The Architectural Language of Contemporary Bell Towers for the Knowledge and Enhancement with Extensible Structures: The Case Study of the Loggetta.

In the broad panorama of slender structures, contemporary bell towers, built since the mid-twentieth century, have assumed iconic value within the global and local architectural landscape. New reasons led in the last century to define the contemporary building languages of sacred works (church-bells), thus determining the architectural characteristics of contemporary bell towers and, arising from post-modern stylistic influences, as well as in line with new religious directives. Hence, the typological analysis of contemporary Neapolitan bell towers that differ from the traditional ones and assume ‘different’ im-plants for each of them in terms of shape, size, volume, materials, and construction characteristics. Case study of the bell tower of the Immaculate Parish of Lourdes, known as the Loggetta bell tower (Fuorigrotta district of Naples) and built during the extensive INA-Casa project (1956) by architects M. Capobianco (1921–2005) and G. De Luca (1912–2004), provides the insertion of rod and node structures, extendable in height, along the south and east fronts. In conclusion, the proposed analysis is aimed at a knowledge in terms of form and geometry of contemporary bell towers, which although built in recent times, need interventions of knowledge, conservation and valorization, here described through the case-study above but extensible to other examples of the same ‘architectural category’.