Urban Corporis - To the bones (abstract) by Anteferma Edizioni

URBAN CORPORIS TO THE BONES

Guest Editor ANNA RICIPUTO Edited by MICKEAL MILOCCO BORLINI ANDREA CALIFANO

URBAN CORPORIS SERIES ISSN: 2785-6917 Director of the Series: Mickeal Milocco Borlini PhD Deputy Director of the Series: Lelio di Loreto PhD Editor in chief: Andrea Califano MSc Books on Architecture, Art, Philosophy and Urban Studies to nourish the Urban Body. Urban Corporis is an interdisciplinary and international book series that questions urban, cultural and social dynamics to investigate and learn about the contemporary city and its inhabitants. Urban Corporis explores the state of tension between historic, contemporary and future cities and its many facets with a view to identify its criticalities and understand its possible transformations. This book series is not exclusively for architects; in fact, it was born out of a desire to find common ground between different disciplines such as fine art, photography, aesthetics and urban sociology.

Series Scientific Committee Fausto Sanna PhD, Head of Department (Designed & Built Environments) at Cardiff School of Art and Design, Cardiff Metropolitan University, Wales, UK. Nadia Bertolino PhD, Assistant Professor in Architecture and Urban Design, Università degli Studi di Pavia, Italy. Christina Conti PhD, Associate Professor in Technology of Architecture, Università degli Studi di Udine, Italy.

Published Volumes 1. URBAN CORPORIS X - UNEXPECTED, M. Milocco Borlini, A. Califano, 2022. 2. URBAN CORPORIS - TO THE BONES, M. Milocco Borlini, A. Califano, A. Riciputo, 2023.

URBAN CORPORIS TO THE BONES

Guest Editor ANNA RICIPUTO Edited by MICKEAL MILOCCO BORLINI ANDREA CALIFANO

URBAN CORPORIS TO THE BONES

URBAN CORPORIS - TO THE BONES First Edition, December 2023 M. Milocco Borlini, A. Califano, A. Riciputo This work is distributed under Creative Commons License Attribution - Non-commercial - Share alike 4.0 International

Publisher Anteferma Edizioni via Asolo 12, Conegliano, 31015, TV, Italy ISBN: 979-12-5953-056-1 (paper version) ISBN: 979-12-5953-088-2 (digital version)ISBN: 978-88-32050-96-7 (digital version) www.anteferma.it The essays in this book have been double-blind peer-reviewed by selected experts Disclaimer: responsibility for the text and images contained in individual chapters lies with their respective author(s). For queries, please contact the editors on urbancorporis@gmail.com or info@iuvas.org. Cover image: Laura Szyman, The entry and corridor. Courtesy of the Author.

A BOOK BY IUVAS www.iuvas.org

GUEST EDITOR Anna Riciputo, PhD, Research Fellow, Sapienza Universita di Roma, Italy EDITORS Mickeal Milocco Borlini, PhD, Lecturer in Interior Design, Cardiff Metropolitan University, Wales, UK Andrea Califano, PhD candidate at Sapienza University, Italy

EDITORIAL BOARD Mickeal Milocco Borlini, Director, PhD, Lecturer in Interior Design, Cardiff Metropolitan University, Wales, UK Lelio di Loreto, Deputy Director, PhD, Architect, Italy Andrea Califano, Editor in Chief, PhD candidate at Sapienza University, Italy Kevin Santus, Assistant Editor, PhD candidate at Politecnico di Milano, Italy Arianna Scaioli, Assistant Editor, PhD candidate at Politecnico di Milano, Italy Stefano Sartorio, Assistant Editor, PhD candidate at Politecnico di Milano, Italy Francesco Airoldi, Assistant Editor, PhD candidate at Politecnico di Milano, Italy

SCIENTIFIC BOARD OF REVIEWERS Alessandro Raffa, PhD, Assistant professor at University of Basilicata, Matera, Italy Francesca Giofrè, PhD, Associate professor at Sapienza University of Rome, Italy Stefano Murello, MSc in Architecture, Italy Giulia Setti, PhD, Assistant Professor at Politecnico di Milano, Italy Chiara Giorgetti, Professor Academy of Fine Arts Brera, Milan, Italy Laura Pavia, PhD, Adjunct Professor at DiCEM e Nature-City LAB, Università degli Studi della Basilicata, Italy Clive Cazeaux, PhD, Professor of Aesthetics, Cardiff Metropolitan University, Wales, UK Silvia Covarino, PhD, Associate Professor Architecture Urban Design Program German University in Cairo, Egypt Gregorio Carboni Maestri, PhD, Associate Professor in Architectural Design at Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium Arianna Bartocci, Architect, Italy

URBAN CORPORIS - TO THE BONES

A BOOK ON ARCHITECTURE, ART, PHILOSOPHY AND URBAN STUDIES TO NOURISH THE URBAN BODY

URBAN CORPORIS - TO THE BONES

Table of Contents 9

SERO VENIENTIBUS, OSSA Those who are late get bones Mickeal Milocco Borlini, Andrea Califano

TO THE BONES Anna Riciputo

SKULL 16

Architectural Bodies in the Flowing Time Ruins and Zero Degree of Architecture Gregorio Froio

