L'Aquila
At 3.32 am on the morning of April 6th 2009 the earth beneath L’Aquila in the Abruzzi region of Central Italy began to shake. The earthquake measuring 6.3 on the Richter scale buried 299 inhabitants under the rubble of their own homes. Within a few seconds 65,000 people had been made homeless and 1,500 injured. The newspaper headlines and images of devastation the next day were reason enough to launch this project, and made us think long and hard about makeshift housing, reconstruction and earthquake-proof building in general. Yet L’Aquila, its inhabitants and the rebuilding of the city remained our focus, as did the question of how the region could be revitalized and how people could be given back some of what they had lost. We travelled around the Abruzzo a month after the earthquake, speaking to the inhabitants, living in the tent cities and watching the anti-seismic and ecofriendly housing known by its Italian acronym C.A.S.E. being built. After a few months we decided which goals we intended to pursue and what principles would guide our planning: 1. Reconstruction on site: Ruins were to be preserved, made safe and supplemented with new elements. To avoid the many negative examples of reconstruction with which the history of Italy is littered we tried to integrate the historic building substance and ruins into our reconstruction concept so as to keep alive the old town and hence preserve L’Aquila’s identity. 2. Earthquake-proof building: The new structures had to be made earthquake-proof and to be built in such a way that they could also function as makeshift housing if necessary. 3. Concept to revitalize the city: Following the earthquake, those who could afford to left the city to make a new start elsewhere. In the space of a few weeks L’Aquila lost many doctors, lawyers, professors and teachers and other important members of the community for whom returning to the past was not an option. We sought to come up with exceptional concepts and ideas that would revitalize the city, secure its future and encourage interest. Since the Università degli Studi dell’Aquila had counted several thousand students in the years prior to the earthquake, a student “city within a city” seemed a good idea to us right from the start. The new structures were to be built of wood in order to boost the local timber industry and create jobs in the forests surrounding the city. Preserving the ruins would also make the city attractive to tourists, for this would render the city’s in some respects tragic history tangible, interesting and instructive. 4. Sustainability: As already mentioned, wood was chosen as the reconstruction material because of its sustainability, its suitability for earthquake-endangered zones and its “people-friendly” qualities. The many interviews we conducted with earthquake victims made us aware of how much people now fear stone and concrete, materials which had spelled death for many of their friends and neighbors. Some of those living in the tent cities could in fact have gone home after a few days but were too afraid to do so. Our plans, ideas and dreams for L’Aquila were many and ambitious, some of them no doubt utopian. In the end, however, we were able to draw up detailed plans only for a small part of the city, the San Pietro quarter. Using sketches, details, analyses and many models we tried to portray a new city that would carry the old one inside it and yet bring forth new life. Hence the thread running through all these elements in the city centre was the drive to stabilize the old and create something new.
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