E U R A U

2 0 1 4 I C O M P O S I T E C I T I E S I N o v e m b e r 1 2 - 1 4 , 2 0 1 4 , I I s t a n b u l - T u r k e y

RECYCLING DROSSCAPE IN THE COMPOSITE CITY

Massimo Lanzi1, D aniele Cannatella1, Emanuela D e M arco1 and Sabrina Sposito1

1: D iArch D epartment of Architecture

Faculty of Architecture
Scuola Politecnica e delle Scienze di Base | U niversit degli Studi di N apoli Federico II, 80134
e-mail: {massimo.lanzi, daniele.cannatella, emanuelademarco83, sposito.sabrina86}@gmail.com
web: http://www.recycleitaly.it


Abstract
The double existence of the city as metropolis and low definition fragments is the paradox of
post m odernity, w hich m ultiplies the hybridization dynamics in the urban environment, reversing
the traditional conceptual framework. The acceleration induced by the economic recession
outcome and the environmental crisis effects lead us to recognize the accumulation of new
forms of empty space w ithin the urban tissue. In 2006, Alan Berger named them D rosscape: all
those areas at the end of their life cycle that share the condition of abandonment, rejection and
disposal. Drosscape has penetrated into the tissues of compact cities and metropolitan
dispersion, designing a palimpsest of scrap and waste in the horizontal urbanization, which is
different from the rhetoric of great urban spaces that characterized the first industrial closure. In
terms of variability, decrease and depletion of resources, the reorganization of the territorial
systems requires a radical change of paradigm, that reconciles economic and, a stronger,
ecological rationality, to draw new spatial and functional m odels. The recognition of the physical
world and the urgency to combine them to the wealth-making processes into the ecological
limits takes the recycling project as a common field of action able to push forward the planning
horizon. The dross becomes the raw material of the project in time of crisis: a challenge for
designers who need to integrate the inevitable waste in a more flexible strategy; an opportunity
for change and experimentation, forming as residual areas and territories of latency a real
reserve land dealing with the development from both urban and environmental perspective.
This contribution is summary of the ongoing studies by the Unit of Naples within the P.R.I.N.
research Re-cycle Italy. It intends to propose a new kind of city in w hich territories of gap are
not conceived as fragments or refuges, but as operational tools, able to articulate the different
systems (ecological, infrastructural and cultural) in the design of a new landscape. In this change
of course, there is an issue of re-invention of the recycling practice as a shift in focus and
construction of difference, together with the desire to build an identity of return that
resumes and actualizes a narrative of the territories interrupted by nearly a century. The
recycling project shifts the centre of gravity at new points of condensation, re-introducing the
waste into new productive circuits and reconfiguration of landscape, working in and around it to
form a w ide geography of D rosscapes: the framework of the new public city of the future.

