guttae: April 2008

Thursday 10 April 2008

Caponegri - A visitor's guide

The pattern, or rather patterns, of the town of Caponegri coexist in uneasy proximity. Ancient historical traces persist, juxtaposed with products of the industrialisation which briefly visited this isolated backwater. Creating discontinuities of scale, the variety of roofline and eaves height, silhouette and fenestration complements the staccato interpenetration of terrace, perimeter block and tower. Tracing a route from one to the next the visitor encounters passages from the urban past and the foundations of its future – the island block where new basements revealed a Roman plough - the stoa where tablet after tablet recalls the Polish exiles who built the market hall – the maze which commemorates the deportees.

Clouded by the epic shadows …
…through the thicket of its history…
…famed for the love of its citizens…
…in the music of its gardens…
…the atmosphere of tragedy…
…disputes over its sacred origins…
…to dance through the labyrinths…
…from the low comedy of the market…
…charting its urban astronomy…

Notwithstanding these narratives, the objective reality of Caponegri for citizens and travellers alike is the typology of its monuments. Despite the articulations of many of its buildings, they remain essentially dumb utilitarian forms. The rhetoric of architecture is expressed in the series of urban types which present a public face as belvedere, garden, camapanile, insula, colonnade, grotto, altar, maze and observatory.

What surprises the visitor is the delicacy with which the spaces of the city connect with one another. Blank gable walls initially repel the curious explorer only to prove to conceal intimate spaces adjacent to the vast arcuated portico of the station…