Anatomy of a Landscape Processes, Approaches, and Methodologies for a Spatial Regeneration Christina Conti, Ambra Pelice

Expected Adjacencies and Common Ghosts Fossil and Ruin in the Financial House Laura Szyman

House-Work Towards an Occupation of Care, or, New Bones for Old Hugo David Moline

Designing Togetherness Rethinking the Structure of the City from In-Between Arianna Scaioli

Locus Vertebralis Exploring Analogies Between Anatomy and Architecture Simon Comploi

The Agency of a Half-Finished Building An Active Ruin Sebastian Gatz

Disinterring the Architectural Drawing

Urban Carcasses The Reinterpretation of Unfinished Spatiality

Linda Matthews

Lorenzo Bagnoli

Permanence and Continuity of the Project Relations Between Persistent Structures and Contemporary Interventions Valerio De Caro

Ceci N’est Pas Béton Armé Unveiling the Backbone Behind the Bricks at Det Danske Institut in Rome Angela Gigliotti

104

Bones as Traces Towards a Nonviolent Architecture Tommaso Antiga

TORSO 114

Dorsum Topography and Tectonic as Lenses of Inquiry for Architecture in Mountain and Rural Contexts Francesco Airoldi, Giulia Azzini

122

Stones Sinking Like Bones Notes on Italian Modern Architecture into the Desert Sands Giuseppe Felici, Antonio Schiavo

130

The Industrial Remnants: Memories of the Past, Assets for Urban and Territorial Re-design The Case Studies of Nantes and Saint- Ouen in France Varvara Toura

138

Kandovan’s Morphology Unearthing the City’s Architectural Skeleton Ghazaleh Tarkalam

146

Essentials in Face of (Climate) Change Venice as a Planetary Metaphor Francesca Dal Cin, Cristiana Valente Monteiro

156

The Reciprocal Interplay of Body and Space: a Phenomenological Exploration of Time as the ‘Backbone’ of Architecture James Acott-Davies

LIMBS 164

X-ACT Desire Lines of a Healing Bone Demet Dincer, Belinda J. Dunstan

172

From Rubble to Ruins The ‘Cavalleggeri Christs’ of from Isolated Elements to Urban System Michele Astone

180

Infrastructure for Informal Inhabit [In]Visible Paradoxical Cities Around Global Urban Skeleton Maria Fierro

186

Lagni Regi Photo-Carto-Graphic Exploration of a Layered Spine Francesco Stefano Sammarco

194

More than Bones Lisbon Infrastructural Footprints Pablo Villalonga Munar, Stefanos Antoniadis

Afterword 205

TEMPORAL OXYMORON Lelio di Loreto

URBAN CORPORIS - TO THE BONES

Simon Comploi, parametrically generated prototypes (naked structure without “skin”). Courtesy of the Author.

URBAN CORPORIS - TO THE BONES

SERO VENIENTIBUS, OSSA Those who are late get bones by Mickeal Milocco Borlini and Andrea Califano

In the intricate tapestry of urban landscapes and architectural marvels resides an inherent essence that defines their very being: the skeletal structure. This essence, explored in the publication Urban Corporis: To the Bones, delves into the complex array of structures and elements constituting the foundational framework of our buildings, cities, landscapes, and narratives within the realms of theoretical and architectural heritage. The colloquially employed phrase “to the bones” typically implies a reduction of essential elements. This essence, manifested as a skeletal structure, encapsulates indispensable components crucial for upholding the conceptual fabric of our urban centres and built environments. Within ontological and phenomenological inquiries into the primordial essence of architecture, luminaries such as Le Corbusier introduced the Maison Dom-Ino, a pioneering concept in “skeletal” architecture. Furthermore, A. Loos expounded in his writings that ornamentation is akin to crime, advocating for reduction to the core compositional elements of architecture. As emphasised by A. Riciputo, the skeletal structure serves as architectural support and acts as a repository of memories, resilient against the erosion of time. It stands as a custodian, preserving vestiges of the past while symbolising temporal continuity through its enduring absence. Additionally, the archetype of the hut, epitomising structural minimalism, is exemplified by Le Corbusier’s cabanon, in contrast to the maison domino, representing a skeletal form resulting from machinery and industrial processes. This dichotomy extends to an existence minimised to a 14 square meter space, culminating in creating habitable spaces through minimal means in harmony with nature, as evidenced by the Caribbean hut designed by G. Semper.

Thus, the way an object is adorned or its superficial appearance can actually represent a fundamental framework on its own. This is similar to how a surface, often seen as expendable in people’s minds – like a painted layer or plaster – takes on a crucial role. This discussion raises questions about how much attention and strengthening this framework requires. The goal of this book is to examine and understand the limits that define how this structure should be handled and reinforced. Can architecture offer a gesture of renunciation to an oppressive and consuming time? This gesture, not defined by abstention from action but rather by a reduction of superfluous gestures, aims to uncover the essence capable of coexisting within saturated and fragmented spaces. This premise underscores the fundamental purpose of this exploration into the concept of the architectural skeleton. This volume endeavours to elucidate and present the architectural skeleton as the fundamental underpinning of our cities and landscapes, ascribing its multifaceted nature as a system of elementary components. Herein lies an exertion to rediscover these elemental constituents, analogous to an intricate architectural system: a cranial structure housing fundamental principles, a supportive spine, extended limbs, and dispersed elements hinting at possibilities and reconstructions. “Urban Corporis: To the Bones” seeks to redefine our comprehension of these elemental constituents, inviting exploration, interpretation, and reconfiguration of the structural framework anchoring our domains of architecture, urbanism, and the arts. This expedition through diverse perspectives efforts to unveil the profound essence – the very core – of our constructed or perceived environments.

