Old and new topics in architectural and urban design
Enrico Prandi
Images taken from the articles
With this
double issue (the most substantial ever) FAM wished to offer the
scientific community of architectural design and urban planning a place
in which to collect a great number of ideas that the unusual lockdown
situation has stimulated in many (if not, all) experts on architecture.
In fact it is due to our professional training that we usually analyse
situations in order to propose solutions.
As we have seen, many architects have expressed themselves through the
various media available and have perhaps presented an alternative to
the debate on Covid-19 second only to that of the doctors (virologists
and epidemiologist) and politicians. In that period of excited
initiative we have seen many proposals (from the most quixotic to the
most elementary) but above all at the limits of professional and
deontological ethics.
For our part, in the conviction that the disciplinary corpus of
architectural design and urban planning has much to propose, we have
worked towards the creation of an international call for papers, the
broadest in terms of acceptance of proposals centred on the viewpoint
of architectural design and urban planning.
Thus the proposals received by the editorial staff were numerous with
more than one hundred and thirty abstracts from all over the world.
This was a remarkable result considering the concurrence of dozens and
dozens of schemes that the magazines or the scientific community
offered for architects to think about. Of all the abstracts, the vast
majority were at a very high level and of unquestioned scientific
quality.
The articles were selected (in the meantime increasing from twenty to
more than thirty to make room for researchers to express themselves)
following the criterion of greatest relevance to the topics stated in
the call with a propensity for those that put questions (and offered
answers) which were of use within the discipline. The material received
was also subdivided into thematic blocks (or organisation by topic)
which made it possible to give some order to the contributions (all to
the benefit of the critique).
Selection is always a difficult task, sometimes unpleasant, but
necessary also for the purposes of transmissibility of the content and
coherence with the cultural objective that we set ourselves.
The articles selected were then subjected to a double blind peer review
procedure and for the first time fielding a considerable number of
registered reviewers to whom I wish to express my thanks.
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Concerning the end of the call text (previously presented), some
questions summarised the operating nature of the experts’
call concerning the situation experienced1.
All the articles in fact tackled the problem directly or indirectly,
analysing it and considering possible corrective planning actions to
either mitigate or solve it completely or at least partially.
Although the articles always treat the matter broadly, we thought it
would be useful to identify the main features of the content in order
to guide the reader through the various types of solutions.
The thirty articles selected were in fact organised and grouped into
thematic blocks each responding to a particular feature.
1. On the home
The first thematic block gathers the articles that commented on and
proposed solutions on the home and the domestic environment in
particular. They are articles which start with the condition, often
experienced directly or seen and understood, and propose solutions
connected with the place of primary importance.
The first concept that emerged was the flexibility of domestic space,
in other words the consideration that a certain functional independence
of spaces can be attributed without giving them a specific purpose in a
rigid uncompromising way. Massimo Zammerini develops a solution which
starts with some concrete examples and identifies the spaces which can
effectively be adapted to different functions such as work, sport and
hospitality, but also independent living in the case of children
showing the first signs of independence from the family for which there
are corresponding cases. The discussion clearly becomes increasingly
complicated as the idea of the flexible room/space interacts with the
various types of buildings, from the most unfettered in terms of
spatial organisation (single-family dwelling) to the more constrained
cases of multi-storey terraced houses.
The article by Giorgio Gasco and Giuseppe Resta can be considered on
the same level. They identify the sofa as an interesting space, as the
threshold of a traditional Turkish home, to be introduced in the modern
home. Following the post-war studies of Sedad Hakki Eldem they describe
some of their experiments at Bilkent University of Ankara aimed at
demonstrating how the Turkish sofa can also be a venturian
“device for inflection in the composition”.
Ottavio Amaro, considering the mainly transformative possibility of
design, considers the home as a new central place in which to perform
the various necessary functions and find the primary value of
protection. A domestic microcosm in where functions usually carried out
in the city take place.
If in the vision of Amaro the home is and remains in any case a real
tangible fact that re-appropriates its original function of giving form
to man’s needs also through an archetypal concept, the view
of Grazia Maria Nicolosi, on the contrary and by analogy with a certain
cyborg culture, raises questions on the home as a space of the virtual,
or simulated reality: this leads one to consider new architectural
forms that better adhere to the physiognomy of man (eliminating any
possibility for artistic expression for the sake of techno-scientific
expression) as a capsule, a shell or house-body. The article becomes an
interesting review of the experiments conducted around the concept of
virtual architecture and that Covid-19 has contributed to causing a
crisis and highlighting its limits with respect to man.
