Passaggiamare - Suburban perspectives of Torre Mileto
Photo essay by Aldo Amoretti
Text by Giuseppe Tupputi
In the contrast between the brutal decomposition of a wild illegal building and the extraordinary richness of its geographical and landscape-environmental characteristics, the locality of Torre Mileto represents one of the most emblematic examples of coastal settlement sprawl in Puglia.
In this seaside suburb, born under the impulse of an unruly building exuberance, the informal spontaneity of the built environment has fatally settled in proto-architectural structures and languages, disjointed and ungrammatical, almost barbaric, which imprison the geographical richness of the landscape, concealing it behind the opaque veil of an incapacity for aesthetic expression.
Characterized by many contradictions and a high degree of complexity, that of Torre Mileto, like many others in Puglia, is a territory in the balance - a middle ground - between the city and the countryside, between the land and the sea, between the architecture and the landscape.
Bounded to the west by the Isola forest and to the east by the slopes of Monte D'Elio, the town extends for almost nine kilometers on the isthmus that separates Lake Lesina from the Adriatic Sea, spontaneously following the linear shape of this thin strip of Earth.
In this sense, it is interesting to note how, albeit in the absence of a plant project, the richness of the geographical landscape has constantly reverberated - feebly and unconsciously - in the configuration of this village.
The arrangement and design of the coastline, the dominance of the Gargano promontory, the shape of the lake, the extension of the agricultural plain crossed by the network of canals: all these conditions have bound and influenced the definition of measurements, depths, density, of the ways of aggregation of informal building, declining the settlement dispersion in distinct figures.
This means that, even in the absence of a real aesthetic intentionality, an unconscious and primordial relationship between nature and architecture seems to have defined the linear metric of the settlement of Torre Mileto. It consists of a tenuous and syncopated rhythm, blurred and at times interrupted by the monotony of the diffusion and the noise of the shapeless building mass, yet visible through the assumption of specific points of view and the recognition of some details.
And it is in this horizon of meaning that the work of Aldo Amoretti is placed. Understanding photography as a narrative and aesthetic medium and, at the same time, as a tool for poetic investigation, his storytelling through images speaks to us of this latent rhythm, choosing to frame the succession of sea sleepers - the suburban perspectives - which, from the street of Torre Mileto, lead to the beach.
Delimited by the enclosure walls or by the volumes of the houses, sheltered from the wind and the sun, these spatial reservoirs constitute the only public spaces of the entire settlement, thus assuming a high aesthetic and functional value. On the other hand, in the summer periods, some sea crossings of Torre Mileto are lived with an intensity comparable to that of the alleys of the ancient Apulian villages, becoming access points to the beach, fundamental shade shelters, theaters of all kinds of outdoor activities (from idleness to the bivouac, from absorbed and solitary contemplation to convivial lunches).
Furthermore, the perspectives of these streets perpendicular to the coast frame the dissonant relationship between the informal characteristics of the suburb and the chromatic clarity of the seascape, condensing a strong conceptual value in this aesthetic contrast.
Observing the photographs of Aldo Amoretti, the continuous movement in which the gaze gets lost is that between the foreground and the background. Traveling through these suburban alleys then becomes the pretext for crossing the physical and conceptual distance between the miseries of illegal building and the landscape richness of this coastal territory; to sublimate the shortage of the formless in the welcoming and absolute rigor of the blue line of the horizon.
Crossing these sea crossings in the dilated, enveloping and silent time of the photographic shot, it is discovered that, although at first sight all similar, these streets differ considerably in their characters and in their physiognomies.
In this sense, Aldo Amoretti's photographic series defines a significant field for training the gaze to recognize the subtle nuances that distinguish informal coastal landscapes. His constant point of view captures the images of the places to then investigate, through the comparison of the sequence, the traces, the clues of those subtle differences that define both the rhythm and the melodic line of the series.
In this way it is discovered that, to the east, in the stretch that flanks the agricultural fields, the building is more squashed on the coast line and the depth of the settlement is reduced. Here, the crossbars are shorter and tighter, the sea is closer. Almost always paved or asphalted, the spatial vessels of these alleys are identified directly by the volumes of the houses or by the concrete walls that delimit the properties, developing a more suburban character.
Continuing west, towards Bosco Isola, the isthmus gradually widens and the central road, sloping, gradually moves away from the coastal front. The houses set back from the sandy coast, finally letting the dune cordons re-emerge, obliterated instead in the eastern coastal stretch. Building density decreases, cross beams lengthen, perspectives open up; the sea is always further away.
Gradually, the characteristics of the suburb give way to rural atmospheres: in addition to becoming more sparse, the building is permeated with rural characteristics, the fences become lower and more permeable, the roads are dirt roads, the landscape appears less domesticated.
This is how all the more subtle qualities that permeate the characteristics of natural places, even if choked by the wild building proliferation, still continue to resonate 'quietly' in the characteristics of the informal built itself. By refining the gaze, the rhythm of this territory is increasingly clearly outlined and with it its expressive registers are better understood.
Once recognized, this fleeting order can be re-measured in relation to the metronome of nature, re-modulated in relation to the geographical score of the territory, re-ordered in respect of its constraints and its delicate ecosystem and landscape harmonies. Once recognised, this underlying order can be the basis for reinventing the possible meaning of this seaside suburb, which until yesterday was a countryside and which today is still a waiting place, frozen in the vain hope of becoming a city, or perhaps already looking for a new destiny.
Giuseppe Tupputi
