Squares and Streets without town. Settlement patterns in Puglia's landscape. The Borgo Segezia

The Italian "new towns" made in the 30s are meaningful architectural interventions at the landscape’s measurement. After them the theme of the planned cities and the territorial analysis will resurface only in the early '60s in the theoretical debate on the great architectural dimension, the city-region and Muratori’s studies. A "structural" analysis of their founding principles in relation to the territory, it is useful to develop the models of settlement for the contemporary, within a historical and geographical perspective, approaching to the landscape with an architectural vision. In particular the Borgo Segezia seems to be a rather significant and fruitful paradigm to investigate in didactic field and research about the topic of the relationship between architecture and nature in the Puglia region. Segezia is a small community center built between 1939 and 1941 near Foggia. Designed by Concezio Petrucci, is part of the program of appoderamento of the Tavoliere delle Puglie, a plan designed by Petrucci. With this plan the architect can work with both territorial and architectural levels. This plan is based on the principle of anthropic settlements and infrastructure of the "Roman" matrix, as applied first in Pianura Pontina, and developed in the Tavoliere with a polycentric form. The base idea of Segezia’s planning, is the synthesis between the continuum of the tradition of Italian city, composed by streets and squares, the widespread pattern of garden-city and the functionalist open scheme. With the residential part never completed, Segezia is today a small core in the countryside consisting of isolated constructions without a building fabric, a square without a town, strongly characterized by the church and the bell tower. The modeling feature, typical of foundation towns is particularly evident in Segezia, and wisely represented by Petrucci, in its unfinished finitude. In fact it remains isolated in a horizontal plane, and its skyline stands out clear in the Puglia countryside, surrounded by almost a metaphysical aura. Segezia, more than other modern planned cities which were later expanded, frozen in its original unfinished condition, can constitute a possible paradigm for the landscape's settlement. It suggests a meaningful way of "poetically living" the countryside in response to the widespread demand to resume a more direct relationship with nature. Segezia shows that there are alternative ways to settle in the countryside, and history gives us many examples (the farms, monasteries, castles, small villages), which on the outside are seen as great individuals, strong presence in the landscape, while on the inside are able to reconcile public and private dimensions of living. This large and complex "architectural structure" is capable of measuring itself up to the dimensions of the horizon and the material empty of the countryside, and at the same time to measure itself with the condition of "internal" . It may constitute an alternative model to the spread of single-family houses, with a capillary and pervasive action is gradually transforming the character and the measure of the Italian landscape.