Department of Civil Engineering

5th Nov, 2015

Location of dept ingegneria 2.jpg

Meeting with Mario Centofanti, 27th October

'Città e Storia', 'L'Aquila Città di Piazze', 'Un Palazzo, Una Città', 'L'Aquila i Palazzi', 'L'Aquila 1753-1983 - il restauro dell città'... all titles of some of the most famous and important books on L'Aquila - and all written, edited, or with contributions by Mario Centofanti. Of course, these are only a sample of his many publications, which cover in detail the architecture, historical development, and culture of L'Aquila. Needless to say, they have been a great source for a significant part of my research on this city.

Centofanti is a professor of Architectural Design at the Faculty of Engineering, University of L'Aquila. I met him at the Department of Civil Engineering alongside his colleague Stefano Brusaporci, an associate professor at the department. There was a significant language barrier unfortunately, due to my very poor Italian! However, with the help of some pre-prepared questions and translations through Brusaporci, we had an extremely interesting meeting that was very useful for my design project.

In particular, Centofanti and Brusaporci provided me with information about the historical development of my site. They also added some considerations for the design, such as ways of acting within certain buildings based on their current condition and use pre-quake. Their suggestions for my overall thesis topic were intriguing, as they felt that this was interesting approach to the city's reconstruction, but that the connection I make between my identification of the cultural heritage of the local people and the design should be very careful and clear. Additionally, they felt the scope of the thesis and design topic is too broad and these should be narrowed down through certain constrains; for example, by only dealing with the public buildings on my site and not the private ones.

One other point quite unrelated to the content of this meeting, was the location of the meeting itself. The Department of Civil Engineering is, as with all the other departments of the University of L'Aquila, located outside the historic centre in the city's sprawling periphery. This particular department is in the Nucleo Industriale di Pile (industrial park) to the south west of the historic centre, and close to the shopping centre L'Aquilone. It was in this location even prior to the earthquake, so the problems associated with it cannot be attributed to the 'quake. It is only accessible by car; as I'm now aware, the public transport drops you far from the department on a busy main road with no pavement. The buses stop early, so that Centofanti even offered to drive me back to the historic centre to avoid walking along the dangerous roads in the dark. It is totally unclear why this department - and the others in similar locations - are not in the historic centre, or not taking advantage of the now empty city to move there, as a way of repopulating the centre and providing much more accessible places to study.

LAquilone car park.jpg The car park of L'Aquilone, where there is the main bus stop for the industrial park and the Faculty.

A note about L'Aquilone, too. This shopping centre is from before the earthquake, however before it was quite unpopular and close to closing. Now, it is one of the liveliest places in the city, and a particular centre for young people to meet and spend most of their free time. The area around L'Aquilone has also been developed now, with more large shops and supermarkets. This is a direct consequence of the closure of the historic centre post-earthquake; unable to access their usual cultural and social spaces, the displaced residents of L'Aquila were forced to find alternative places to meet. A similar shopping centre nearby also gained new-found popularity post-quake as it was close to one of the tent camps for displaced citizens in the immediate 'quake aftermath. Despite its popularity, most people feel that L'Aquilone is a terrible alternative to their historic centre and not a pleasant place to be.

Uncaught Exception

Uncaught Exception

Function get_magic_quotes_gpc() is deprecated

Origin

system/boot.php on line 41

Trace

#0 [internal function]: System\Error::shutdown()
#1 {main}