Keywords: Recycle, Drosscapes, Palimpsest, Reserve Land, New Life Cycle

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1. INTRODUCTION
Hybrid conditions of contemporary cities exhibit the collapse of modernity leitmotif, founded on
seeking a continuous and regular space to unify individuals, society and environment within a
common representation (Secchi, 2000). Hybridization marks a split of universal framework for
cohesion and order in m ultitude outlying parts, lives, landscapes, w asted by degradation, conflict
and inequity. This process tends to emerge both in spatial and temporal dimensions, challenged
by the swirling of technological progress, economic dynamics and demographic pressure in
urbanized cross-border regions, causing ever-new m orphological and functional compositions.
I. Metropolis. It has clearly led the traditional concepts of shape, extension and density up
to a higher level of complexity, enhanced by the physical expansion of cities. As epitome
of the contemporary age, the sprawling metropolis has gone through all directions,
inducing the explosion of urban boundaries in uncountable fragments scattered over
wide territories. Since the XX century, expansion has inspired considerable models,
metaphors and denominations for expressing the unreal size of metropolitan
development and the multitude of conditions intertwined. Urban studies have been
crowded with neologisms resorted to both humanistic and scientific disciplines.
Conurbation (Geddes, 1915), Megalopolis (Gottman, 1961), Global City (Sassen, 1991),
Hyperville (Corboz, 1994), Post-metropolis (Soja, 2000), Arcipelago metropolitano
(Indovina, 2009) are only some of the terms which have occurred to describe the
metropolitan stages of industrializing and post-industrializing process. In these broad
entities live more than 50 percent of the worlds population, according to a growth rate
of 1.85 percent per year. Urban agglomerations and suburban fringes stretch twice,
spontaneously and recklessly, inhabiting and dotting the countryside and the natural
lands whose geographical and ecological continuity they hardly cut. This relentless
dissolution of old urban fabrics outside and without the city makes patterns and edges
problematical, due to a m isconceived m ixture of heterogeneous m aterials.
II. Wasting land. The settlements of Exopolis (Soja, 1992) are unplanned natural/artificial
hybrids, not well-characterized, precarious enclave generically placed in no mans lands,
containing complex features of in-between areas that are ecologically damaged,
economically distressed and socially marginalized. That is a sample book of conditions at
worth of vacancy, dereliction, contamination, obsolescence, disuse, disruption or
destruction: wasting land and buildings as a by-product of horizontal urbanization and
innovation in economic and production systems. Nevertheless, their neglected and
unproductive state can unveil the hidden value of absence and residual as measure of
voids in the continuous m etropolis.
III. Drosscape. The concepts of Terrain Vague (de Sol-Morales, 1996) and Drosscape
(Berger, 2007) have marked a crucial turnaround in the logic of wasting land, re-
discovering the potentials of its places as means of dealing and differences where a
project can still emerge. The amount of dross resulting necessarily from the urban
metabolism, indeed, has assumed such a consistency to design a wide geography lying
inside and around built-up regions, that interferes and overlaps with greater systems of
landscape (waterscape, infrascape and ruralscape). Therefore, the new attitude of dross
to be -scaped replaces the tendency to repair after damage for suitable adaptive
strategies which act on cycles and processes of landscapes. By reintroducing the dross
into new productive uses and values, the Drosscape can interact properly with the
landscape networks as endless raw m aterial for the public city (Gasparrini, 2011).

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IV. Networks. Hybridization has highlighted the twine of physical, social and economic
networks that run on multiple levels, not always balanced and tuned. The contemporary
metropolis has grown above the concepts of asynchrony, suspension, disturbance,
diversion and anomaly to the point of exhaustion. Therefore, the breakage undergoing
the strain of urbanization have had disastrous effects especially above long-term
networks of ecology, raising one of the biggest crisis that humankind has ever faced.
Tight sequences of punctual decisions and split short-term operations have left aside the
value of land for too long a time. Daily, research satellites provide and map the overview
of this worldwide disaster, increasingly becoming visible: urban sprawl, constructions on
unsuitable sites, over extraction of soil, pollution, loss of biodiversity, climate change,
and the general depletion of resources and energy. By the way, the transitions city to
territory or city to Land Mosaic or terra firma to terra fluxus exhibit the trade-offs
between natural and human processes, often ruled by hidden or unknown forces, which
affect the ecological habitats, but also urban fabrics, socio-economic trends and cultural
practices of communities. It means that city has evolved into something extremely new,
not merely an addition of physical components but a hyper-system of dynamic relations
we treat in terms of networked ecologies (Varnelis, 2011).
V. Re-cycling. Several effects of hybridization, in m any cases operating simultaneously, have
overturned how planners and designers imagine and produce terrain of cities. Other
unexpected effects will not be long in coming and cities will be still at the threshold of
the urgency of change. Hence, the need to be equipped with multiple paradigms,
perspectives, technical tools and practices, dealing with unusual and unpredictable
conditions. The larger competitive scale of city-regions and the economic/ecological crisis of
global concern, never before, require long and short-term reversible strategies and
evolutionary visions, using imagination, resilience, adaptation. Crisis has produced a
multiplicity of large stagnant wastelands and will keep producing them continuously, raising
two crucial questions: what to be done with wasting lands and how to manage the wasting
process? These questions place the project in prospect, requiring recycling responses to give
limits-to-growth and downscale consumption while designing for the future, in order to
prepare the way for a space and time which do not generate unrecyclable waste
(Corboz, 2010). As a practice, recycling is not something completely new. W e m ay find its
traces in ancient systems of exchange and re-use still visible in many informal
economies or tactics that, in the last decades, have undergone a process of translation
into modern practices. As a paradigm, it has not exhausted yet the issues to explore and
solve.
Taking part in this challenge, the research Recycle-Italy. New life cycle for architecture and
infrastructure of the city and the landscapei tries quoting the words of its national Coordinator
Renato Bocchi to overcome the weaknesses of restoration and transformation projects, and
the logics of conservation and emergency. Getting started from some essential references (i.e.
the triad Reduce-Reuse-Recycle, the slogan Cradle to Cradle by William Mc-Donough, the MAXXI
exhibition Re-cycle. Strategies for the architecture, the city, the planet by Pippo Ciorra) it traces
the m odes and the forms to induce new life cycle both in the urban fabrics and in the gap sites of
urban sprawl, but also in the lost landscapes of our m emory and experience (Bocchi, 2013).

