The recovery of the landscape: the quarries as resource for the contemporary city. The case of Apulia region

In a territory strongly humanized as that Italian, a particularly delicate theme is that of the quarrying activities and the finding of raw materials as the construction stones. This essay wants to show as the quarries can return in a virtuous circuit able to produce a new concept of 'sustainable construction' applicable not only to a single building but to a whole cycle that holds in consideration whole portions of territory. Particularly, the distribution of the quarries in proximities of the urban centers has tied basically to the construction of our cities, especially in that places where the only raw materials for the building originate from the subsoil. These quarry areas are nowadays places of the landscape in which is evident, more than in other parts, the problem of the restructuring of the form of the territory. The quarries, following the strong intervention at the man, are characterized for the almost definitive loss of their aboriginal relationship with the natural landscape and they become integral part of the architecture of the territory and the cities. Such transformation is comprehensible only if read at a scale that holds the landscape and the urban form together. In the contemporary urban structure the quarry can arise as an amazing answer to the requirement of infrastructures, services and new places for the collectivity. The quarries may become architectural forms that find their last meaning in the contemporary city. The quarries are therefore places of the territory in which is possible to let coincide the problem of the restructuring of the territory (and his construction) with the production of new urban cores and architectural forms that are in continuity with the production and use of traditional raw materials for the building.