URBAN CORPORIS - TO THE BONES

Anna Riciputo, The Senob, digital collage 2023.

URBAN CORPORIS - TO THE BONES

TO THE BONES by Anna Riciputo, Guest Curator

In the constant search for physical and spiritual immortality, the Italian artist Gino De Domincis entrusted a gigantic skeleton with the task of uniting the sensitive world to the imponderable universe through a cosmic magnet held on the tip of a finger: Humanity, in its essentiality, is reduced to the bones because, if the flesh is destroyed and the soul transmigrates, the bones remain and testify to our passage on earth. In the same way, Le Corbusier’s Maison domino, naked only in its structural bones, stripped Architecture of its superstructures, showing the zero degree that can be covered with infinite possibilities. Thus, the anatomical structure that supports human beings, through analogy, becomes a tool for knowing and understanding the territory on which natural and artificial bones write words that allow us to read it: “the skull”, which contains its founding characters; the “backbone”, that supports its courses and settlements; the long “limbs”, that extend outward and upward; the “short bones”, that tell about fragments; and so on, until describing an anatomical landscape in which, by form or function, the natural and anthropic elements behave as parts of a single organic system, composed of hard and soft parts, rigid and flexible, fixed and variable. Bones like large outcropping stones or long rivers that have determined the adaptation of man’s buildings to nature, or like homogeneous environmental systems that can be broken down into simple geometric entities such as points, lines and surfaces; bones as the fortifications, the great walls and the aqueducts on which parasitic architectures have been grafted, which surround the urban agglomerations whose original geometries

are still legible in the filigree of the contemporary city or which, sinking and emerging from the ground, project towards the countryside; bones as historical or industrial archaeologies, isolated remains or deep stratified networks that have formed positions and backbones on which the urban fabric has developed or will develop; bones as the remains of colonialism, the artefacts that have written on the earth the destinies of men and nations that have determined the dynamics of the contemporary city or that have remained temporal anti-murals in the landscape becoming Landmarks; bones as emerging fragments recovered and used within contemporary architecture, generating new hybrid aesthetics in which reconstruction, anastylosis and integration go beyond the discipline of restoration to found the transtemporal architectural project; bones as infrastructures – which branch out like veins within the terrestrial body in the distinction between arteries and capillaries – also represent the great “spine” on which the economy and development of countries are based, determining political and cultural geographies which, precisely on those infrastructures, they move; bones such as beams and pillars, walls and stairs, structuring elements of the architecture that determine and support its progress, but also rigid casings within which man occupies only the space of his own body; bones as minimal formal principles, morphemes, essential lines and paths that direct reality and the project, which bring the form back to its most intimate existential paradigm; finally, bones as theoretical principles that structure thoughts, key information supporting the framework

URBAN CORPORIS - TO THE BONES

of architectural discourse, axioms, rules, ordering systems of the act of composing and breaking down reflections on reality. As in the biological world, there may be endoskeletons and exoskeletons capable of guiding or dominating the shape of the landscape, city and architecture. The endoskeleton guides the shape: placed inside it, and the shape is free to modify itself, to expand or contract, to grow in a more than proportional manner following concentric offsets or shrinking until it coincides with the skeleton itself. If a part of the skeleton breaks or deforms, the shape varies along unexpected lines, generating distortions that attribute plastic values to the original shape. On the contrary, the exoskeleton dominates the form: it forces it into a closed and unchangeable boundary unless the skeleton breaks or deforms, generating possibilities. As insects teach us, to grow, the form must abandon or destroy the old exoskeleton to “enter” a new one that contains it: the building envelope, blocked in its shape given a priori, can only extend by budding, obtained by addition or multiplication of immutable primary cells. The action of recognising the bones of a territory is triggered through the sense of time or, as usual, the act of travelling through space allows us to identify sequences and experience its realities within a cognitive process in which recognisability accompanies the identity of places, enhances their potential by reconnecting the individual to the global, through a contemporary rereading of the meanings of locus, form and memory. Long bones like rivers, mountains, fractures, slopes, and coasts write linear words on the earth, which, through directional movement,

reach the exit towards the time of the future. Fragmentary bones, isolated elements that dot the surface, instead determine a horizontal crossing movement, a situation still in the present time in which the individual must face a continuous succession of obstacles: it is the archetype of the labyrinth – already a metaphor of complexity in the Euthydemus of Plato. Terrestrial writing speaks both the language of nature and the language of humans: it represents the desire to modify the territory by solid acting. Settlements, textures, paths, alignments, directions, rhythm, and distributions define a rule, the set of morphology and mutual relationships between the elements that make up an anthropised place. The movement through the rule is a counterpoint, in which independent yet in agreement exceptions are combined with the cantus firmus – considered in its harmonious meaning. The counterpoint time is variable, containing slow and accelerated movements, horizontal and vertical movements, and past and future times. At the extremes of form and time are ruin and the unfinished. The ruin presents itself in a metempirical condition in which objects move in the space-time suspension in which it exist, but as a fragment of a whole that was in the past but is not in the present. Equally the unfinished: it exists in the present as non-being, not in the past; it will be in the future or the rubble – which contains neither the testimonial value of survival nor the monumental value of permanence. Artists and architects look at the bones of the landscape and architecture, reading memory and potential: these are the keywords