i
Three-year Research Program of National Interest P.R.I.N. 2013/2016, financed by Italian by Ministry of Education,
University and Research, for the scientific-disciplinary area 08: Civil Engineering and Architecture.

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The eleven Units of Researchii belonging to Re-cycle Italy and corresponding to eleven Italian cities
are questioning about the future of their territories in time of crisis and emergency. Among
these, the Unit of Naples iii has a special focus on Re-cycling and Re[land]scaping the Drosscape.
As will be discussed and explained in this paperiv, crisis has deeply marked the city of Naples,
several times: closure of plants in 80s, hydrogeological instability and waste emergency since
90s. Yet, it is exactly from these crisis conditions and their countless open wounds in the
landscape that the city needs to re-start and re-cycle.

2. RE-IMAGINING W ASTE
Whenever a value, whether physical, relational or strategic, was ever recognized to a site or
artefact that was a waste for the city, it became the raw material for transformation, through
the re-attribution of meaning and role in a new cycle of life. In the 90s, wide renewal projects
took place in the cities, through the re-vitalization of large abandoned industrial areas that were
still strategic for the urban fabric. The purpose was to give both a new economic impulse and a
renewed image to the city through urban marketing actions: areas are still marked by the
exploitation of productive functions, w hich remained after the industrial cycle, in need of special
treatment of resuscitation (Nicolin, 1994) .
In the last decades, the city has changed its shape, and new territories of urban expansion have
become the issue of contemporary research in urbanism. Currently, the juxtaposition between
nature and build environment including agriculture, living and production spaces, where the
evolution of urban dynamics spreads their effect produces new fields of experimentation.
Urban, economic and social trends are faster than the capacity of the territories to absorb and
deposit change. Therefore, a disconnection between the frame (territory) and the activities
(urban metabolism) comes out, as the territory does not change at the same speed of the
functions it supports. This lack of synchrony causes a large amount of wasting lands, frozen
fragments of built and natural environment, expelled from the metabolism of the city. They
create a new geography of dross in w hich the radical overthrow of attention and priority gives to
the vacuum a key role in the rethinking of cities and landscape values. This is because waste is
not m erely brownfields or empty spaces, landfills, unfinished buildings or infrastructures that the
city itself tends to refuse, but also a device that is strongly connected to the city and its system
of networks.
In this perspective, the wasting land is a system of areas, buildings and relations strongly
influenced by natural and human networks and affected by different sources of contamination
and ecological depletion processes. Therefore, the dimension of strategies and projects has

