Bagnoli, a specific place.
A site, a territory. Memory and future. Bagnoli is a place. A specific one. An invention is needed. A specific one.
Therefore, Bagnoli is not a place where to experiment with delicate naturalist or pseudonaturalist forms of expression; nor it is a place where to submit pedagogic-communicative proposals or carry out an aesthetization of the spaces.
We are in Holland, in Germany, in France. Bagnoli is Naples and Naples is the heart of the Mediterranean. Bagnoli must be a junction, a perception and cultural continuum; the atavistic strength of the subsoil, the beauty of nature, the regenerative energy of the sea, the heroic strength of history and archaeology, the artificial refinement of nature, the poetic and social brutality of industry. We propose to enhance the dualistic structure of the Bourbon gardens, heightening the contrast between nature and artifice, up to the concepts of “production” and “vision”. Production by means of water and subsoil and “environment”, “magic vision”, sensuous beauty. Such dualism – composed of dream, realism and magic, perception, artifice and variedness, fanciful and heavenly elements, memory and perception of the future – changes the function of this place, deputed to steel production, transforming it into a place able to represent Bagnoli, Naples and the Mediterranean culture. Besides only in Naples and Bagnoli it is possible to find the Earthly Paradise, represented here, in this place, with its wonders and its faults.