Un collegamento tra oriente e occidente: la cerniera urbana di Posillipo e Davide Pacanowski

Posillipo Hill is one of the most beautiful places of Naples, where it is possible to enjoy amazing views on the Vesuvio and Ischia, Capri and Procida islands. Nevertheless, it is also a side of the city, which has played an important role in the modern development of Naples during the 20th century. Since Roman period, Posillipo was the favourite location of luxury residences and, at the same time, the urban hinge connecting the east area of the city to the west one. Between the beginning of the 1930s and the second half of the 1970s, however, a new residential neighbourhood was built along Posillipo Hill’s slopes as symbol of the rising “upper middle-class city”. Some of the best architects of the Neapolitan Modernism were selected to design houses, villas and “palace-condominiums”. The Polish architect Davide Pacanowki worked in this cultural context and in Naples he could practice his excellent knowledge of reinforced concrete. On the Le Corbusier’s and Roth’s footsteps, he built masterpieces marked by lightness of spaces, wide overhang terraces, bold structures, pilotis stuck in tuffaceous benches, roof gardens, horizontal windows, white volumes and Mediterranean shapes. The Neapolitan architectures by Pacanowki are good examples of the so-called “Italian Style”.