L'Aquila: Five Years After the Earthquake

28 July, 2014 By Pippo Ciorra

Five years after the tragic earthquake, L’Aquila’s stricken urban fabric is gradually
recovering. But what will welcome the dispersed community when they return to their
streets and spaces?
The reconstruction of earthquake-stricken L’Aquila is a complex topic demanding cautious
circumspection in light of the suffering of the people who are living there. What is the role of
architecture in face of such a disaster? On the one hand, we can assess the current situation of
this Abruzzese city five years after the devastating quakes which took the lives of 309 people
and, on the other, examine the reconstruction choices made since. The goals are twofold: to
rebuild decent housing as soon as possible, and to restore and preserve the city and its
buildings. These two objectives may seem to be contradictory, given such distress, and became
a point of political and cultural contention - first the city or first the people? - in the five years of
reconstruction.
If today we were to draw a diagram of L’Aquila, it would be of concentric circles. The first circle
represents the epicentre of the ‘red zone’ (the part designated inaccessible after the earthquake)
that has reopened for public and commercial uses. Along the principal street, within a forest of
scaffolding, several public buildings and some 30 bars and shops have reopened. If you go
inside, you’ll see that, by day, the majority of the clientele are workers from the nearby
construction sites and, by night, these are replaced by young people attracted by the charm and
strange melancholy of a city in ruins. All of these businesses will ultimately have to close once
the buildings that house them undergo renovation.

L’Aquila’s Palace Square, shown here in 2013, fell into the red zone following the
earthquake, remaining inaccessible until its re-opening in December 2010. The square
became the center of protests for the city’s restoration, with the ‘People of the
Wheelbarrow’ carrying away debris themselves in an attempt to speed up the process
Surrounding this core is the remainder of the historic centre of L’Aquila, still inaccessible without
permission, with a few buildings restored and all the private properties starting, or waiting to
start, reconstruction. It’s a ghost town where at night roam soldiers, thieves, looters and groups
of young people that the army can’t control. But the biggest hole in L’Aquila remains: it will not
be easy to restore the city, even less easy to repopulate it, and very difficult to reinstate an
economic and community identity once all the financial and emergency interventions are over.
All around the closed centre extends a zone that strikes visitors to L’Aquila the most. This
periphery was largely built in the 20th century and many of its newer houses were able to
withstand the earthquake. All the city’s economic and administrative activities in addition to all
the activities - both healthy and unhealthy ones - associated with the reconstruction are
concentrated in this ring. It’s densely populated and swarming with people who were victims of
the earthquake as well as those who came after, even from afar, and are involved with the
reconstruction in various ways. It’s the strong, prominent soul of the city, the strip that best
represents the city’s complex political life, the fragments of its economic life, the intense conflicts
between state and local agencies, and where citizens and intellectuals come to explore.
 Via Camillo Cavour in 2010
The fourth ring is the suburbs, the old outskirts, that today are much more densely populated,
lack the clarity of logical planning and contain the two standard housing solutions provided by
the state for earthquake victims. The first are poor quality MAP (Moduli Abitativi Provvisori)
housing, which are cheaply constructed of wood and intended to last only for the period of
reconstruction. Second are the CASE schemes (Complessi Antisismici Sostenibili ed
Ecocompatibili), which are intended to remain after reconstruction; they embody the idea, albeit
naively, of the ‘new town’ promulgated by Berlusconi immediately after the earthquake. Both
these programmes have functioned poorly. The MAP housing has been criticised (and
repeatedly investigated) for the inferior quality of execution and an impressive array of technical
flaws, which have made it very difficult for people to continue living in them. The CASE were
scattered rather at random, wherever there was space or vacant land, and without any logical
response to the remnants of the prior urban fabric of the neighbourhood. In the end they don’t
present much of the ‘new town’ that Berlusconi dreamt of, but simply added more to the existing
sprawl.
What were the most flagrant errors of the reconstruction? From a conceptual point of view, the
biggest mistake was certainly the Berlusconian new towns. Italians should have learned by now
from Gibellina (the earthquake of 1970) that it is nearly impossible to transfer an entire
community from one place to another without serious trauma, in spite of the fact that high-level
architects, planners and artists are involved. In particular, the delicate equilibrium of the city of
L’Aquila - architecturally important but with a fragile economy based on services and the
university and many houses uninhabited - demanded that efforts be focused immediately on the
work of restoration, that governance and procedures were clear from the start to avoid any
ongoing conflict between local and state authorities and that the criteria for allocating funds were
crystalline.
It makes no sense today to wonder why many buildings are still not functional. The restoration of
a destroyed city takes time. But what is still missing is a vision and a plan that will provide
meaning for the future of L’Aquila. In other similar situations, such as the earthquake in Friuli or
the one in Umbria and Le Marche, the preservation of regional and community values was
handled with more coherence and efficiency, more dialogue with the local population, and far
better management of relations with the municipalities, regional government and the state, even
if it was at the cost of more people remaining in temporary accommodation. Here again, we find
the conflicting priorities of property vs people.

Via Zara in 2010

Architects were unable to contribute substantially to the reconstruction of L’Aquila, except in two
specific phases relating to the restoration of individual buildings or to ‘solidarity’ initiatives that
were more for show than really essential. Shigeru Ban, with aid from the Japanese government,
created a temporary concert hall that can be dismantled; Renzo Piano, thanks to funding from
the province of Turin, built yet another temporary concert hall. Could the money not have been
better spent restoring some of L’Aquila’s many already existing concert halls? In selecting areas
for restoration and resettlement, architects were noticeably absent, almost as if waiting for the
government’s choices to then focus on the opportunities for work.
Naturally it is impossible here to give non-Italian readers a full account of all the legal and
administrative failures of these past five years. Suffice it to say that the mayor of L’Aquila who
resigned several times (but then always withdrew his resignation) is under investigation, that the
person in charge of allocating funds was also accused and then acquitted for mismanagement
of funds, and that these two men with power have always been at war, thereby further delaying
the process of reconstruction. There were other fierce discussions regarding the support
scaffolding, which seemed excessive and cost the state hundreds of millions of Euros; the
activism of local professionals with their studies created specifically for the purpose of
compensation claims, at times in the thousands; and the strange situation in which the heads of
condominiums served as compensated officials to handle all the relationships with businesses
and institutions, building by building.
In short, the earthquake in L’Aquila was an enormous catastrophe from which a city can recover
only with time, patience and great difficulty. But the reconstruction has finally started moving
forward. The state has now spent 8.5 of the 12 billion Euros that was allocated for the project. A
significant percentage of the public buildings have been restored and approximately 30 to 40 per
cent of private buildings have been recovered or are in the process of recovery. The hard part
will come later, when the dispersed community eventually returns to the streets and spaces that
will be there to welcome them.

Photography
Photographs by Andrea Sarti and Claudia Faraone