Lynch Architects Naples «

These drawings and images are from an exhibition of our unit’s work at The Architectural Association in 2003. Drawings are not texts but we do read spaces too, just as it is images that we remember from a poem or a novel.

“Trade, deeply rooted in Naples, borders on a game of chance and adheres closely to the holiday.  The well known list of the seven deadly sins located pride in Genoa, avarice in Florence (the old Germans were of a different opinion and called what is known as Greek love Florinzen), voluptuousness in Venice, anger in Bologna, greed in Milan, envy in Rome and indolence in Naples.”

“At the base of the cliff itself, where it touches the shore, caves have been hewn… As porous as this stone is the architecture. Building and action interpenetrate in the courtyards, arcades, and stairways. In everything, they preserve the scope to become a theatre of new, unforeseen constellation. The stamp of definitive is avoided. No situation appears intended forever, no figure asserts it ‘thus and not otherwise’. This is how architecture, the most binding part of the communal rhythm, comes into being here…”

“Porosity is the inexhaustible law of life in this city.”

“Porosity results not only from the indolence of the southern artisan, above all, from the passion for improvisation, which demands that space and opportunity be preserved at any price. Buildings are used as a popular stage. They are all divided into innumerable, simultaneously animated theaters. Balcony, courtyard, windows, gateways, staircase, roof are at the same time stage and boxes.”

“Just as the living room reappears on the street, with chairs, hearth, and altar, so…the street migrates into the living room.”

Walter Benjamin and Asja Lacis ‘Naples’, 1925