Reading the Negative Form. Morphological interpretation of the Urban Space of Lanciano

The orography of the area surrounding Lanciano, in Abruzzo, is profoundly shaped by the Majella massif, whose descending rivers and streams carve the tuff terrain into a sequence of steep valleys and linear hills. The city’s expansion within this complex topography has produced a discontinuous and incoherent morphological structure, marked by long, undefined valleys that act as true voids in the urban fabric. These unbuilt areas, perceived as non-places, interrupt the continuity of the city and reveal the absence of a coherent spatial order. This paper aims to investigate how the negative space of Lanciano’s valleys can be reinterpreted as an active morphological matrix for reading and reconfiguring the city. The research draws on Luigi Moretti’s studies on the internal space of architecture conceived as a “specular and negative value, capable of encompassing both itself and its opposites,” extending this concept from the scale of the building to that of the urban system. Through the inversion of the full-void relationship, the project interprets the morphological discontinuities as potential generators of new forms of urban continuity. In this sense, the valleys emerge as latent traces, embodying what Peter Eisenman defines as the “presence of an absence”: a hidden structure that organizes perception and measure within the urban field. The reading of this negative morphology proposes a method for recognizing and reactivating the spatial order of cities shaped by fragmented topographies.