Patrimonio archeologico affiorante: frammenti e Architetture

Emerging archaeological heritage: fragments and architecture Riccardo Florio The topic of collective memory is the basis for a specific reflection on issues about common heritage, in terms of assessing a commu- nity’s desire and ability to restore a shared reference point and memory of the past, whilst individual memory is built on partici- pation in transmission processes. Moreover, if memory is also regarded as “[...] endurance in the form of faithfulness to origins, rediscovery and revaluation of roots, reactualisation of the past, which is perceived and understood as a repository of seeds that have yet to bear fruit” (Ferrarotti, 1994); then art, especially figurative art, and the ancient roots of architec- ture are no more than a massive form of memory, reinterpreting the Past through the creation of its image. Among inherited Cultural Heritage, archaeological heritage takes on a multifaceted aura as a distiller of memories that hold and retain different temporalities: the time of Antiquity, the time of transformations, the time of stratifications, the time of neglect, the time of depredation and oblivion, and the time of revelation. An extremely fragile heritage – not just physically, but also in terms of the passing on of its witnessing presence – opens up a huge field of events that the complex and detailed unveiling process makes especially fertile as an active carrier of memories. The ruins appear as a stratified accumulation of art manifestations, hermeti- cally condensing multiple pasts whose “[...] enigma is doubled, exacerbating their beauty” (Augé, 2003). But memory – via its deeply reconstructive action of the past – reveals and, at the same time, conceals. Every memory carries within itself the risk of forgetting and the temptation of oblivion. We must ensure that it is questioned about its elusive relationship with oblivion. Ruins inevitably impose a sense of loss that becomes a new reality, i.e., an irreducible manifestation of their regained form in the present time, yet they continue to convey the yearning for a form that no longer exists. Nevertheless, the contemporary values expressed by an ancient artwork perpetuate an atonal reflection that fails to fully embody the features of its own time and comprehensively disseminate them. Today, our gaze contemplates a remarkably different status com- pared to how it was originally perceived. The ruins gather new shapes and a variety of signs to the point of portraying a time that has become matter, revealing itself. Looking at this missing and silent evidence through ever-changing eyes, we witness a gap between the initial perception and the current one. It sets a distance between a past and vanished meaning, and the incomplete-perceived present; the latter foreshadows the frailty of time, mutilated by reconstruction and restoration work, but also by attempts at ostentation and sensationalism. Ruins, due to their uniqueness and the multiple meanings they convey, share some common features with contemporary buildings. Among these, unearthing represents a constructive event clearly exemplified in worksites; here, the vertical dimension of building works, almost always in depth for archaeological excavations and upwards for new structures – except for the initial phases or special cases – conjures up many distant or recent pasts that in both cases shape pending spaces. The consistency of the ruin landscape, seek- ing to rediscover architectural traces and signs or even fragments of entire cities, necessarily merges with the spectacle of nature, thus lending it a temporal dimension. The persistent relationship between ruins and buildings under construction displays the ex- traordinary power of the construction act, establishing a provisional state of equilibrium where a temporal suspension between past and future crystallises and inexorably affects them. Contemporary construction sites have to pass through and over- come a stratification of presents to achieve their final form, knowing that any intermediate condition, unless overcome, can paradoxically result in imminent ruin. Ruins become a meaningful material for architecture and its design. Ruin stratification becomes the ineluctable root of memory layering, which is a necessary component of architectural prefiguration. Therefore, ruins become a complex and densely articulated whole that also crosses into the territory of the “unfinished”, by estab- lishing a relationship in terms of conceptual and material-formal proximity, once again, with contemporary architecture, intended as a physical expression of the layered construction comprising several new possible transmutations. This way, ruins move towards the present, breaking away from the static and settled condition they originally belonged to. Ruins and the “unfinished” are two apparently overlapping processes, implying that incompleteness – whether provoked or sought – firmly supports, on the one hand, an unexpected and un- precedented transformation and, on the other, an anticipated and then achieved idea of architectural design. The resonance point, where they meet without colliding, stands out as an absolute con- dition that expresses both a transitory arrival point and a potential restart for a historical process and a precise, anticipatory action. This seemingly fixed – i.e., perpetual and immutable – condition is fully revealed in one of the largest and most extraordinary ar- chaeological complexes in Southern Italy: the Archaeological Park of the Phlegraean Fields. Our study focused on a hypothetical outline that we have defined as the Constellation of Waters, comprising forty-five sites that are considered to have a direct connection with water: in terms of proximity, different usage (cisterns, thermae, reservoirs, under- ground conduits, sections of aqueducts, etc.). Twelve case studies and nine sites were thus identified for further study. Namely, the nine sites are all located in the area of Baia, with the sole exception of one in the area of Pozzuoli. On this basis, both during the on-site surveys and in the synthesis and interpretation/representation of the data acquired, we focused on the link that these heritage sites and architectural assets inter- weave, thus becoming territory, landscape, and city. We implemented an exploratory process that, in many cases, es- tablished a model for enhancing the configurative features exam- ined. This triggered further analytical and cognitive processes aimed at examining the “state-of-affairs” conditions, capabilities, and potentials for the study sites – interpreted both in terms of their paradigmatic contingency and of their worth as part of the overall complexity – in order to convey the identity code of the territorial and urban structure.