In the Domus 1066 editorial, Jean Nouvel wrote that architecture, like living beings, is too often irresponsibly abandoned, forgotten, or exploited. For architecture to last, it must be kept alive, so that it can adapt to the new circumstances of the time. Orphans of forward-looking stewardships, sometimes distracted or dormant, these architectures have given a civic look to institutions and powers, hosted symbolic events, and welcomed local populations, marking historical seasons and collective imageries.
Abandoned architecture in Italy: 10 buildings now disused, but not to be forgotten
A journey across interrupted dreams and buildings left to their fate: from forgotten authored architectures to the most buzzed cases on media.
Archivio Luigi Cosenza_Archivio di Stato di Napoli, Pizzofalcone
Photo by Davide Galli Atelier
Foto by Roberto Conte
Photo by Roberto Conte
Photo by Roberto Conte
Photo by Roberto Conte
Domus 1026, July2018
Photo by Gerardo Semprebon
Photo on Wikicommons
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- Gerardo Semprebon
- 31 July 2023
Imagining to trace the identikit, a series of connotations are recurring. These are works with a powerful expressive character, in many cases conceived on the tables of famous interpreters of twentieth-century architecture, often destined for extraordinary uses, and often witnesses of a social change that initially brought them into vogue and then discarded once exhausted utility; in other words, once the expiry date has struck.
Looking at them chronologically, we can trace an itinerary across some fundamental phases of Italian architectural culture, from the Rationalism of the 1930s to the Brutalism of the 1960s. The dream of shaping the society of the future with the infinite expressive possibilities offered by concrete casting has clashed with the bitter discovery of the unexpected and unripe perishability of the material. The causes of the decline also include structural changes in the ways of understanding society and inhabiting space, which vary from the organization of public institutions to the evolution of building standards, from the disenchantment following too risky bets to the inadequacy of the context conditions. The list could extend, ultimately reaching a misplaced faith in the ability to regenerate beyond the initial project, as pre-industrial society has instead repeatedly done over the centuries.
The Belpaese is full of abandoned places, and it is sufficient to travel along a highway to come across concrete skeletons, walls devoured up by the ivy, and large storehouses more or less devastated, the results of sociopolitical traumas that led to premature evacuations. In some cases, they are spaces surrounded by the halo of mystery typical of places banned from public use, which, as evidenced by the swarming of dedicated pages on the web and the never-slowing urbex trend, feed the fantasies of those who pass by or arouse the irrepressible propensity for their archaeological rediscovered. In others, they become the temporary habitat of marginalized groups or even the scene of open-air landfills. What remains today of those buildings that society has not managed to reabsorb into its life cycles?
The fish market in Naples is one of the major examples of the work of Luigi Cosenza, a leading figure in the Neapolitan architectural scene in the first half of the 1900s. Adhering to the principles of Rationalism, the first example in Naples, the covered market consists of a large main trading room and a series of ancillary trading spaces organized along the perimeter. The impressive barrel vault rests on iron reticular arches while the vertical heads of the building and its wide slits are closed by Saint-Gobain glass-cement, in one of the first applications in southern Italy. Although the market is restricted and subject to recovery projects, with reclamation works in progress, recent chronicles report illegal occupation acts.
Archivio Luigi Cosenza_Archivio di Stato di Napoli, Pizzofalcone
Archivio Luigi Cosenza_Archivio di Stato di Napoli, Pizzofalcone
This work by Renzo Zavanella is a refined example of early Rationalism, expressed in the volumetric composition and the definition of the construction details. It was designed between 1931 and 1932 as a residence for the directors of an industrial complex and is characterized by some avant-garde solutions in relation to the typology of the interior spaces, such as the double-height living room and the arrangement of niches to house the built-in wardrobes, and to the technology used, like the insertion of an air gap between the two reinforced concrete walls that form the closures. Studies are still underway for the recovery of this precious architectural testimony.
Photo by Davide Galli Atelier
Photo by Davide Galli Atelier
Photo by Davide Galli Atelier
Inaugurated with the name of the hierarch Costanzo Ciano, this colony could accommodate up to 800 children. The complex is part of a green area of approximately 60,000 square meters with a planimetric scheme based on rigid symmetry. The central body was used for distribution, while the side pavilions were for dormitories and service spaces. During the war, the building was occupied by the Germans and later fell underused until it was definitively abandoned. Between the 70s and 80s Marcello Aliprandi and Pupi Avati used the Varese colony as a set for the films La ragazza di latta and Zeder.