URBAN CORPORIS - TO THE BONES

with which this volume of Urban Corporis. To the Bones should be read and studied, interpreting the skeleton concept as a complex system of load-bearing elements that structure architecture and landscape in their material and immaterial reality. The purpose of the volume is to use the notions of form and time to discover how the aesthetics and structure of reality depend on them through the attribution of unprecedented value judgments to natural and anthropic elements considered “essential” for knowledge and planning of space. Openness to reflections that study the bones of the virtual, the post-human and the metaphysical also allows us to explore an array of theoretical paradigms that prefigure futuristic or atopic, but never impossible, realities. The volume is divided into three sections called – through anatomical analogy – Skull, Torso and Limbs. The first section, the Skull, refers to everything that is intellectual and theoretical and has to do with speculative thought, memory, the virtual and the sentimental. The second, the Torso, contains the spine, protects the soft organs and supports the limbs; therefore, it represents all those landscape, urban and architectural conditions in which the skeleton functions as a system composed of interrelated parts. The third section, the Limbs, collects those contributions in which the bones of the territory project outwards, tell of movement, expansion, roads to travel and rivers to navigate, of extensive networks and long lines that unite humans and the lands into a single large living organism.

Anna Riciputo is an architect, PhD and Research Fellow RTDA in Architectural and Urban Design. At the Department of Architecture and Design of the Sapienza University of Rome, she is a specialist and teaching manager for the Master in Design of Buildings for Worship; she teaches within the degree courses in Design, and Landscape Architecture. She is a visiting researcher at the Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo da Universidade de São Paulo and a visiting professor at the Facultad de Arquitectura, Diseño y Urbanismo de la Universidad de Buenos Aires and the Universidad Nacional de Moreno; in 2023, she has been resident researcher at the Giovanni Michelucci Foundation in Florence. Through her research activity, she studies the interdisciplinary relationships between architecture, the arts, and the social sciences to define new housing and urban models. With her doctoral thesis, she studied the architecture of the 1960s with a particular reference to Rome and its affiliation with the Scuola di Piazza del Popolo. In 2015, she obtained a scholarship from the Sapienza Foundation for a thesis abroad published with the title Lina Bo Bardi and the Heterogenesis of Form. She won the “Il Paese delle donne” award in 2021. In 2016, she won the Honorable Mention at the Young Critics Award with the Souvenir project. Since 2008, she has worked as part of design teams for competitions as an architect and consultant; she worked as an architect for Fendi, designing the brand’s stores worldwide. In 2013 she began her research on the “city as performance”, exhibiting several times as the solo exposition organised by Ordine degli Architetti of Ancona in 2021; the solo show at La Casa dell’Architettura at Palazzo Collicola Arti Visive in Spoleto in 2018; the collective exhibition The City of Inclusion at the MACRO - Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome in 2019 and the participations in the Rome Biennale in 2017, 2019 and 2021. She is a member of the collective Gruppo MOA within Sinestetica Gallery in Rome, organising exhibitions, lectures and cultural activities. Essayist and editorial curator, she participates in academic research, workshops, and national and international conferences, writing the results in texts and articles published in collections and magazines, including Op. Cit. by Renato De Fusco.

SKULL

01. The Artist’s Despair Before the Grandeur of Ancient Ruins. Heinrich Füssli, 1778-1780, Author drawing.

G. FROIO

Architectural Bodies in the Flowing Time Ruins and Zero Degree of Architecture Gregorio Froio Architect and PhD in Architectural and Urban Composition, is an Adjunct Professor in Architectural Design at UNICAL. Since 2009 he collaborates with teaching courses in Rome and Cosenza. From 2008 he works as an architect, participating in national and international design competitions.

Keywords: body, structure, fragment, ruderization, unfinished Abstract

according to Georg Simmel the ruin makes the conflict between opposing forces evident. The matter, with its inertia, contrasts the fall of the supporting structure towards the ground, place of the state of rest. The construction, made of weight and support, fights against this slow but inexorable process, which is ultimately inevitable. In contemporary art, the ruin becomes a metaphor for the body (investigated in the artistic experiments of the seventies, in particular in body art), a body that is lacerated, dismembered, reduced to shreds. The fascination of the ruin as a metaphor for a stripped architectural body finds a classic demonstration in the Vitruvian triad: once the utilitas and the firmitas fall, the building collapses in the venustas. “Architecture is what makes beautiful ruins,” said August Perret. This is why some architects in the 19th century started to imagine the building virtually in ruins, even before it was actually built. This concept of ruderization of architecture, which has its most important precedent in the etchings by Giovanni Battista Piranesi, becomes an aesthetic device which allows the beauty of a building to be verified. Architecture as subjected to a sort of conscious self-destruction is brought back to its founding matrix. With pictorial wisdom, Le Corbusier obtains this effect by resorting to the unfinished technique. In the Maison Dom-ino the bare reinforced concrete structure leads modern architecture back to a rough essentiality, creating a visual short circuit with the countless images of buildings under construction that crowd today’s cities. Like a bone fragment, this drawing is prophetic of an unfinished building scenario, in where cities are suspended awaiting completion.

