City and Architecture. Marginality and reappropriation. The case of Cavone in Naples

Contemporary town calls for a peculiar attention nowadays. Its text exegesis, written by history through stratified emersion of its becoming, is requiring a critical interpretation in order to understand its final state, which is expressed by the forms of its contemporaneousness. The connected operations of interpretative reading and dynamic representation put us in the privileged condition of catching deeper meanings which are translating terms such as latent information into manifest information. Those are suggesting possible scenario(s) to define suitable and well-balanced intervention’s strategies. If Survey is not only collecting data and Representation is not only an empiric restitution of information through sign vocabulary, Survey and Representation together are a complex operation to prime a process of stratified knowledge in order to delete hampering parameters to the unveiling identity of a place, of its characterizing components, of interferences (meaning genetic crossing-over), all of which are marking the place’s belonging to town and to environment. It is like looking for a subtle and hidden vein within which the town’s genoma is flowing. It means referring to this to be able to imagine and think over that place’s identity renewal and the criteria to confirm and consolidate the spirit of its domain. The experience I would like to propose as a good practice is that concerning the study of “Cavone” area in the city of Naples. This area was at first a river-bed and then a tufa quarry until XVIII century. It was situated outside city walls in front of what was once called Largo Mercatello. Today the area has been totally absorbed by the tumultuous plot of contemporary urbanization. It is a difficult area, as far as its morphological origin, its urban character, its social and living conditions. This area is pervaded by an atavic imprimatur of degradation and marginality (less) which is imposing at this time the promotion of a total regenerative action (more) in order to bring back town’s role of strategic relevance as a whole