Napoli: collina di San Giuseppe dei Nudi e Cavone/Naples: hill of San Giuseppe dei Nudi and Cavone

The critical inquiry of the urban area in question, whose expansion took place in the west area of the walls of Neapolis, requested its representation through a dynamic structure capable of containing at the same time the significance of building and stratification, fundamental methodological assumption also for a site whose original urbanization is certainly dated to that of the ancient city. «It is to know that before the year 1537 in this part there were only gardens and groves, with some delitioso casino of nobles, and this place, especially, was called Olimpiano [...]. This village could serve for a great city, [...] and to give notitia of the village’s parties, getting out from Porta Reale it is seen to the right the walls of the city with a part of the ancient wall made by Carlo Secondo [...]; to the left it is seen likewise the new wall that goes towards the village of Porta Medina. One sees from the same hand a road pulling up, that it is called Imbrecciata of Gesù Maria because it comes to this church» (Celano, 1962). The sensitive issues of the existing buildings’ protection and of their integration with the contemporary instances require devices capable of reading and represent the complexity of the sites, communicating effectively the sense of the multiple interrelations, overlaps, stratifications and mutual interference among the sedimented parts which makes it is possible to take possession of the global significance of the place. The program of critical reading and detection of the spatial and temporal overlaps arranged for the identification of the current’s transformation strategies of the area in question, has assumed as a necessary reflection for the subsequent determination of the data and design projection, the fundamental and intrinsic complementarity between the results of the exploratory and restitutive surveys and the design assumptions, made evident by the experience of detection in situ and the subsequent representation.