world, projected toward the future. N.EST Napoliest and the Archis Foundation the European house. Take Naples, It- The rubbish disposal Emergency is fourteen years old, which makes it aly’s fourth largest city. Of course it’s Editorial Board: an old culture with a Roman and even quite inappropriate to call it an emergency. What has actually been lasting Arjen Oosterman editor in chief a Greek past (Neapolis), later ruled fourteen years is a bureaucratic procedure that enables local adminis- Diana Marrone editor at large by Ostrogoths, Byzantines, Normans, trations, by using the term Emergency, to manage huge sums of money Christian Ernsten and Lilet Breddels editors Spaniards, French, you name it! The Danilo Capasso design and art director and pass acts and procedures which would be impossible in an ordinary city has been nodal within a web of administration regime. historical and political relations; one Texts by: thinks here of the ‘Kingdom of Na- The streets covered in rubbish bags are the consequence of 14 years Flavio Albanese, Sila Barracco and Mauro ples’. It sees itself as umbilicus mundi of superficiality, corruption, incapability. The rubbish is overflowing, spill- Smith, Matteo Belfiore, Gilda Berruti and [the world’s navel], or at least as the Francesco Ceci, Luca Borriello and Salvatore ing, it turns the air foul: the picture that hundreds of photographers are center of the Mediterranean world. Velotti, Riccardo Brun, Iain Chambers, presently taking shall remain an un-perishing memory. New Year’s Eve’s But for non-Neapolitans the city lies Gigiotto Del Vecchio and Stefania Palumbo, refuse adds on to the mass of non-picked rubbish: let-off fireworks as far off the beaten track, outside the Diana Marrone, Antonio Niego, wall as faulty unexploded ones, broken chairs and bottles, soak clothes. Arjen Oosterman, Maria Federica Palestino, tumult of European politics. The Saverio Pesapane, Aldo Rianna, relative isolation of the mezzogiorno The night toll is one person dead, over a hundred wounded people, and Fabrizio Tramontano [southern Italy] is always present and a hundred fires. Thus 2008 starts here, in the scarred city, province of the active. Only in times of disaster, like Empire. There are riots in the morning of January the 2nd in the areas Images and drawings by: the 1980 earthquake or Mt. Vesu- of Pianura, Naples West, where since the 29th of December there is a Danilo Capasso, Sila Barracco and Mauro vius’ threatening rumblings (natural Smith, Alessandro Cimmino, disasters always attract attention and permanent sit-in of citizens in opposition to the opening of a new site for Roberto Conturso, Danilo Correale, are mediagenic), does Naples claim depositing ‘eco-bales’ (bales of compressed garbage) in Contrada Pisani, Giovanni Ferrarelli, Annalisa Ferrari, N.EST, the center of international attention. a rubbish-dump closed eleven years ago. Riots start when the police tries Antonio Niego, Saverio Pesapane, Aldo The recent garbage scandal made to dislodge the demonstrators. They shall not leave. Rianna, Massimiliano Rianna, news the world over; it fascinates and During the night of January the 3rd an ANM Bus – ANM is the city’s Fabrizio Tramontano, Salvatore Velotti is simultaneously played out outside the bounds of what ‘we’ in a Western, transport company – is set on fire. The following morning four ANM Translators: regulated society know; recognition is buses with flat tires are positioned by demonstrators so as to block Sean Altamura virtually out of the question.