ii
Universit IUAV di Venezia, Universit degli Studi di Trento, Politecnico di Milano, Politecnico di Torino, Universit degli
Studi di Genova, Universit degli Studi di Roma La Sapienza, Universit degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Universit degli
Studi di Palermo, Universit degli Studi Mediterranea di Reggio Calabria, Universit degli Studi G. DAnnunzio Chieti-
Pescara, Universit degli Studi di Camerino.
iii
Belong to the Unit of Naples of Re-cycle Italy: Carlo Gasparrini (scientific coordinator), Vito Cappiello, Antonio Cavaliere,
Roberto Serino, Michelangelo Russo, Massimo Fagnano, Rocco LaFratta, Lodovico Maria Fusco, Fabrizia Ippolito (UNINA2),
Antonio Passato, Marina Rigillo. Belong to the Laboratory of Naples: Fabrizia Ippolito (site responsible), Anna Terracciano
(operations coordinator), Libera Amenta, Susanna Castiello, Daniele Cannatella, Danilo Capasso, Gennaro Cozzolino,
Emanuela De Marco, Cecilia Di Marco, Davide Di Martino, Nunzio Fiorentino, Enrico Formato, Paola Galante, Adriana
Impagliazzo, Massimo Lanzi, Francesco Stefano Sammarco, Antonella Senatore, Ciro Sepe, Giancarlo Sorrentino, Sabrina
Sposito, Danilo Vinaccia.
iv
The paper and the images are the result of the collective research activity by the Unit of Naples and the Laborary of
Naples within the P.R.I.N. research Re-cycle Italy.

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completely changed. The objective is no longer working on large disused areas by implementing
technical solutions for the remediation, but re-inventing waste as a reserve land. Therefore,
the project does not focus exclusively on enclosed space anymore, that was the most used
approach after the first great industrial closure in 80s and 90s. Rather, it demands a qualitative
and multi-scale approach within an ecologically-oriented recycling project, which reassembles
fragments through landscape networks starting from the wasting land. In 2004, Alan Berger
introduced this systemic approach: the term drosscape implies that the dross, or waste, is
scaped, or resurfaced/rein-scribed, by new human intentions, so that once waste landscapes
are identified, the designers propose a strategy to productively integrate them (Berger, 2004).
To do that, adaptive actions are urgently required to recover symbiotic relationships between
the couples built/nature, public space/ecosystems, environment/society.

3. RE-CYCLING D ROSSCAPE

3.1. Methodological framework

How can we imagine the city of the future? The work of the Unit of Naples within the P.R.I.N.
research Re-cycle Italy purposes the image of city in which the territories of gap are no more
fragments or refuges, but operational tools able to gather different systems (ecological,
infrastructural and cultural) in the design of a networked landscape. The aim is to build an
interpretative framework for Drosscape in the region of Piana Campana, outlining new trajectories of
recycling through the implementation of a new life cycle for the dross.
The research area refers to three river basins in Campania: the Domitio-Flegreo coast, the plain of
the Sebeto River and the plain of the Sarno River. These areas have been classified as SIN or SIR (Site
of specific National or Regional Interest) because of the great environmental and ecological damage
they are undergoing. Among others, water is a critical issue as it is the foremost mean of
contamination and threat due to anthropogenic pressure. The region of Piana Campana, indeed, has
a great historical tradition of water management and practices for land reclamation and for risk
mitigation. However, in the 90s, inappropriate land uses altered and exhausted its accompanying
structure, giving back a fragile territory where the juxtaposition of different uses (rural, productive,
residential) is chaotic and unsuitable to the health of environment. In light of this, the recycling
project works closely with the waterscape, which represents a potential structure for the re-
definition of relationships between Drosscape and urban materials.
The three sample areas (Figure 1), diverging for width and scale of phenomena, represent three
hybrid cities that activate three different processes of dross production in three different recycling
contexts. So that, even if the methodological framework is common, the result is not unique.
[1] Domitio-Flegreo coast. Situated in the north side of Naples, it is affected by the interruption of
touristic life cycle and, then, by abandonment of buildings and large parts of urban tissues. As
consequence, pervasive phenomena of squatting has settled down. The massive spread of illegal
settlements has occurred especially along the coast, altering the breakable dune and retro-dune
ecosystems. In addition, the spread of legal and illegal landfills has enhanced to exacerbate levels
of soil and groundwater contamination, leading a remarkable abandonment of countryside. The
image that steps out is that of an implicit city, in which a huge amount of hidden potentials and
energies of reactivation co-exists.
[2] Plain of the Sebeto River. Looking toward the Gulf of Naples and wedged between Vesuvius and
Poggioreale hill, the marshy Valley of Sebeto river was transformed into a fertile agricultural
plain by land reclamation interventions (XVI-XVII century). Afterwards, it underwent a fast and

