The strada litoranea. Mapping colonial rural landscape along the Libyan coastal road.

Politecnico di Milano, DAStU Department of Architecture and Urban Studies, 20133 Milan, Italy

Corresponding author: alessandro.raffa@polimi.it

Abstract

The construction of the Strada Litoranea, the first modern infrastructure of Libya, coincided with an impressive territorial refoundation process. Although the role of this infrastructure in the tourist and rural development had been recognized, the scope and its transformative qualities in the process of modernization of the territory and of invention of a modern landscape has still not been investigated. The present paper illustrates ongoing research, interweaving geography, landscape architecture and architectural planning. Its first aim is to overcome the design-related disciplines previous research, through a less thematic and more 'relational' approach. A process that, starting from the coastal road, can tell the colonial fragments and their relations and reassemble them into a new interpretation of the Libyan peculiar rural landscape. Particularly, the modern strategy for rural development will emerge, also from a topographic point of view. A further element of originality consisted in the mapping process based on multi-scale territorial readings and architectural drawings, both as an instrument of knowledge and of restitution of relations between colonial fragments and strada litoranea. These maps intend to describe the complexity of an ambiguous landscape that oscillates between heterotopia and rooting, designed to be Italian and Libyan together.