Domus 659, March 1985
The Marxer Institute is a rare example of brutalist architecture in Italy, commissioned by Adriano Olivetti to house production and research in the pharmacological field for the homonymous company. The complex is divided into two main volumes, which housed offices, research laboratories, and the production plant, and an existing building with the canteen and other functions. From the end of the seventies, the socio-economic transformations led to several changes of ownership and progressive underuse along with degradation processes fueled by the action of time and by acts of vandalism.
Photo by Roberto Conte
Photo by Roberto Conte
Domus 394, September 1962
The Foro Boario was created to host livestock trading, exchange, and exhibition. The structural conception based on the iteration of a horizontal and vertical geometric module generates a large, bright, and airy covered space, whose architectural quality has earned various acknowledgments such as the In/Arch Award in 1969, the interest of the MoMA of New York, and a relatively premature monumental constraint as an element of active qualification and an episode of extremely high emergence in the surrounding urban environment, defined in a totally new way. Once the city's project to establish an international forum collapsed, this cathedral, as it was called by many, fell into disuse and is today at the center of interest of the Lille multinational Leroy Merlin.
Domus 490, September 1970
Domus 490, September 1970
Domus 490, September 1970
The Ufo Bar was a small, today abandoned, nightclub on the coastal road out of Salerno, shortly after the Arechi stadium and near a service station. The building designed by Giovanni Giannattasio has the shape of a spherical cap pierced by small portholes. Two oblique walls mark the entrance and, once crossed the threshold, it seems to enter some Tatooine tavern from Star Wars. Theater of the Salerno nightlife until the end of the 1990s, the Ufo Bar has ceased activity since the authorities affixed the seals after some illegal activities were found upon inspections.
Photo by Roberto Conte
Photo by Roberto Conte
The dream of a house by the sea on the shores of a wild coast and the meeting with a visionary architect led to the conception and construction of a futuristic building: a sphere in reinforced concrete inextricably integrated into the surrounding marine landscape. The Binishell patent convinces a couple, director Michelangelo Antonioni and the actress Monica Vitti, to rely on Dante Bini to realize their home on the island of Budelli, in Sardinia. The house is built in a single casting of concrete using air pressure. The conclusion of the relationship between Antonioni and Vitti created the conditions for gradually abandoning the structure and the inevitable deterioration.
Domus 1026, July 2018
Domus 1026, July 2018
The expansion of the San Cristoforo station was commissioned to build a terminal for the transport of private cars along the Milan-Paris line. The construction was never completed due to the client's constant rethinking until the definitive abandonment of the works in 1991. Today we can virtually read the masses of the ruined skeleton and imagine the transit of vehicles in the area in front. The debate on the future of this unfinished building is destined to continue in the years to come in light of the transformation program affecting the Milanese railyards.
Photo by Gerardo Semprebon
Photo by Gerardo Semprebon
Photo by Gerardo Semprebon
It was the early 1960s when the entrepreneur Mario Bagno bought the land in the district of Consonno and razed the few houses abandoned after the crisis in the agricultural sector to build a new Toyland. Focused on the tourism industry, Consonno housed shops, restaurants, sports fields, a dance hall, a luxury hotel, an amusement park, a zoological garden, a medieval castle as an entrance gate, and the notorious minaret. In 1966, the first of two landslides that would have marked the future of this place within ten years, isolated the town, showcasing the consequences of excessive overbuilding and land taking. It was the beginning of a gradual abandonment that turned the themed village into a ghost town.
Photo from Wikicommons
Photo from Wikicommons
The complex was built as a real estate initiative commissioned by Cemadis S.p.A. acronym of Centro Marittimi di Soggiorno, against the backdrop of the urbanization plan of the Arenzano pine forest. The 300 meters of shops, streets, public spaces, services, car parks, and residences are organized on basements connecting the different coast levels and above-ground blocks organized around courtyards and patios shaped to maintain controlled scalar relationships. Over the years, the residents have gradually abandoned the structure, leaving the public spaces for the use of bathers and passers-by. The presence of several owners with heterogeneous interests has contributed to slowing down the initiatives for functional recovery.