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massive industrializing process, which overlapped the ancient reclamation infrastructures. The
hydraulic system collapsed at the end of XX century by the de-industrialization of the east side of
Naples. So that, the image that comes out is a fenced city where the environmental reclamation
process should be related to a general re-thinking of urban fringes.
[3] Plain of the Sarno River. Lying in the southeast side of Vesuvius volcano, the site still contains
parts of the ancient hydraulic infrastructures dating from XVI century. These infrastructures
aimed at the industrial development of the area in a symbiotic and respectful relationship
between waterscape and human activities. In the last century, urban sprawl, pollution,
contamination and lack of regional planning and governance have almost definitely altered the
geomorphological components of land, returning a fragile and less resilient territory at high level
of hydrogeological risk. Waste areas from rural activities, infrastructures and high impact
productions, along with some fragments of the ancient water management system generate a
complex mosaic of drosscapes along the Sarno River. The image that results is a dispersed city,
where the artificial water system can play an active role for regeneration as part of a new
waterscape that intercepts and reactivates changing ecological dynamics.

Figure 1. D rosscape in the composite city of Naples

A reverse city emerges through the production of maps, based on the identification of 7 drosscape
classes and the related landscape networks. This new geography of drosscape, made of different
space-temporal dimensions, represents a potential series of nodes, buffer areas, physical
relationships and intangible assets that becomes the backbone of a high-quality system of spaces.
The recycling project, indeed, is stratigraphic/relational in space, acting both on the surface and on

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the vertical stratigraphy of the soil, and resilient/adaptive in time, marking and satisfying long and
short lead times. According to this approach, what already exists is the ground 0 to be restored
earlier, at which new grounds can take roots and sense. Therefore, the recycling project seeks to
recover memories and culture of places through a creative and cycling perspective: an identity of
return to redefine-update-make resilient, instead of deleting. Since this process of revitalizing
plays with long term processes of nature, a proper set of timeline strategies and alternative scenarios
are certainly needed.

3.2. Grid and G eoMaps

Given the complex and cross-scale geography of drosscapes, the research aims at scoping and
experimenting innovative methods and tools of data mapping and processing. The model of Geo-
mapping is certainly effective and suitable to achieve this target, as it combines the well-exstablished
capability to browse thematic layers with the possibility to investigate and forecast distribution,
intensity and evolution of space-time relations among features. The use of a Geographycal
Information Systems (GIS), supported by a Multi Criteria Analysis and multimedia components,
enables a dynamic analysis, query, interpolation and monitoring of selected data at different scales
of observation, unfolding patterns, trends and trade-offs from coarse-grained to fine-grained. The
expected outcome is an open taxonomy of drosscapes described by endogenous and exogenus
factors, which exibits levels of criticality and conflict, life-cycle states, susceptibility to re-cycle and
priorities. This result cannot be achieved without an appropriate Data Model, able to organize and
manage the mass of heterogeneous data and the density of interactions through a set of significant
indicators. Obviously, the model deals with many aspects of data, i.e. format, availability, significance
and coverage.
With the intent to return the hybridization process undergoing the store of drosscapes over lands,
the research areas have been covered by an imaginary Grid made of [2.5 x 2.5 sq km] cells (Figure 2).
The grid allows an uniform space allotment and, consequently, an objective comparison between
cells or groups of cells about extension and weight of evaluated phenomena.

