Nottetempo, 2022

This book looks at Naples turning its back on the panorama, rejecting picturesque imagery both old and new, and embracing a perspective far-removed from scenes of quaint anarchic charm or the Gomorra style which feeds contemporary tourist imagery. Instead, the photographs taken by Giovanna Silva and the research carried out by Lucia Tozzi aim to recount the stratified work of architects and urbanists underpinning the forms of civil architecture of the twentieth century, from the many social housing neighbourhoods to the campus of the Polyclinic, from the Mostra d’Oltremare exhibition centre to the Centro Direzionale business district. But most of all, the images and words that dialogue and overlap in these pages forcefully bring to light the absence of any new architecture over the last quarter of a century, when this city has concentrated all its energy in a single major entirely public work, albeit one entirely invisible insofar as it is hidden beneath the surface: the new metro system.

Contributor: Lucia Tozzi