The “Friuli Model” and modern postearthquake reconstructions in the Mediterranean Basin: at the beginning of an endogenous and ecological approach

Ristret

Post-earthquake reconstructions may represent fundamental milestones in the “science of territory” because they provide lessons not only on the basic reasons for risk prevention but also on the evolution of the relationship between human thought, territory and nature. Grammichele in Val di Noto, Sicily, after the 1693 earthquake, provides an important example of pre-modern reconstruction, while that of Lisbon, following the 1755 earthquake, adopts the essence of the modern capitalist European city. The reconstruction of Messina, following the earthquake of 1908, inaugurates the Italian contemporary story of “infinite reconstruction”, in a sense, a return to pre-modern situations. After the Second World War, in the nineteen sixties, we saw the “late modernist” reconstructions of Agadir in Morocco, and of Skopje in Macedonia (then Yugoslavia). Other emblematic cases of reconstruction are that of Longarone after the hydrogeological disaster of Vajont in 1963: “where it was but not as it was”, and that of Gibellina, after the Belice earthquake in 1968: “neither where it was, nor how it was”. The case of Friuli, following the 1976 earthquake, represents a turning point in the history of modern post-earthquake reconstructions: it is at the beginning of a new endogenous and ecological approach to reconstruction. The primum movens probably lies in the fact that the model has placed, at the centre of reconstruction, the “microcosmic” values of place, work and home as representing the complexity of the whole. The «Friuli model» is a highly successful model but has, unfortunately, remained isolated as the central State continually tries to extend its powers from emergency situations to the “big business” of reconstruction