Figure 2. M ethodological scheme for an implementation of a GIS for drosscape analysis

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The method is provided on a systemic approach, being conceived to detect the most representative
samples to be tested for the re-cycling project. It is organized into three main phases.
[1] Tpos: identifying and mapping the drosscapes, but also those areas that are directly or indirectly
involved in the process leading to production of drosscapes.
[2] Class: re-classifying the drosscapes into seven categories of degradation: polluted water and
water devices; polluted soil; damaged ecosystems; critical tissues; brownfields; quarries and
landfills; derelicted infrastructures and in-between areas.
[3] Cluster: assigning values to grid cells, which depend on the weight of each class, on relations
between classes, and on interaction between classes and outer drivers i.e. demographical, social,
economic and climate aspects; uses; transformation demand; governance. This stage is crucial, as
it should identify the most relevant macro-cluster, also scaling up.
Grid and Geomaps provide a discerning attitude on drosscapes, through the blending of micro and
macro perspectives. As intermediate stage, it matches the examination of landscape networks, uses,
current plans and projects, local actions, in order to support and describe the stratigraphic-relational
dimension of recycling.

3.3. Wasteland and Recycling Project: the east-side of N aples

The Recycling project will be a progressing synergy between strategies and tactics, by a cross-scale
concatenation of structuring/priority actions promoted by public policy and smaller site-
specific/timely actions promoted by various stakeholders. Questioning on how the city will be in the
future, the project will stem from interaction among drosscape/life-cycle and site/use/flow/demand
of landscape networks, even in their hystorical and long run dimension. In light of this approach, the
recycling project is being tested in three sample areas, three hybrid cities in the main composite city
of Naples. Among these, the east-side of Naples has already achieved critical advances.
The east-side of Naples has always been a structuring pause within the settlement system, first as
wetland/rural system, then industrial site and finally post-industrial void, where actually multiple
rationalities and their signs convey: the open-wave grid of plants, the twentieth century
neighborhoods bordering with the city, the Roman centuratio connecting hamlets and rural waves,
the buried river, until the development of highways and axes tracing the final boundary line.
Plans and regulations in force have arranged for a landscape reconfiguration founded on two key
factors: a blue/green park for leisure, sports and energy, that embraces the hystorical marshes
gardens into a renovate design; a new mixed settlement for residence, urban functions, production
of good and services. Keeping these guidelines, the recycling project provides a more sensitive
configuration for the river bends, by giving significance to the urban water cycle (stormwater,
groundwater, wastewater) and the current site remediation. The emphasys is on enhancing the
hydrological and environmental systems in sustainable urban landscaping, through a network of
watering parks and gardens, channels, ponds, riparian habitats, which protect and restore the
ecological values while offering a set of recreation amenities. Toward the city and the sea beyond the
infrastructure barriers, the hill northward, the urbanized countryside around, the blue/green park
riassembles fragments into a mosaic of public property/public use open spaces, ranging from macro
(outer green belts) to intermediate (urban parks) to micro (in-betweens) sized sections.
The hybrid mosaic standing out of reversion, selection and semantization processes defines a
network of multiple syntactis forms, uses and functions developed especially along the hystorical
infrastructures of land reclamation. The signs of ancient hydrological dynamics, indeed, can serve as
means of identity and awareness, while ensuring a well-functioning system of open spaces.

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Figure 3. Strategies for drosscapes in the east-side of Naples

Connected by a (BGD) landscape networks design (Figure 3), the open space can express its
embodied energy at the height, being as joint between scapes and scales. Furthermore, the
landscape axes can benefit from the space variety, becoming the land frame of multiple
compositions. In the east-side of Naples, three main landscape networks appear to be significant.
B. Blue network. It is conceived as a contemporary water machine aimed at managing surface and
ground waters through several operations: a) re-functioning of existing channels and water
devices to benefit ecosystems run-off filtering and fuel green economies energy by
biomass; b) re-activation of wells, in order to ensure existing and planning wetlands health, to
lower the groundwater aquifer and to reduce contamination of water; c) realization of ponds for
phytopurification. The Blue network, as an hybrid machine, allows the adaptive hydrologic
management of the territory and the water purification, reasons that require clear policy actions
and long-lasting procedures.
G. Green network. It consists of connected green open spaces (public, half-public, private) between
built-up areas and countryside that enhance the collective facilities supply and the general
natural/cultural quality of the site: d) peri-urban agricultural land along the highway that stretchs
northward tieing up with the blue network; e) new wetlands close to the highway junction and
within the purification plant; f) in-betweens of the industrial grid; g) borough open spaces.

