Few other cities have such a strong presence in the natural environment. Considering its special geography, it comes as no surprise that Matera has been selected as European Capital of Culture, thanks to a program that explicitly rejected the idea of new construction. Often this type of appointment becomes an opportunity to build structures and infrastructures with a high architectural profile but uncertain future impact, as in the case of Marseille, Capital of Culture in 2013.
The dossier of Matera’s bid, developed under the artistic direction of Joseph Grima, instead speaks of reuse of existing buildings and recovery of ‘forgotten’ spaces like the stone quarries. Matera 2019 is many things, but it is above all an experiment in the making of architecture without volume.
After all, Matera has a complicated relationship with modern architecture. As we know, starting in 1952, the year of the “special legislation for the regeneration of the Sassi,” the inhabitants of the Sassi were evacuated and moved into the districts of the modern city. In the wake of the success of Christ Stopped at Eboli, which describes the Sassi as a sort of Dante’s Inferno, the government run by Alcide De Gasperi made the modernization of Matera one of its leading initiatives.
Though the experts called upon to analyze the Sassi, and many of their inhabitants as well, urged the option of restructuring the dwellings, the government insisted on the need to move the population, exploiting the negative image of ‘caves’ in a country that was struggling to build itself a modern identity.
The expansion of Matera involved some of the most important Italian architects of the time, like Carlo Aymonino, who designed the Spine Bianche district, and Ludovico Quaroni, creator of the rural settlement of La Martella. The latter, in particular, was an experiment that was only a partial success: in spite of some excellent buildings, like the church of San Vincenzo de’ Paoli, many of the planned public services were never built, and the idealistic vision of recreating the community life of the Sassi remained on paper.
What Carlo Levi and the politicians who came after him hadn’t seen, in their focus on health and hygiene, was that the dwellings in the Sassi constituted a sophisticated system, skillfully inserted in the natural environment. The renovation improved the material conditions of the people of Matera, but at the cost of sweeping away an age-old culture.
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