01. Territorial map of the Friuli Venezia Giulia region highlighting the production sites, the forest system and the main infrastructure networks identified (the cardo and decumanus).Elaboration: A. Pecile.

C. CONTI A. PELICE

Anatomy of a Landscape Processes, Approaches, and Methodologies for a Spatial Regeneration1 Christina Conti Associate Professor of Architectural Technology at the University of Udine, DPIA. Ambra Pelice PhD candidate at the PhD program in Civil-Environmental Engineering and Architecture at the University of Trieste with a research grant funded by the Friuli-Venezia Giulia Region.

Keywords: Landscape, systemic approach, environmental regeneration, territorial breakdown Abstract The contribution analyses the methodological process of analysis, research, and experimentation that formed the basis for defining an experimental project for the reinterpretation and formal restructuring of the Friuli-Venezia Giulia territory, a region in north-eastern Italy. Working on a vast scale has required initial operations of decomposition and simplification of the territory, to identify punctual, linear, and areal elements that constitute its backbone, functional to the definition of intervention and regeneration methods that are punctual, but at the same time part of a broader territorial vision. These considerations have led the experimentation to propose a second breakdown of these units, leading to the identification of the minimum element, the “pixel”, with which to compose the architectural project, i.e., the tree. The two breakdowns implemented, on the vast scale on the one hand and on the “building” scale on the other, allowed the experimentation to integrate the regeneration practices within a holistic vision of the territory, to read the essential elements of a complex architectural and landscape system, yet defined in each of its parts, with a new look.

01. The entry and corridor.

L. SZYMAN

Expected Adjacencies and Common Ghosts Fossil and Ruin in the Financial House Laura Szyman Design-research PhD candidate, working between architecture, urbanism, and sequential art. She is currently completing a PhD at RMIT, examining the spatial impact of market-driven housing development through novel illustration methods.

Keywords: Commodity, fossil, ruin, natural history, historic nature Abstract Within the ruin-upon-arrival state of Melbourne’s growing peripheral suburbs, the Financial House (a domestic style like the Victorian, Georgian and Tudor dwellings before it) is the ruined matter of its own dream, with nothing of the Morris-esque romance of tumbling crenelations and knights on hilltops. A split has occurred in how we read the traces of the city: on the one hand, a palimpsest of fossils from the romantic city of the past; on the other hand, the living ruin of the Financial House, held in limbo by the speculative anxieties of the housing market. Fossils and ruins are both dead things, but while fossils can be read as the contemplative end of a natural process, ruin can be read as artificial containers for a romantic story that is untrue of the ruin itself, but true of its specific-non-specific type, the fairytale. “Once-upon a time in a little house…”. The ruined Financial House is defined by an interior filled with Expected Adjacencies, the bones we expect to see jutting from the cliffs, and Common Ghosts, the spectral vestiges that cling on to their forms. In isolation each Commodity House is constructed from these ghosts and adjacencies, is an uninteresting mimic of other architectural styles. As the components coalesce into a suburb, a network becomes clear and we realise that the ruins are the bones of a still living structure. They lie dormant, waiting for some imagined future. They are more than the empty container of an unrealised dream.

01. Towards an Occupation of Care, or, New Bones for Old. Hugo David Moline.

H. D. MOLINE

House-Work Towards an Occupation of Care, or, New Bones for Old Hugo David Moline Architect and PhD. He is director of MAPA Art and Architecture and Lecturer at the University of Newcastle, Australia.

Keywords: Housing, Land, Participation, Maintenance, Care Abstract Housing and work, the bones of our common lives, are hollowing out. This project is a proposal to build new ones. Through a combination of text and drawing the project outlines a new form of ‘high-maintenance’ housing as a permanent and self-referential scaffold. In Australia, as elsewhere, the gradual transformation of housing from a basic support of life into a tool of financial speculation has increased its value relative to wages, while wages themselves have plateaued. In this situation we find our labour yielding ever less housing security. House-Work explores the notion that labour and housing are already connected in other, more direct ways, through the undervalued and overlooked forms of reproductive labour : care, maintenance, mending and tending. It explores the possibility that these direct, yet neglected connections could be amplified to form the basis of new forms of housing which create possibilities beyond exclusive land ownership within the existing housing system.

01. Making Space in Dalston. Multiplicity in Interaction. © muf

A. SCAIOLI

Designing Togetherness Rethinking the Structure of the City from In-Between Arianna Scaioli Architect, PhD Candidate in Architectural Urban and Interior Design at Polytechnic of Milan, DAStU (2021), has been a visiting researcher at Brookfield Sustainability Institute, CA (2023). Her research deals with gender-sensitive approach as a design tool focusing on transition spaces between the domestic and public domains.