While around the single person and the construction of one’s
minimal living space – One Person House –, revolves
the considerations of Alberto Bologna and Marco Trisciuoglio who
transform the contextual situation experienced into a didactic stimulus
through which architecture students attempt four design exercises of
the type “research by design”. They are
substantially based on the analogy between man and architecture from
which they obtain the elements to design.
Antonino Margagliotta and Paolo De Marco, are hoping for liberation of
the home to bring it back to the spirit of necessity, ethical
aspiration and aesthetics of the essential. A type of home that we
imagine located in a situation of collective living, as the modern
architecture has suggested by the Unité of Corbusier to
Social Housing. The real principle on which to rely in design,
analogously to what happens for the disabled, is adaptability: a
predisposition for the different tasks to be done in the current home
including study and work.
2. On the home/work combination
It is precisely on this aspect, the configuration of space destined for
doing work at home, that the second thematic block is dedicated and
which we can consider as an extension of the preceding block. There is
no doubt that the pandemic condition experienced has affected in
various ways the relationship between the home and the workplace. One
aspect in particular concerns the possibility, made conceivable by
openness to remote working to combine the two categories of home and
work in a single space (the domestic one).
In the first article the author, Marianna Charitonidou, takes up the
theme of the studies by the Greek architect Takis Zenetos who, in the
seventies, designed the IT revolution of the home and the city of the
future, studying and anticipating its repercussions. In particular he
takes up the idea of a home optimised to the conditions of remote
working (individual living unit) within which he designs multipurpose
furnishings and a “postural chair”, understood as
an extension of the human body.
The second article by Edoardo Marchese and Noemi Ciarniello, uses the
categories of production and reproduction within which they
metaphorically place their considerations on the home space. There is
no doubt that production (work) has undergone a process of
domestication during the pandemic: recalling the concept of Mack Sennet
on porosity, the two authors however extend the consideration to
include the type of home, suggesting collectivisation and sharing of
functions that would optimise human life between productive work and
reproductive work.
Roberta Gironi shifts her focus from the home to the landscape of work
spaces, pointing out how for some time they have evolved from the
compartmented fixed work post toward the multipurpose open space.
Furthermore, following this evolution, the author arrives at a concept
of the office workplace as a new relational hub made possible by the
relocation of production into homes. This concept, altered by the
flipped classroom, allows a redefinition analogous to a new flipped
workspace formulated on the acknowledgement of different types of work
(communication, concentration, contemplation, cooperation) that lead to
proposing environments organised specifically for different purposes
(brainstorming, presentation, focus, relax, socializing, etc).
3. Between the building and the city: space for relations
The third thematic block specifically concerns space for relations,
variously defined in architectural literature also as an intermediate,
neutral, threshold space, in between, infra, etc.
Giovanni Comi focuses his thoughts on the empty space between the
building and the city, the space for relations which is too often
undervalued (and rejected) in favour of economic performance. The
author opens by presenting the difference between the habitable and
inhabitable which leads him to underline the importance of the
intermediate architectural elements (threshold, portico, roof) unlike
certain spaces in the modern city which would be uninhabitable due to
the inability to conceive how to inhabit them before even thinking
about how to build them.
Claudia Sansò and Roberta Esposito use the representative
potential of a collage to demonstrate through dystopian visions how
during the pandemic there has been an inversion of the busy city which
has become empty and the emptiness of indoor spaces which have become
full. Between the urban desert and the domestic dream reigns the space
of the threshold, consisting of the window (frame from the film) which
is made to react with the pictures.
Paola Scala and Grazia Pota apply the concept of an elastic place (a
place conceived to favour the building of social networks but also able
to react in the event of emergency and becoming equipped spaces) and
propose an intermediate design scale that starts with the experiences
of Chermayeff and Alexander concerning the relationship between public
and private spaces.
4. At the scale of the settlement: design of the contemporary city
Leaving the residential microcosm and entering the urban macrocosm we
come to the fourth thematic block which deals with the question of
designing the contemporary city, its form in the light of the recent
experience we have had. It is pointless to say that the articles
analysed below contain a harsh criticism of the city as it has come
about and been established in recent years and which has revealed its
functional limits during the period of the pandemic.
A city without form and without limits, which has grown over time by
the addition of nucleuses that continue to revolve around the main city
centre, has led Antonello Russo in his article to propose an idea of
urban expansion by nucleuses in which architectural densification and
urban thinning out are possible simultaneously. What follows is a
composition of archipelagos and islands, distinct but interconnected
settlements that originate from experiments on the district, from the
horizontal city to the extended city up to the more recent experiments.
