Napoli città porosa. Strategie per un processo di valorizzazione del paesaggio urbano e naturale della città / Napoli Porous City. Strategies for a process of enhancement of the urban and natural landscape of the city

After his voyage to Naples, Walter Benjamin published a text describing Napoli as a porous city. «The architecture is porous as this stone», writes the philosopher. The porosity extends from the materiality of the tuff to the way the Neapolitans live the city. Porosity is also the image that you can use to describe the process by which the city grew, digging and clinging on to the natural elements that make up its geography. «Only a strip along the coast is flat, while behind, the buildings are staggered one above the other. Tenements of six or seven floors with stairs that climb from the ground, which in comparison to the villas appear as skyscrapers». With these words, Benjamin describes the relationship between the architecture, the landscape and the Bay. To observe it from the waterfront, the city is a built landscape that clings to the hillside. From the top – with its back to the hill – the view opens up to the part of the Bay going from Castel dell’Ovo to the Posillipo Hill. The view on the bay is a conquest of the upper levels, which characterises the architecture of the high part of the city. This paper deals with the issue of the vertical dimension and porosity as the city keys of reading and as creative means for a strategy of transformation. Starting from a design project proposal for the Palace of Veterani and the complex of Santa Maria of Bethlehem, the issue is developed by combining theoretical and design oriented issues within the economic, social and urban dynamics that affect the city in a transversal manner.