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D. Dross network. It concerns the re-appropriation and the re-cycle of abandoned, discontinous or
underused artifacts in a network of new public/public-use recreational opportunities: h) the TCC
(Therma Cataliting Cracking) tower, an industrial symbol to be turned into a public facility to
serve the district, also through an accompanying operation of ecological preverdissement (first
plant colonization and instrument for monitoring the dynamics of soil pollution); i) disused oil
deposit within Q8 areas still in business, which could be used for environmental purposes, as
composting and storage of biomass, or those social, as art exibitions, performaces, events.
Blue, green and dross networks, but also those slow and smart, design re-newed forms and ways of
inhabiting that can minimize waste and wasteland, encrease collective well-being, optimize social
integration and launch green economies.

Figure 4. The m osaic of dross

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4. CONCLUSIONS
Urban and economic dynamics clearly lead to a continuous production of drosscape, which can
become an essential resource for the city through a proper recycling project. Drosscape, indeed,
offers an interesting perspective on design disciplines, because of its interactions and
interferences w ith rural spaces, w ater and infrastructural networks. The recycling project aims at
managing and balancing these materials and relations thorough a systemic and landscape
approach.
The recycling project begins from the activation and integration of new life cycles for artefacts
and territories, able to induce self-adaptation and self-regeneration m echanisms. That is not just
an ecological matter. It deals also with creating new public/public-use spaces characterized by
high environmental and socio-ecological values. The project enhances the sensitiveness for
topology, reclaiming the inner value of soil (stratigraphy) and the identity of places.
Two issues appear to be significant. First, the recycling project co-exists with uncertainty and
temporary balances. Secondly, it deals with a cyclic and creative transformation that does not
disrupt but updates constantly uses and functions w hile enhancing resilience.
The final image that comes out, indeed, is not a fixed scenario, but a blurred composition, point
of contention among different disciplines.

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New life cycles for architecture of city and landscape, Re-cycle Italy (2), Roma, Aracne editrice,
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Corboz, A., Lipercitt, Urbanistica, n. 103, pp. 6-10, 1994.
Corboz, A., Le territorie comme palimpseste et autres essays, Besanon, Editions de lImprimeur,
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Corboz, A., Recyclabe Space-Time, in Colloquium, Slowing D own the City, 2010.
Corner, J., Terra Fluxus, in Waldheim, C. ed., The Landcape Urbanism Reader, New York,
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Massimo Lanzi. Architect and PhD in Urbanism and Urban Design, he developed his career by working on the field of planning and
urban design, with particular attention to the issue of critical urban areas and urban regeneration. He was adjunct professor in the
Master of Science Degree in Regional, Urban and Environmental Planning at the University of Naples and is currently a Research
Fellow in the P .R.I.N. research Re-cycle Italy.

Daniele C annatella. U rban P lanner a nd P hD S tudent in U rbanism a nd E nvironmental A ssessment a t the D epartment o f A rchitecture,
University of Naples. The main subject of his research is the relationship between water and cities in coastal areas. He attended a
Master in Sustainable Planning and Design of port areas. He is Lab member in the Unit of Naples within P.R.I.N. research Recycle
Italy.

Emanuela De Marco. Urban planner and PhD Student in Urbanism and Urban Design at the Department of Architecture, University
of Naples. Her research is about methods for a safe regeneration of contemporary city as tool for risk mitigation and resilience
improvement. S he is Lab m ember in the U nit o f N aples w ithin P .R.I.N. research Recycle Italy.

Sposito Sabrina. Urban Planner and PhD Student in Urbanism and Urban Design at the Department of Architecture, University of
Naples. She attended a Master in Sustainable Planning and Design of port areas. She is Lab member in the Unit of Naples within
P.R.I.N. research Recycle Italy. H er m ain subject o f studies is the role o f w ater in contemporary u rbanism.

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