René Soleti proposes the theories of Samonà again
– reinterpreted through the projects of his student Polesello
on Venice – identifying the category of architectural empty
spaces as the instrument for replanning the post-Covid-19 city: in fact
the empty space is an organisational element, an instrument of
measurement and dynamic balance. Apart from the unquestioned
“compositional” value of this approach, planning
with empty space also becomes an opportunity to reorganise the places
and parts of cities.
Pascal Federico Cassaro and Flavia Magliacani place emphasis on the
regenerative potential of the urban fabric and identify the European
city block (and in all the studies, mostly French, aimed at developing
it and emphasising its design value) as the spatial element to be used
in proceeding with the planning of the post-Covid-19 city. The city
block or multiple thereof, the îlot or macrolots, a possible
collective dwelling in multifunctional conditions (with this term
referring also to the satisfaction of needs for sport, wellbeing and
leisure time) and energy and environmental sustainability. A sort of
city within a city defined by the perimeter of the public streets which
takes inspiration from the works in Schützenstraße
in Berlin by Aldo Rossi.
Similarly Giuseppe Verterame, in his article, is inspired by the macro
city block understood as a spatial prototype which, starting with the
invariant morphological type of the block, improves the quality of
living conditions by means of compositional operations in the dialects
between construction and open space, in the context of new primary
functions, local services and improvement of the standards of
environmental sustainability. In these terms the macro city block
contributes to creating a settlement structure where the continuity of
the fabric is determined by independent parts created that have a
mutually relationship that depends on the various levels to which they
are complementary.
The article by Li Bao and Die Hu, takes stock of the critical points
that have affected Chinese cities during the pandemic and suggest a
series of proposals that involves three distinct planning areas (urban,
architectural and community) capable of providing an even better answer
to the pandemic situation in the future.
The article by Ken Fallas and Ekaterina Kochetkova indicates the
resilience of the Korean city as a model for intervention against
Covid-19. The situation of modern man’s isolation and social
inequality described in the recent film Parasite are renounced in
favour of a global urban planning approach defined as K-urbanism based
on the use of technology but focused on man. This is a type of approach
made possible by a capillary IT infrastructuring and an urban model
different from the European one.
5. The role of the public space
The fifth thematic block concerns the relationship and role played by
the public space in the way the city works. In general the
considerations and planning approach collected here are more in the
management-administrative sphere and often connected with planning
methods that are endorsed, shared and cooperative that also include the
reclaiming and consequent reuse, even if only temporary, of abandoned
spaces. It is interesting to note how the three approaches presented
originated differently from urban planning, cooperative architecture
and tactical urban planning, even though they converge on the
objectives and solutions.
It is precisely on the temporary reuse of abandoned spaces that the
article by Nicola Marzot concentrates. After an articulate analytical
explanation he presents the experience of the “Ex Scalo
Ravone” area of Bologna, a symbol of the reclamation of
disused spaces, the subject of a specific exploration of original
solutions to include in the regional implementation plan. It is a
public area that is proposed again for its multiple possible uses which
are also compatible as a place for reconstruction of the sense of
community.
Similar to the preceding article Riccarda Cappeller also suggests
putting areas of an important historical past of the city to uses in a
new way and not originally considered in order to involve the
population in active participation and reappropriation processes. Not
just reuse but considering the spaces and architecture as
“open to continual change” and open to
modernisation. On the basis of the works proposed the idea of
cooperative architecture, understood as the co-creation of places,
spaces and opportunities for use, makes sense.
Fabrizia Berlingieri and Manuela Triggianese propose a strategy of
reappropriation of residual public areas for the purposes of greater
capacity for adaptation to risk by means of methods typical of the
so-called Tactical Urbanism. This involves low cost projects carried
out with the active involvement of the population (creation of cycle
tracks, redevelopment of squares and reappropriation of residual
spaces). Various projects in cities of Milan and Rotterdam are given as
an example.
6. Planning culture in relation to the Pandemic
The sixth thematic block includes articles that deal with the question
of planning culture in relation to the pandemic. Two articles in
particular emphasise renewed interest in proxemics, a discipline that
could help architects and architectural design – the same
echo in the foreword of the book published in Italy by Hall refers
mainly to them – specifically dealing with the relationship
between space and the body. An outline is thus given of a flexible
elastic city that has many independent centres rather than a single
centre around which the external parts revolve.
In his article, Luca Reale proposes restarting with ‘bodies
in space’ rather than the ‘city as a
body’ (sick and in need of regeneration). Besides the general
considerations on domestic space the author imagines a new balance
between city and public health which would confute the tendency toward
densification in favour of a rebirth of the district (perhaps
reassessing the INA-Casa experience) and its pedestrian use.
