Making Gibellina Nuova

Abstract

The 1968 earthquake destroyed the Sicilian town Gibellina. The citizens were then moved into a New City drawn by the Institute for Social Building Development ISES in a plain formerly used only for agriculture. How to give identity to an urban infrastructural system spread between fields? Quaroni and Anversa, who were comissioned to construct the building of the main church, combined the necessity of identity with a symbol of the city's rebirth project. The dome of the church is a spherical structure, recognizable in this way from close-up as well as from far away. “To make the city” it is necessary to embed the church into a context through the design of public space. Only then, Quaroni’s intent of building the well visible and accessible “Stadtkrone” can be explained. The submitted project proposes a definition of the actual void around the church in order to keep the sphere as sole focus.