The Scent of the Sea in Stone

architects Carlo Di Gregorio, Domenico Potenza, Marco Volpe
project The Restructuring of Corso Mazzini, Grottammare, Italy
written by Carlo Pozzi

photo Alberto Muciaccia

We are no longer dealing with the expansion of cities, of new building volumes that just occupy territory, of an urban spread that overlaps rural areas, of mega-shopping centres that divert attention to alleged new hubs. On the coast of the Middle Adriatic, these signs are clear: parallel belts of infrastructure, houses, and hills face the sea and run monotonously from north to south; from the train it is possible to see the pieces of a chil­d’s toy construction set (Silvia Balle­stra, Compleanno dell’Iguana, Milan, 1991); and, amidst the houses, there ra­rely appear the renewed signs of public space to tell us what being outside means today for the contempo­rary inhabitants of comfortable homes equipped with all the requirements of the Corbusian machine, soon to be telematic with plasma images pretty much everywhere.