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KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
10 aprile 2025
Aula Magna,
Università della Campania, Caserta
| 11.00 | |
Leonardo di Mauro |
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Fortifications of the Kingdoms of Naples and Sicily: |
| progress of studies and bad restorations | |
The bibliography on the fortifications of southern Italy in recent years has thickened, increasing, and refining our knowledge thanks to the discovery of new documents, the identification of the roles played in the project by figures already known and others previously ignored, new and more precise surveys and analysis of wall structures along with restorations and restoration projects that have been the subject of many graduate theses. Added to these studies is the reporting of the many fortification drawings studied and exhibited in Naples in 2020, but which for various reasons deserve further scholarly attention. These are twenty-one drawings of fortifications partially related to the Mediterranean world, while others are pertinent to continental Europe. The four drawings are related to Palermo, Syracuse, Vieste and Taranto. Alongside the fundamental research of archival sources, mention should be made of the substantial innovations that came from the reception even in the field of architecture of the methods and tools of the archaeology of the elevated, borrowed from the medieval area. However, while research and study are being done, restoration methods are being theorized, some castles are being transformed and debased in their architectural value by imaginative renovations as, for example, scandalously happened to the Castle of Rocca Cilento, reinvented in its forms without the intervention of the authorities in charge of protection. |
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President of the Italian Institute of Castles – Campania Section, former Full Professor in History of Architecture, University of Naples Federico II |
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| 11.40 | |
Cesare Battelli |
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LIMES. |
| Digital fortifications | |
| Artificial intelligence is first and foremost an entity that moves within a virtual space (metaverse), creating visions and architectures at the boundaries of the possible. From this point of view, AI can be understood as the construction of a heterotopic, non-hierarchical, multidimensional space with a defined though imprecise time, often a destorialised time, in which the concept of limit, wall or threshold marks the passage, but also the link between different territories and reference times. These thresholds, both symbolic and physical, do not, however, represent an external, physical boundary of protection and hierarchisation as, for example, in ancient Mesopotamian or Mediterranean cities. The concept of boundary or wall in this case lies primarily in the initial space, in what might be called the ‘genome’ of the prompt, but also in the space and limits of the representation of architectural images and visions. The purpose of the keynote is to explore both the elaboration of walls in a contemporary key starting from significant examples such as the ancient Persian gardens or the cyclopean walls of ancient Greece, but also to offer areas of reflection on the meaning of limit, perimeter or virtual walls within the process of representation and narration of Artificial Intelligence. | |
Visionary Architecture. Architect, artist and Ph.D. University of Alcalá de Henares. |
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| 12.20 | |
Andrés Martínez-Medina |
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The Mediterranean Wall in the 20th century |
There is not a single document of culture that is not at the same time a document of barbarism. W. Benjamin, 1939 |
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| Historically, the Mare Nostrum has been a sea of cultures, but also a fortified sea: the FortMed congresses are evidence of this. We are almost all familiar with the Atlantikwall, built by Germany between 1942 and 1944 from France to Norway: a unitary and systematic project whose decay inspired Paul Virilio's exhibition Bunker Archeology in 1975. However, other southern European countries had already begun to build their own walls, and others did so in parallel. We call the ‘Mediterranean Wall’ the set of defences that were built between the two great wars -and decades later- along these shores. This discontinuous wall is composed of a scattered system of almost prefabricated pieces that, mysteriously, conform to the tradition of military architecture that has otherwise always been at the forefront: technically precise, form and function intimately united, and economical like no other. These stubborn reinforced concrete ruins that stand the test of time are, perhaps, the first of modern architecture. | |
Arquitecto, Doctor y Catedrático de Composición Arquitectónica de la Universidad de Alicante (UA) en Dibujo Arquitectónico, Historia de la Arquitectura y Teorías y Proyectos de Intervención en el Patrimonio. |
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