Authenti- City: a Project of Militant Design,

The paper describes the state of progress of the work presented at X Forum. It aims to identify the general indications for the militant design project which will be carried out in the market area of Porta Nolana in Naples. The theoretical basis of the project owes much to the ideas of Denis de Rougemont and the work of other personalists. It is also influenced by a series of case studies that refer to the practices of so-called spontaneous urban planning and, above all, to self-design as defined and practised by Enzo Mari in the 1970s. The design proposal is known as AuthentiCity, in which the notion of authenticity refers to its original etymological roots, namely being in control of oneself and thus responsible for one’s own actions. In this context, the Greek etymology is interesting because the word ‘authenticity’ derives from αὐϑέντης, i.e. author, the person who acts by him or herself and has authority over him/herself. Further references in the text underline the importance of multiple stories linked to the search for the spirit of places, such as the importance of objects - defined as relational devices - and as a contrast to official history which requires the carelessness of the interlocutor at least as much as the global market requires ignorance. The proposal related to the market area of Porta Nolana therefore involves a series of actions regarding both socio-economic management and the production of endogenous objects, through participatory workshops where knowledge-sharing is free.