Nelle pieghe della distruzione per un’architettura contro la cancellazione. Il caso del Pio Monte della Misericordia a Casamicciola Terme (Ischia)

The contribution frames destruction not as an event of erasure, but rather as a condition capable of generating processes of architectural and urban rewriting. Moving from a counter-thesis to the logic of the “before and after” of disaster, the text proposes a reading of crisis in which design can interpret material traces, collective memories, and forms of risk as active materials of the project. Specifically, the reflection develops from a research project conducted in Casamicciola Terme, on the island of Ischia, focusing on the Pio Monte della Misericordia complex, a building currently in a state of abandonment and located in proximity to the landslide cone of November 26, 2022. Through a design-driven approach, the research investigates the relationship between risk, memory, and project, assuming destruction as a premise for urban and architectural reading and transformation. The contribution reconstructs the historical, typological, and symbolic value of the complex, highlighting how it embodies a stratification of catastrophic cycles and project- based responses to risk. By illustrating the methodologies and operative actions adopted, based on morphological and typological analyses, the contribution shows how a project aimed at transformation can serve as a device to ensure habitability and spatial safety. The project thus emerges as a practice of care, capable of operating within the folds of crisis without denying its fragility, redefining the role of architecture as an infrastructure of adaptation and as a tool against erasure.