Keywords: Feminist critique, Urban thresholds, Urban structure, In-Between Space, Collectivity/Alterity/ Performativity Abstract This paper delves into the feminist critique of architecture and explores the transformative potential of in-between spaces in reshaping the built environment. By adopting a feminist perspective, the project challenges the notion of a neutral user and seeks to design spaces that consider the needs of marginalized groups. The study focuses on the project “Making Space in Dalston” by muf architecture/art, which emphasizes collectivity, alterity, and performativity in the design process. The in-between spaces are seen as complex, relational realms that bind the city together and offer opportunities for emancipation and recognition. The paper highlights the significance of living bodies in spatial narratives and emphasizes the temporal aspects of design. This research contributes to the ongoing debate on feminist perspectives in contemporary design and advocates for more inclusive and equitable cities.

01. State of tension between human anatomy and novel architectural structures.

S. COMPLOI

Locus Vertebralis Exploring Analogies Between Anatomy and Architecture Simon Comploi Born in 1995 in Bressanone (Italy) and grew up in Ortisei, where he attended the art high school “Cademia”. He is currently studying architecture at the LFU Innsbruck (Austria).

Keywords: Anatomy, Analogy, Metamorphic, Vivid space, Flexibility Abstract The Locus vertebralis project is built upon an unconventional interpretation of anatomical forms as well as properties, and aims to implement the findings in a multifaceted architectural design. Visitors experiences a vivid space that is constructed like an organism and functions as such - a dynamic structure that breathes, makes sounds, and responds interactively to external influences. The analogy between the human body and architecture extends beyond form, construction, and design, to include functional and above all metamorphic aspects. This can be imagined as a structure that is responsive to the user’s needs and adapts or changes accordingly. The constructive characteristics of the human body provide a model for translating basic forms into a complex architectural system. Furthermore, the project could explore numerous other aspects, including materiality, haptics, organization, cycles and more.

01. Energy Accumulator, half-finished architectural test site, 2022-ongoing. Author: Sebastian Gatz.

S. GATZ

The Agency of a Half-Finished Building An Active Ruin Sebastian Gatz Architect, he combines ficto-critical and posthuman methods to explore human-nature-technology relationships. Currently he is doing a PhD in Fine Arts at Konstfack in Stockholm.

Keywords: Architecture, Ruin, Wabi-Sabi, Posthumanism, Metaphysics Abstract When is a building finished? Is a building ever finished or is it just a product of constant transformation? Transformed by its users, by time, by society and nature? When is a building a building? The moment the foundation is created? The moment the first wall is created? When it is airtight? When the workers leave the construction site? Currently I am constructing a building which functions as an artist studio, a greenhouse, an energy accumulator and an architectural test site. The building is part of my PhD in artistic research at Konstfack University in Stockholm. My PhD and the building’s current state is “half finished”. What does that mean? Is there something to be learned from Romanticism and its obsession with ruins? Is there such a thing as an “active ruin” – a planned ruin? A ruin exposed to the weathering agents of nature but also not forgotten and still in the control grip of its creator. Can a half-finished building feedback and inform theory, which feeds back and informs the rest of a building? Architectural production is different from working with clay on a sculpture.

01. PixelMath software distribution of numerical colour values in a New York digital webcam image. Centre: The same digital webcam image of New York showing the numerical pixel-grid array. Bottom: Digital webcam image of New York. All images are extracts from Dissolve video footage. Extended royalty-free license.

L. MATTHEWS

Disinterring the Architectural Drawing Linda Matthews Associate Professor at the University of Technology Sydney’s School of Architecture. Her research explores architectural design methodologies utilising the optics of digital visioning systems.

Keywords: Image, Urban, Digital, Atmospheric, Architectural Abstract Architecture’s ability to use qualitative data as generative media has only recently emerged with the advent of digital visioning technologies and the increasing proliferation of camera networks throughout urban space. Regarded as the structure or bones of the digital image, the pixel’s capacity to embed complex numerical data about a scene’s colour, brightness, and shape means that the city’s captured atmospheric qualities are now the factors that determine image composition rather than the linear coordinates of the Cartesian grid. Furthermore, the representation of the city is no longer a single or static event – this block of spacetime now occurs at multiple sites simultaneously and across constantly shifting timeframes. By extension, the tools and techniques of the architectural drawing that formerly operated as the foundational element or ‘skeleton’ of new form are therefore also required to operate in alignment with visioning technology and according to the laws of digital geometry. Therefore, with the pixel operating as the base unit of the digital image, this chapter will propose that contemporary architectural drawing, the bones of the digital city, is enlivened and enriched by the algorithm-based operation of digital imaging technology. It will present new representational techniques for recomposing and grouping pixels according to ephemeral, qualitative urban patterns rather than traditional linear form. It will argue that these new virtual urban bones not only provide hitherto unseen insights into the atmospheric qualities of urban space but underpin a new mode of formal production.

01. Vela di Calatrava, Roma. Photo by Fabio Guibellini.

L. BAGNOLI

Urban Carcasses The Reinterpretation of Unfinished Spatiality Lorenzo Bagnoli Architect, PhD in Architecture and Construction. President of the Institute for Urban Variations and Architectural Systems (IUVAS).

