The text explores the relationship between time and design in architecture, conceiving heritage as a living material subject to processes of stratification, reuse, and transformation. Design is understood as both a cognitive and operative practice, capable of selecting, interpreting, and recomposing fragments, reactivating continuities obscured by memory and constructing new spatial and temporal relationships. Within this framework, operations of subtraction and addition become dialectical devices that reveal historical layers while generating new ones. Recalling the idea of geography provoking history, the projects examine the interplay between settlement morphology and territorial morphology, showing how contemporary accumulations of infrastructure and construction have often concealed the legibility of original urban structures. The use of territorial models, developed at multiple scales, enables the reconstruction of visual, geomorphological, and infrastructural connections with the sea and surrounding elevations, restoring centrality to the landscape dimension in shaping urban identity. The notion of the thickness of the edge describes the margin between ancient and contemporary city as a liminal space, or “Janus space,” where historical and present layers coexist more by juxtaposition than by dialogue. Two case studies ground the discussion. In Pompeii, projects address the archaeological boundary, redesigning entrances, reinterpreting agrarian traces, and, in the Murecine project, constructing a museographic device rooted in excavation, light, and void, turning the fragment into a threshold between past and present. In Syracuse, the project redefines the edge of the Neapolis, using infrastructure as an operative limit and organizing paths and viewpoints to stage the fragmentary nature of the ruins. The project thus explores building as an act of resistance and listening to the place, capable of translating the measure of time into a new, navigable geography.
The thickness of the border Boundary projects in Pompeii and Syracuse
Claudia Pirina
2026-01-01
Abstract
The text explores the relationship between time and design in architecture, conceiving heritage as a living material subject to processes of stratification, reuse, and transformation. Design is understood as both a cognitive and operative practice, capable of selecting, interpreting, and recomposing fragments, reactivating continuities obscured by memory and constructing new spatial and temporal relationships. Within this framework, operations of subtraction and addition become dialectical devices that reveal historical layers while generating new ones. Recalling the idea of geography provoking history, the projects examine the interplay between settlement morphology and territorial morphology, showing how contemporary accumulations of infrastructure and construction have often concealed the legibility of original urban structures. The use of territorial models, developed at multiple scales, enables the reconstruction of visual, geomorphological, and infrastructural connections with the sea and surrounding elevations, restoring centrality to the landscape dimension in shaping urban identity. The notion of the thickness of the edge describes the margin between ancient and contemporary city as a liminal space, or “Janus space,” where historical and present layers coexist more by juxtaposition than by dialogue. Two case studies ground the discussion. In Pompeii, projects address the archaeological boundary, redesigning entrances, reinterpreting agrarian traces, and, in the Murecine project, constructing a museographic device rooted in excavation, light, and void, turning the fragment into a threshold between past and present. In Syracuse, the project redefines the edge of the Neapolis, using infrastructure as an operative limit and organizing paths and viewpoints to stage the fragmentary nature of the ruins. The project thus explores building as an act of resistance and listening to the place, capable of translating the measure of time into a new, navigable geography.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
