Il ruolo del disegno nei processi di progetto per la rigenerazione della città storicaLa fascia costiera a Napoli: dal porto monumentale al ponte della Maddalena

“The great cities keep in themselves the secrets that we barely know; or, when we gradually know them, they even more cover themselves with that secret that, being a secret, cannot be revealed” (A. Rossi 1988). And moreover, as a direct reference to the city of Napoli, Aldo Rossi affirms: “The image of Napoli is, maybe from always, the image of the sea; of an harbour which is both docking and boarding. This ancient, classical and pagan image of gentleness of waters and places is dominated by the unusual but universally familiar Vesuvio’s profile. All the coast, from Baia to Amalfi, including the islands, takes part in this image. It is a fixed image that we received since the nineteenth century, despite ugly things and demolitions […]. Other cities on the sea, Trieste, Odessa, Ancona, have a built front which identifies itself with the harbour; and they have another history and another beauty. The image of Napoli from the sea, or in the sea, belongs to this more complex drawing of places, works and conditions” (A. Rossi 1987). Aldo Rossi’s statements are referable and referred to the city of Napoli; they suddenly and magisterially reveals its real essence. The city’s urban iconography seems to be indissolubly connected to the relation with the line of water which has drawn the coast in the course of time; this relation has produced not only an urban vocation, but also a vocation of continuous landscape interference, together with the particular environmental condition. The particular orographic condition of the site, the lack of spaces in a densely built urban structure, the chaotic proliferating of buildings beyond the walls, the impossibility of the eastern expansion beyond the Aragonese walls in a zone which was flat but insalubrious, have always pushed the city towards the sea and its beaches, contributing to nourish the large literature about the beauty of Napoli’s strolls: “The Gulf, Pompei, the Vesuvio, Sorrento, Baia, Capri, ecc. … Everything is and will always be an enchantment; it will always attract onlookers of the two worlds […]” (Giulio Dary – J. De Laforest 1887). But reviewing the rich iconography of Napoli, it inevitably emerges how its relation with the sea, even if Napoli is a city that was bred by the sea and that was and is subjected to the «tropism of the sea», has gradually become flat until it has become a mere landscape episode; and its architectural signs, except those of the great castles, are lacking in their original role. Napoli was once an attraction, just thanks to the strength of the image that was perceived by the people who arrived from the sea, and thanks to the richness of its border. It is an extraordinary and problematic image which continuously confronts itself with the uniqueness of the natural conditions; it is an invisible barrier where the manifold components of an urban multitude, which is perpetually in contrast, thicken and manifest themselves. All the city’s history is conditioned by this relation, by the possibility of the dialogue that can be established between its hills and the gulf, that are the borders inside which the soul of this elusive reality throbs. Until the relationship between the city and its barycentre, that is the centre of the gulf and the sky of Capri, was lively, the city lived in a magic dimension; this dimension dissolved as soon as this contact was lost. Concerning the imago urbis of this city on the sea, the ‘border’ has a particular meaning: as a vocation, it is a belt where we have to intervene in order to eliminate the barriers and relaunch all the potentialities which are made available by the presence of the water element. It is just the recourse to the gnoseological and epistemological operation of Drawing, survey and representation that can guarantee a proper action of explorative research and rendering of the features that shape the quality of these spaces. According to this ample acceptation of control and management of the knowledge, architectural drawing becomes an irreplaceable proto-design moment; we would have to constantly refer to this moment during the elaboration of every correct program that is aimed at regenerating the city, and in particular the historical city where, more than in every other city, we will measure the value of the capacity of its projection towards the future.