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The Two Faces of Matera: Diachronic Narratives of Changing Perspectives on Heritage

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Spatial Tensions in Urban Design

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Abstract

In the early 1950s, the Italian city of Matera gains international prominence with the label of “national shame” attributed to the case of the Sassi, inhabited caves excavated in the local ravine. In a decade, it was transformed into the manifesto of Post-World War II development, in relation to the research and building programs of the National Institute of Urban Planning and the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, promoting new neighborhoods as a modern alternative to relocate Sassi’s residents assuring better living conditions. The inclusion of the Sassi in the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1993, and the process and events related to the European Capital of Culture 2019, have formalized the long-standing recognition of the Sassi as a heritage site and shows the complexity of the relationship between cultural events and heritage. On the other hand, the post-war neighborhoods disappeared from the public and disciplinary narrative, while facing the typical problems of half-a-century-old modern building stock and soliciting a disciplinary reflection in the frame of the twentieth-century heritage. The paper traces the genesis of the urban tensions opposing different and shifting understanding of the very concept of heritage, architectural value, and planning discipline.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Legge 17 maggio (1952), n. 619, Risanamento dei rioni dei “Sassi” nell'abitato del comune di Matera.

  2. 2.

    First article of the draft law, as reported in Pontrandolfi (2002).

  3. 3.

    The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration was a voluntary agreement between nations, signed in 1943 with the aim of planning, providing and coordinating support measures for war victims (see Agreement for United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (1943): Articles 1 and 2 for the targets of the agreement, United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (1946) for the interest in the Italian context, and Woodbridge (1950) as reference publication concerning the first years of operations). In Italy it resulted in an experimental housing programme organised by Gustavo Colonnetti and institutionalised in May 1946 under the name UNRRA-CASAS, Comitato Amministrativo Soccorso ai Senzatetto (see Bongioannini 1946; Allason 1950; Barotta 1952; Fascio 1956). The placement of the programme under the control of the Ministry of Public Works, as the executive structure of the Italian Delegation of UNRRA, allowed CASAS to survive the closure of UNRRA's European operations in 1947, until the reopening of funding by the European Recovery Program in 1950 and its subsequent resumption and reorganization (see De Togni 2018).

  4. 4.

    Friedmann came to Italy with a research assignment from the Fulbright program, and was then funded by the Center for International Studies of the Massachussets Institute of Technology in 1953 and the Rockefeller Foundation in 1957 (Papafava 2012).

  5. 5.

    Commissione per lo studio della città e dell’agro di Matera—UNRRA CASAS 1 giunta (1956a): 3. Translation by the author.

  6. 6.

    These aspects were the objects of the first sociometric studies of that period by Lidia De Rita. See De Rita (1955).

  7. 7.

    Mutual Security Agency Special Mission to Italy (1953): 1. Translation by the author.

  8. 8.

    The work of Piccinato was then originating a comprehensive General Plan in 1956, organized on a double connective system constituted by vehicular and pedestrian traffic, which recomposes the neighborhoods located along the traditional lines of expansion of the city.

  9. 9.

    Legge 11 novembre (1986), n. 771, Conservazione e recupero dei rioni Sassi di Matera.

  10. 10.

    “The Sassi and the Park of the Rupestrian Churches of Matera” site enlisted during the World Heritage Committee’s Seventeenth Session, Cartagena, Colombia, 6–11 December 1993 (UNESCO 1993).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Architecture and Urban Studies, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy

    Nicole De Togni

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  1. Nicole De Togni
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Correspondence to Nicole De Togni .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Interuniversity Department​ ​of Regional and Urban Studies and Planning (DIST), Politecnico di Torino, Turin, Italy

    Ianira Vassallo

  2. Interuniversity Department​ ​of Regional and Urban Studies and Planning (DIST), Politecnico di Torino, ​Turin, Italy

    Michele Cerruti But

  3. Department of Architecture and Urban Studies (DAStU), Politecnico di Milano, ​Milan, Italy

    Giulia Setti

  4. Department of Architecture and Urban Studies (DAStU), Politecnico di Milano, ​Milan, Italy

    Agim Kercuku

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De Togni, N. (2021). The Two Faces of Matera: Diachronic Narratives of Changing Perspectives on Heritage. In: Vassallo, I., Cerruti But, M., Setti, G., Kercuku, A. (eds) Spatial Tensions in Urban Design. The Urban Book Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84083-9_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84083-9_9

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