Earthquakes, natural disasters, reconstruction strategies

This essay examines a reconstruction strategy in response to the earthquake which struck Central Italy in the summer-autumn 2016. After a survey of the main earthquakes in Italy in the last century, from Messina in 1908 to Emilia Romagna in 2012, we examine the case study of the historical nucleus of Amatrice, a walled town of Frederick-Angevin origin lying along a ridge. Faced with the clean slate left by the earthquake, a reconstruction from scratch of the entire historical town comes up against the theoretical and operational problem of the conflict between rebuilding "where it was, as it was" and the risk of producing a "historical fake", which this essay addresses both in theoretical terms and through an operational verification of the architectural project.