A 'socio-building' reading of the Valle d'Itria's landscape

This essay focuses on the Valle d’Itria landscape, a sub-region of central Apulia. Here a long and arduous process of civilization occurred over the years has culminated in the emergence of an agricultural society which has shaped this landscape in such a way that the urban and the rural environment are synthesized. Within this essay I will investigate this synthesis by analysing the Valle d’Itria landscape according to different levels of complexity: elements (architectural organisms), structures (urban aggregates, urban organisms, rural aggregates and rural settlements), systems (settlements, routes and productive activities), and organism (the landscape itself). Such an analysis will be introduced by reflecting on a theoretical-logical method that tends to attribute a temporal-structural dimension to the territory and consequently to the landscape. In fact by referring to studies developed since the 1960s by the Italian architects Saverio Muratori and Gianfranco Caniggia, I will attempt to provide an idea of the territory as a living organism whose structure is determined by the anthropic process that has occurred throughout history. Aware that contents will emerge from this research could be interpreted in several ways, and that each of the levels of complexity of the Valle d’Itria landscape would require a more in depth analysis, this study has mainly the purpose to demonstrate how the aesthetic data of this landscape is the result of anthropic interventions which, conceived on different scales interconnected each other, bind living and working places with the countryside.