In the article by Anna Veronese proxemics is proposed as a specific
planning instrument useful for rethinking the spaces “on a
human scale”. We are thus reminded of the four spheres of
distancing (intimate, personal, social and public) by which we can
imagine respective scales of city organisation. A concept that measures
the distance which in the event of use underpins the project of La
ville du quart d’heure produced by Carlos Moreno –
the expert of the Sorbonne Smart City – in the context of the
programme for re-election of Anne Hidalgo, the mayoress of Paris.
By the paradigm of the raft with which humanity is to be saved,
according to the thinking of Richard Neutra in Progettare per
sopravvivere, Elisabetta Canepa and Valeria Guerrisi propose a review
of the main Italian magazines on architecture during the great health
crises of the 20th and 21st centuries in search of how planning culture
reacted to previous pandemics (Spanish flu, Asiatic flu, Hong Kong
fever, Swine flu). The outcome shows how regardless of the extent of
contagion it is the media amplification that creates the base or the
project magazines which most of the time deal with the urban problem in
terms of livability and consequent accessibility, as well as the danger
of high density.
7. The care of the city paradigm
The seventh thematic block gathers together articles that have recourse
to the Geddesian paradigm of care. The city is seen as a sick organism
and as such in need of care: needless to say that in this case the
condition that generated the problems, including those of an urban
type, i.e. the medical health problem, ended up shifting in an abnormal
spillover also to the city and to architecture changing the scheme of
diagnosis/cure by medical practice. In particular the article by
Alessandro Oltremarini considers the characteristics of the cure
intersecting them with those of measurement: if the cure attends to the
plural relations between different parts and their continually changing
meaning, it acknowledges the character of necessity that belongs to the
measurement of “things” and the relations between
them.
The cure of the city, – but also with the meaning of care
– from the viewpoint of Landscape Architecture is the content
of the article by Sara Protasoni in which it is necessary to find a new
balance between architecture and nature. For example, the author
presents a planning approach of this type, describing it as the work of
the three architects Mitte, Figini and Porcinai.
Silvana Segapeli reinterprets and applies a good part of the Geddesian
lesson to the current reality, outlining in four specific points the
concept of care applied to planning. It is the article that most
resumes the theories of Geddes to whom the reader is referred for an
exhaustive treatment
There are also some articles that take up the defence of the city and
in contrast the defence of suburban life in the abandoned or
underpopulated districts. This tendency is also considered in the
article by Enrico Bascherini who, supporting the broader and more
general movement which for some years has tended to develop and
repopulate internal areas, identifies the greatest problems (or risks)
such as ensuring that those places are refounded in community terms,
starting a medium to long term process. I agree with the author when he
affirms that in this collective rediscovery of being a community, a
feeling can and must arise in which the district system can be a social
and economic life choice but definitely not a substitute for the city.
In fact, not only the necessity of having a city, which cannot be
replaced, is the conviction of Costantino Patestos but also that it has
not exhibited any serious defects in handling the pandemic. It must be
(regarding the care paradigm) cared for, says the author, but not
hospitalised. Against the speculators of the situation, guilty of using
the pandemic to rehash already superseded solutions, he proposes some
fundamental disciplinary points including: defence of the old city
centre; opposition to inequality; replanning of internal peripheries of
the city and promotion of a new territorial multicentricity;
reclamation of the quality of public areas.
Lastly, some contributions on functional subjects outside the primary
ambit of living such as that of Laura Anna Pezzetti and Helen
Khanamiryan that deal with the space of the schools or investigations
on change in urban behaviour in Sweden analysed by Ann Legeby and
Daniel Koch.
In the first article the two authors dwell on the importance of the
educational space and its implementation in regard to advanced
functional criteria (space as a “third educator”)
and to use in the emergency pandemic conditions such as we still have2.
Ann Legeby and Daniel Koch instead, sent questionnaires to the
population of three Swedish cities (Stockholm, Uppsala and
Göteborg) during the pandemic to record the changes in
behaviour consisting of greater use of services bordering the
residential areas and public parks and spaces typically having
extensive open spaces.
Note 1
It should be said that in regard to a truce in the summer, at the time
of writing, 31 October 2020 we are going through a second wave of the
pandemic which in Europe is creating alarm (a few days ago France went
into lockdown again and Great Britain is trying not to despite having
an even more serious situation): after the first partial closure order
we will probably see a new lockdown, perhaps a total one or at least
geographically limited to the areas mist seriously hit. 2
In summer 2020 an attempt was made ensure ongoing teaching and the
resumption of lessons introducing specific distancing measures in the
schools. At the moment lessons are attended in primary and middle
schools while senior school lessons are held using remote teaching
methods.
.