Luigi Cosenza’s Experiments: from City to Prefab

In the planning activity of Luigi Cosenza there are numerous opportunities for urban planning reflection addressed both to Naples and to the entire Campania region. Each time he elaborates a model of intervention aimed at redefining the ancestral relationship between man and the physical environment. The territory analysed by Cosenza reported within an exact cartographic space, includes a multiplicity of other factors related to the ways of living and inhabiting contemporary space. The paper will analyze the urban projects of Cosenza from 1940 until 1959, year of participation in the Ciam Congress in Bergamo, where he will interpret the grid proposed by Le Corbusier. The Naples framed in the scheme goes beyond the functionalist approach of the "plan" traditionally intended, renouncing the description by homogeneous zones and preferring, rather, the anthropocentric reading that frames the territory as a living system, full of history, human and landscape values. From the urban scale, proceeding in descending order, the grid of Naples identifies the contexts of experimental building realized with the technique of prefabrication. The industrialization of this sector is considered a priority in planning the growth of cities, and Naples, in the innovative vision of Cosenza, is no exception.