The sense of time immemorial, of traditional customs and independent character, of the passion for life and respect for nature all bear on the historical, geographical, and cultural wealth of this mountainous region. Within this context, the villages represent Abruzzo’s most original achievement.
In 1982 on the occurrence of the Festival of Musicarchitettura in L’Aquila, honouring Canada, I met Architect Pino Chiarizia.
He wasimpressedbythe exhibit on Canada’s performing spaces and wondered if they would last as long as the stone walls of the villages of Abruzzo.
He extendedan invitation on a tour of villages that dotted the mountainsides and ended in a walled town on a knoll sprouting out of a verdant plain.I crossedthe southern gate and found myself in a vernacular place that spanned centuries. Castel Camponeschi, a medieval walled village ofthe 13th century epitomized the character of the land and its people.
A small graffiti depicting soldiers of a bygone era was partly covered by thorny vines that sprouted from a pile of crumbling stones.
I walked through the silent, depopulated, and wireless alleys. Silence substituted for the vernacular has travelled over the centuries. All this made an indelible impression on my architectural sensibility.
A few years later, I returned to L’Aquila for the opening of the astrophysical laboratory deep in the Gran Sasso, the highest peak of the Apennines. In its cavernous spaces,scientists from many parts of the world would conduct experiments with particles seeping down the ‘crack’ in the mountainreducing the flow of cosmic rays.
In the laboratory, the sound of ‘celestial silence’ from the far reaches of the universe could be heard.
A few days later I met with Pino at the Tre Marie restaurant. He told me that he had begun working onplans to restore Castel Camponeschi. The possibilities inherent in the undertaking were of immense cultural importance albeit with potential recurrence into oblivion without a clear and defined utilization.
The importance of the laboratory was front and centre in my mind as I gently savoured risotto ‘allo zafferano.’ I suggested the bringing together of the cosmic reaches of the universe with the historical findings of the medieval village. The former is a rarity to be discovered, the latter an irreplaceable rarity. Where the past and future structures become didactic as well as offer aesthetic values. As a result, we agreed to work together and independently.
Its organic rectangular size compares to a Toronto geometric city block of the 20th century without vehicular traffic.
I imagined the abandoned ‘abitazioni’ as living quarters; the few stables, the stench of manure long aired away, would be tuned into recreational facilities; a town half for meetings and conferences would be built on the open space and the deconsecrated church, its saints liberated, would continue its role as a place of meditation. The medieval town walls would remain with its open gates as a sanctuary from the chaotic modernity of the present. The ‘low’ architecture of the medieval village would fuse with the highest science of the cosmos. Eventually, some restoration was achieved under Pino’s direction, but as is often the case in Abruzzo as elsewhere, without political imagination and acumen, and in this instance scientific interest, the initiatives came to a standstill.
The stone walls of the village echo medieval reminiscences, while the Quindar tones from remote space reach the astro laboratory. The romantic village and the scientific laboratory working together would announce better things to come.
