Beyond the Damage, the Reconstruction of L’Aquila

After twelve years from the earthquake which hit L’Aquila, it is time to evaluate its reconstruction from a qualitative point of view. The case of L’Aquila demonstrates how the persistence of the physical sense of a place, the numerous episodes of historical–artistic interest and the quality of the built heritage charac5 terise the historic centre as an irreproducible identity nucleus, on which to base the material and immaterial reconstruction. Particularly, nowadays this identity is compromised by interventions supported by anachronistic hopes of “recovery of the ancient splendour”, which reveal uncertain cultural assumptions and a misunderstood continuity with the past. With these premises, the research aims to investigate how the actors involved in the reconstruction of L’Aquila have chosen to shape the historic centre as if the earthquake had never happened. From the analysis of 13 case studies, a selective memory approach has emerged, which aims to remove the painful recollection of the catastrophe as an ordinary attitude in a post-disastrous phase. This approach is of reluctance to the architectural project as a tool of reinterpretation and renewal of the historic architecture, while it deals with the seismic vulnerability only through an engineering-oriented approach. A selected past is displayed while liquidating the value of the architectural addition, thus generating a mere copy of a presumed original city. The plethora of palimpsests is therefore lost—including the earthquake’s trace—as a result of the man’s secular inability to accept sudden changes. In L’Aquila, this emerges through the reconstructed monuments managed by the public institutions that have embraced this effortless procedure as a tool to prove their efficiency. On the other hand, one could wonder whether an “architectural absence” would be more meaningful or at least more reversible.