L'Aquila Invisible City: surveying, preservation and restoration of the city

The earthquake of 6 April 2009 has hit hard the old town of Aquila, which in its 168 hectares cover a highly valuable architectural and artistic heritage. The damage is significant but not enough to have affected the recognition of cultural historical and architectural identity. After the emergency protection phase, through a systematic buildings shoring process, still in progress, has to follow the recognition of historical and architectural values to protect, even residual, and, at the end, the restoration of each architecture and of the old city centre as a whole. The present phase of the reconstruction’s long process shows a strong debate on issues concerning legal means, procedures, of intervention methods for the restoration and for the definition of a new social identity of the old city center. It is an absolutely new experience for the Italian architectural culture because of its quality/quantitative peculiar characteristics. This paper is intended to provide, through appropriate analysis tools, a critical framework of the complex issues involved, and of the arising cultural and disciplinary debate. Mostly there is the need to oppose to the keyword "as it was-where it was", the responsible restoration culture. A project that aims, respecting the specificity of each architecture, unavoidably concerns how to proceed looking for a right balance between the needs for mitigation of seismic risk (firmitas) and new functions (utilitas), and reintegration of architectural formal and figurative values (venustas), together with the preservation of the historical authenticity of the testimony.