Continuità urbana del segno archeologico. Forme in attesa_ Urban continuity of the archeological sign. Forms in waiting

The juxtaposition of archaeology, representing completed cycles of civilization and thus fixed in their historical time, and cities, as the broader manifestation of existence where everything is still in action and alive, raises many questions, uncertainties, and difficulties of both theoretical and operational nature. How can that stratified shell, which emerges in cities in residual, forgotten, and neglected forms, be brought back into the current of lived experience? This involves understanding the delicate, sometimes unresolved confrontation between archaeological outcroppings and our contemporary world, where a discontinuous archaeological system forms unpredictable and still undiscovered relationships. The issue highlighted here is how “ruins” enter contemporary urban planning. The focus of this essay is on those particular cases where the archaeological sign does not constitute an organic system, highly stratified and extended in the city to configure recognizable morphologies, nor does it present itself in the completed forms of architecture where the aesthetic values of the work converge in the category of the monument. Rather, it is a viewpoint that looks at the archaeology of outcroppings, of minimal planimetric extension, residual in its topographical rationale constrained by contemporaneity, intermittent in presenting itself on the urban scene, and often confined behind the scenes. This condition requires architects and archaeologists to adopt a common design strategy, to think together, and to initiate a dialogue between two creative and distinct intelligences.