Dalla inversione degli sguardi al ridisegno dei campi geografico-relazionali

Moving away from the emergency areas, investigated in the context of Villard:16 Pozzallo. Strategic territories. Ancient landings and new destinations of freedom”, the design seminar Villard:17 “Reverting the views/landings. Migrations, welcoming, interculturality. The architecture of the new centralities” proposes as area of didactic experimentation what remained of the last impressive ‘monument’ to multiculturalism: the Mostra d’Oltremare which together with the “Istituto dei figli del popolo” testifies to the largest interrupted project of modern Naples. The proposal is to be understood in resonance with Ian Chambers’ studies on the phenomenon of postcolonialism. In fact, the choice of these areas in itself fueled the oxymoron according to which Naples, marked in its history by physical transformations induced by a widespread multiculturalism, is inhabited in the contemporary world by migrant communities who seem not to find representation in its forms. The Neapolitan metropolitan city therefore offered itself as an unprecedented and exceptional field of reflection for investigating the existing and potential spatial repercussions of a controversial and sometimes conflictual urban coexistence. After five years, that experience remains indicative of the potential of the architectural project to seize the opportunities of the spatial transformations induced by migratory phenomena to regenerate the geographical-relational fields making use of the fertile fragment/landscape dialectic. The enhancement of the Villard:17 experience must contemplate an expansion of the overlook that goes beyond the administrative boundaries of the metropolitan city to include regional realities connected by semantic or use relationships, to detect and manage meaningful dialogues between heterogeneous landscapes.