From the Cutting Room Floor 2018-281
The Italian planners had in mind the ambitious example of the Tennessee Valley Authority, which had resettled thousands of Appalachian families. An American sociologist, Friedrich Friedmann, led a team of researchers—including a historian, a doctor, a geographer, and a psychologist—who assessed conditions in the Sassi. After architects devised several potential resettlement schemes, Friedmann’s team asked the peasants which design they thought was best.
In the new rural development of La Martella, four miles west of the Sassi, the architect Ludovico Quaroni attempted to re-create the open-air vicinati that the Materans had used as their plazas and drawing rooms. Each resettled family was given a house with an adjoining barn for animals; the bedroom windows looked out on the stables, so that residents could keep an eye on the beasts at night, as they had in the Sassi. The first families were moved to La Martella in 1954. The Giornale del Mezzogiorno declared that Materans had travelled “from the darkness of the Sassi to cottages in the green countryside!” Italian newspapers continued to support the cause, and the government began encouraging residents whose caves had originally been thought salvageable to move.
From the Cutting Room Floor 2018-281
The Italian planners had in mind the ambitious example of the Tennessee Valley Authority, which had resettled thousands of Appalachian families. An American sociologist, Friedrich Friedmann, led a team of researchers—including a historian, a doctor, a geographer, and a psychologist—who assessed conditions in the Sassi. After architects devised several potential resettlement schemes, Friedmann’s team asked the peasants which design they thought was best.
In the new rural development of La Martella, four miles west of the Sassi, the architect Ludovico Quaroni attempted to re-create the open-air vicinati that the Materans had used as their plazas and drawing rooms. Each resettled family was given a house with an adjoining barn for animals; the bedroom windows looked out on the stables, so that residents could keep an eye on the beasts at night, as they had in the Sassi. The first families were moved to La Martella in 1954. The Giornale del Mezzogiorno declared that Materans had travelled “from the darkness of the Sassi to cottages in the green countryside!” Italian newspapers continued to support the cause, and the government began encouraging residents whose caves had originally been thought salvageable to move.