Borgo Appio

The Borgo Appio Settlement in Grazzanise_ The Borgo Appio rural settlement in Grazzanise, near Caserta, was built starting in 1940 within the framework of a wider colonization campaign. lt was sponsored by the ONC, the organization of war veterans, which undertook several similar actions in the souther region of Campania. Beyond serving as a residential and productive settlement for new inhabitants, it had to become a point of reference for the wider agricultural landscape sur- 174 roun ding it. The project was drafted by Mosè Tufaroli and Emanuele Filiberto Paolini, both of whom had authored other similar interventions in the previous years, and was expected to be completed by 1941, but the outbreak ofWorld War 11 left many parts incomplete. The settlement, which was originally intended to host 500 residents, was conceived as a small, selfsufficient rural community, comprising housing, public buildings and a chu rch. Ali buildings, following the guidelines of autarchie building practices ofthe time, are designed using a simple architectural language inspired by Mediterranean villages, using locai materials and reducing the use of high-cost techniques such as steel or reinforced concrete construction. The urban layout is linear and well-balanced, concentrating ali public buildings on the centrai square and locating residential areas in direct connection with the agricultural land. After construction halted in 1941 the settlement was damaged during the war and suffered further alterations in the following decades, leading up to its current state of disrepair. The regeneration project born from the idea to recover the remains of Borgo Appio through an hypothesis of completion and expansion of the residential part. For the pre-existing, the project aims to a volumetrie reconstruction of the demolished parts and a symbolic recovery of the representative buildings that surround the square. The western part, according to the project of '39, is used as part of residential building with single houses aggregated together. The settlement pattern is of the plate type elevated from the ground, corroded and pierced by numerous courts, both public and private, in order to read , through a series of perforation, the different layers thai make up the complexity of the structure.