Potenza. Windows on a vertical city

Potenza, capital of the region Basilicata, could be an opportunity to reflect on the architecture of the Italian contemporary city. The city, of medieval origin, was the object of an uncontrolled urban development after the 1980 Irpinia earthquake that caused its’ current configuration. Nowadays, due to the growing interest in the protection of historic centers, “the real landscape is duplicated in an imaginary landscape and this allows its destruction in real life and its preservation in our imagination” (Purini, 2008). We should ask ourselves if there is another method of intervention that allow us to act consciously on the existent. Every Italian city has its own architectural identity dependent on its geographical belonging: the North “produced genetic attention for the plan [...] the center of the peninsula absorbed the theme of section”, the South is characterized by the attention to the elevation and the landscape (Purini, 2008). The city of Potenza constitutes an exception in relation to the neighboring capitals, such as Bari and Naples. Developing in height, rising to 819 meters above sea level, Potenza has little to do with the Mediterranean architecture that characterizes the Southern Italy. Its orography imposes types of research that come close to the characteristics of the towns of the central Apennines. Therefore, it is necessary consider Potenza a city with an identity strongly characterized by the landscape but also by attention to the section and, consequently, to the vertical connections. Generally, in lowland and hilltop towns, the connections between the voids of the city are given by the distance covered by the road and by the identification of a vertical landmark. In Potenza this procedure is reversed and the main connection theme is identified by the climbing ladders and by the arrival space defined through the architectural wings. The studies carried out in sculpture by Consagra, offer an important input that resides in the two-faced buildings where “the viewer is driven not to fix the attention on the work from a single point of view, but to implement a reflection considering the vision from the other part”. (Di Milia, 1996) The paper aims to study the verticality that characterizes Potenza and to put it into a system with the studies conducted by Consagra. The goal is to find an answer for contemporary architecture that is able to propose project possibilities for the city that put identity and memory at the center of research.