The
Future of Bagnoli or Lamont Young’s Revenge
Indeed, at the time, a new steel mill seemed a fine compliment to the then ongoing risanamento of Naples—the tearing down and rebuilding of vast areas of the city to make it clean, spacious and modern. Bagnoli was the perfect place to put that steel mill. The risanamento rejected other ideas for the area, including a plan by the visionary Neapolitan architect Lamont Young to transform Bagnoli into a great seaside resort with trees, sports fields, beaches and grand piers to stroll on. It was too “Victorian” —an anachronism. It is ironic that Bagnoli is now busy trying to transform itself into a great seaside resort with trees, sports fields, beaches and grand piers to stroll on. In decades as an industrial bee-hive, Bagnoli was not just home to the Italsider steel mill, but to other industrial pleasantries, such as a thriving cement and asbestos industry—facilities built in the 1920s and 30s. Yet, as late as the 1930s, Bagnoli was still a resort town, not a bad place to spend a summer. Then, the entire area was bombed in WW2 and finished off by the “scorched earth” policy of the retreating German army in 1943. Italsider climbed back to pre-war production by 1951 and was an important part of the “economic miracle” in the 1950s in Naples. By the 1960s, however, deindustrialization was underway, decay and industrial blight set in. Italsider closed in 1992, putting 9,000 workers out of work, an economic un-miracle all its own. The
Isle of Nisida
 That
was almost fifteen years go. The steel mill
has been demolished by now; the ovens and smoke stacks are gone, and
acres of
Bagnoli are now sitting there waiting for some action. The
land awaits disposition according to whatever
plan is finally chosen by Bagnolifutura, a company set up in
April of
2002. The area (in blue on map, left) includes not just the land
directly on the sea, but
stretching
back across the old “steel mill road” to encompass the entire premises
of the
ex-plant, extending more than half a mile inland to Bagnoli’s next-door
neighborhood
of Fuorigrotta. Bagnolifutura will choose from among 24 plans
that have
“made the cut” (from 40 submitted from around the world) for the
construction
of a ca. 300 acre “urban park” (imagine a square area approximately 11
football
fields on a side). The park is to include—besides the above-mentioned
sports
fields, beaches and grand piers to stroll on—a camp ground at the base
of the
Posillipo cliff, a new residential area, a
“music city” array of auditoriums, new train
stations, and
even—in conjuntion with the renowned Dohrn aquarium in Naples, a series
of
marine pools to rehabilitate
injured sea turtles and return them to the
open
sea. So, with or without the America’s
Cup, the spirit of Lamont Young is now hovering along North Pier
muttering, “I
told you so.”-------- (I am indebted to Mr. Giovanni Capasso of Bagnolifutura for his time and the information he provided in the preparation of this article. (back to index) |
I
suppose if Bagnoli had
won its bid to host
the 2007