The Apartments where they lived
Is that style of apartment building common in Italy? With the walkways attaching each house and the different open levels. Very strange looking to me.
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MovieChat Forums > Gomorra (2009) Discussion > The Apartments where they lived
Big blocks of flats like that are quite common, especially in the larger cities (Naples, but also Rome, Milan, Turin); they are housing projects whose purpose was to give destitute people a place where they could live. Not very different from the big housing projects in NYC, for example.
But those buildings are special; they are the Vele in Scampia. Vela means sail. They were designed by an ambitious architect who dreamed of a sort of utopian community. The result wasn't very satisfactory, as you can see in the movie. The peculiar fetures of those buildings (walkways, etc.) can only be found in the Vele, not in the other housing projects elsewhere.
However, living in an apartment building is quite normal in Italy. You can even have luxury buildings. Those in the movie aren't, however. Scampia, the part of Naples where that episode of the movie is set, is a sort of Neapolitan Alphabet City or Inglewood, so to say...
i heard they started demolishing the veles
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http://faculty.ed.umuc.edu/~jmatthew/naples/vele.htm
It reminded me of a scene in the austrian film "import/export" where we see a Soviet styl block that was as bad if notworse than the one in this film
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0459102/board/nest/169040471?p=1
...The director just took great picks on extreme locations, filmed in winter and even added a desaturation filter. That's why the movie is good and depressing. ...It's the same almost everywhere I've been. There are very poor people in America, there are very ugly locations in America. Same in Europe. Extremes bordering with extremes...share
I've read that Italy had a very vibrant futurist movement in the 70s. In addition to Soviet-like influences, many projects like the Vele were supposed to be some kind of a self-sufficient futuristic cities with high rises, different services and pedestrian walkways.
Soviet influences, however, were dictated by the urbanization that led to an enormous demand for cheap city apartments, made out of prefabricated concrete units. In UK and in the U.S., most of these housing projects weren't externally as appalling as in the continental Europe, mainly because they were built somewhat earlier or over the time, not as hastily.
They are very common in Italy, as well as in south and south-east Europe.
sharethose particular towers are not common in italy nor are the even common in Naples. I drive pass them on my way home everyday and they are an eyesore. The big, crumbling, and dangerous. It was built in teh 60's off of some 40's designs and they were suppose to look like sails but in reality they look like sh**. If by 60's design you mean they are built of cheap concrete then yea.
shareDestruction of the towers started earlier this year, with only one tower to be left and used as an office or museum
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