Keywords: Unfinished Architecture, Unfinished Landscape, Urban Carcasses Abstract The gestation process of the architectural work is an articulated succession of complex phases which encompasses a multitude of risk factors. In this context, there are many conditions that can lead to the complete failure of a work that remains, in these cases, suspended in time in a limbo of disturbing uncertainty. The grotesque presence of these urban skeletons has now become a constant that finds its surreal nature in the most disparate urbanized areas. These mastodontic structures become motionless observers of a world that grows around them, urban skeletons that loom over the man-made landscape as memorials of the unfinished. The permanence in this condition is thus rooted as a distressing presence of an un-built space. It is thus that with the inexorable passage of time these missing works are attested in the urban, industrial, sometimes in the historical or even landscape scenario. Thus we arrive at the paradoxical legitimacy of maintaining and pursuing their state of abandonment, going to force the lack of completeness with that of urban ruin with imprudent analogy. It therefore becomes legitimate to wonder about the purpose that these failed works must have in the evolution of the urban fabric and whether it is possible to find, in their difficult nature, a possible glimmer of completion. Added to this is a particular interpretation that focuses attention on the failure to optimize the soil consumption that these structures have in the environmental landscape. Their presence negatively affects the increasingly unstable balance between the built territorial load and open space. Defining a vision that directs the regeneration of urban skeletons thus becomes an urgent necessity, a perspective that objectively needs accurate reflections but which can no longer be delayed in being addressed.

01. Eduardo Souto de Moura, Carandà Market. Valerio De Caro.

V. DE CARO

Permanence and Continuity of the Project Relations Between Persistent Structures and Contemporary Interventions Valerio De Caro PhD Architect, graduated at the Kore University of Enna. He is interested in architectural design as a spatial product of multiple fields, such as nature, memory, matter and experimentation.

Keywords: Fragment, Persistence, Structure, Restoration, Space Abstract Nuno Brandão Costa and Sérgio Mah, curators of the Portuguese Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale, speak of buildings as entities that should be thought of as fragments that contain within themselves the capacity to act with other constructions and to be links themselves. If the vision of the two curators investigates the social and contextual dimension of architecture with respect to the complex dimension of the urban territory, the logic of the fragment, reread in a typological key by Carlos Martí Arís expresses the need to weave a relationship between the structural persistence of architectural space and contemporary intervention. This contribution aims at highlighting the role of the fragment as a persistent element but at the same time revealing possible design actions, thanks to the condition of partiality with respect to a whole that can no longer be recomposed. Numerous contemporary projects have highlighted the multiple interpretations that a condition of departure can produce. A variegated cultural contribution can be found through the analysis of some case studies such as the Braga Market by Eduardo Souto de Moura, the Merida Museum by Rafael Moneo, the tea house in the Montemor-o-Velho castle by João Mendes Ribeiro, the Santa Caterina Market by Eric Miralles and Benedetta Tagliabue, the Kolumba Museum by Peter Zumthor, the restoration of the Palais de Tokio by Lacaton and Vassal and the archaeological museum in Praça Nova do Castelo de S. Jorge by Carrilho da Graça with the intention of highlighting the generation of semantic constructions that these projects originated by enriching the structure of the city and the historical pre-existences with which they were confronted.

01. Frame from the movie “Det Danske Institut i Rom – Accademia di Danimarca” depicting King Frederik IX entering the hypogenous area where two Italian masons are waiting for him to support the laying of the first stone. Source: DIR Archive – Copyright Det Danske Institut i Rom (Permission Granted).

A. GIGLIOTTI

Ceci N’est Pas Béton Armé Unveiling the Backbone Behind the Bricks at Det Danske Institut in Rome Angela Gigliotti Architect, educator, and researcher. Her focus on history and theory of architecture frames professionalism and cross-cultural modes of production, under instances of Danish Welfare State and Swiss coloniality.

Keywords: Diplomatic Architecture, Architecture and Labour, Cross-Cultural Architecture, Building Site, Alternative Historiography Abstract This paper addresses the construction (1961-67) of Det Danske Institut (DIR) – the Danish Academy – within the cultural diplomatic compound of Valle Giulia, Rome, Italy. So far, its historiography has been centred around typological studies addressing Danish modernism grafted on a foreign land and Kay Fisker as its only author, neglecting instead several aspects about collective authorship, building techniques and materiality. This contribution acts in this niche reappraising many misconceptions about the materiality of the building, delving into what has been interpreted so far as its Danish-ness’ mark: thousands of yellow bricks. The paper addresses instead the building’s backbone behind the façade focusing on – rather than the load-bearing technique, eventually never realized – its Italian bones made by reinforced concrete and later cladded with hand-laid bricks. Specifically, such forming is argued as the pivot to investigate the cross-cultural exchanges between Danish design principles and Italian building know-how. As sources, the paper deploys the building as artefact and several paradigmatic archival documents collected in the Byggesager Dossier, an archival collection compiled by the author specifically to reconstruct the building site’s process. Additional visual data include two video recordings of that time: the institutional movie recorded at the Cornerstone and at the opening ceremonies to seal the birth of DIR (April 22nd, 1964; October 24th, 1967); and, the show broadcasted by the national Danish TV DR titled “Højt over byens søde live” (July 25th, 1965) and since then forgotten because of its harsh critical content. Finally, this paper argues that the building should be interpreted as a hybrid built by continuous negotiations between home (Danish) building traditions, the actual know-how of the local (Italian) building constructors, and the availability of the materials on the Italian ground.

01. Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates, Oakland Museum (section drawing), Oakland (California), 1968. Credits: courtesy of Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates.

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T. ANTIGA

Bones as Traces Towards a Nonviolent Architecture Tommaso Antiga Architect and PhD Student in Architecture at the University of Trieste (inter-university PhD course with the University of Udine), Italy.

Keywords: Nonviolence, Architecture, Bones, Ecology, Buddhism Abstract Well, perhaps Zygmunt Bauman is right when he says that we are living at the dawn of a world that is “moving towards Buddhism”. In fact, it can be said that the Buddhist point of view is the most correct for interpreting current events, which have two common denominators: ecology and inclusiveness – that is, respectively, interconnection with things-in-the-world and acceptance of the Other-from-itself, two precepts that characterize Buddhism. As aspiring Buddhists, we are trying to impact the environment as little as possible, that is, to leave no physical traces. Even the world of architecture is veering towards a progressive and conscious “erasure of traces”: environmental sustainability is nothing more than a gradual removal of our “ecological footprint”. We are aiming for a built world that can naturally return to humus and we are understanding that the condition of the transitory and the ephemeral is the only truly real one. Earthen constructions or coverings derived from plants are just the vanguard of a future that will see architecture increasingly naturelle. And they are examples in which the bones, muscles and skin of the buildings accept their ephemerality, their sudden return to the earthly mixture. The day when even the bones of our buildings are rapidly biodegradable, what will our traces be made of? Will we still aspire to leave some or, as enlightened ones, without any claim to future eternity, will we perhaps be able to live in a more respectful, ecological and inclusive present?

TORSO

01. Daniele Regis, Valeria Cottino, Dario Castellino e Giovanni Barberis, Regeneration project of Paraloup, Rittana (Italy), 2018. Photo by the authors.

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F. AIROLDI, G. AZZINI

Dorsum Topography and Tectonic as Lenses of Inquiry for Architecture in Mountain and Rural Contexts Francesco Airoldi PhD candidate in the Architectural Urban and Interior Design program at the Politecnico di Milano, Department of Architecture and Urban Studies. He graduated cum laude in Architecture and Urban Design at the Politecnico di Milano (2021) with a master thesis on the regeneration of the Valle Roveto inner area in Abruzzo, Italy. His doctoral research deals with architectural co-design strategies for transformation of fragile contexts, mitigation of risk and resilience of communities and territories. Giulia Azzini PhD candidate in the Architectural Urban and Interior Design program at the Politecnico di Milano, Department of Architecture and Urban Studies. She graduated cum laude in Architecture and Urban Design at the Politecnico di Milano (2022) with a master thesis on the expansion project for the Cineteca in Bologna, Italy. Her doctoral research deals with design strategies for public spaces in mountain and fragile areas.

Keywords: Tectonic, Topography, Rural, Marginalities, Identity Abstract The term dorsum was used by the Latins not only for the backs of animate beings – and thus their spines – but also to refer to mountain ridges. This statement evokes an essential image of the mountain or rural landscape, in which type-morphological aspects and the human skeleton stand in analogy. Thus, orography becomes backbone, supporting the position of settlements; artifacts become bones, elements carried and dependent on the landline in their form; infrastructures are the limbs, ruins the fractures. To this reading, an additional element can be added, that of communities, actors who modify the physiology of the organism to inhabit it. Staying within this metaphor, the contribution aims to accompany the transition from the territorial to the architectural scale to identify possible approaches that allow for a contemporary interpretation of history, tradition and memory: the fragilities of these contexts take on a different connotation when explored through the lenses of topography and tectonic, essential methodological tools of architecture that locate in the design process the cultural environment for territorial development, reducing “to the bones” the site-specific design topics and the possible attitudes to front them. Through an analysis of case studies that reread the forms, ecologies, and meanings of vernacular architecture in minor contexts, a critical gaze is proposed considering “pride in modesty” (Sabatino, 2010) as a guiding sentiment for the formulation of design methodologies that put the spatial experience of humans in co-existential relationship with nature at the center of the discourse. This is intended to help stimulate a disciplinary debate on the necessary adaptation of architectural design paradigms in villages, hamlets and marginal places, in order to conceive and propose projects adapted to today’s needs of small settlements in mountainous and rural contexts.

01. The Arch of the Philaeni near Ras Lanuf (Libya); architect: Florestano di Fausto (1937 – demolished in 1973); Carta geografica da Tunisi ad Alessandria. Libia - La quarta sponda.

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G. FELICI, A. SCHIAVO

Stones Sinking Like Bones1 Notes on Italian Modern Architecture into the Desert Sands Giuseppe Felici Architect and PhD candidate, department of History, Representation and Restoration of Architecture, Sapienza Università di Roma. Antonio Schiavo Architect and PhD, department of History, Representation and Restoration of Architecture, Sapienza Università di Roma.

Keywords: Libya, Mediterranean, Rationalism, Metaphysical, Bones Abstract When we wander around the recently uncovered ruins of an ancient Roman outpost, or venture into a recently colonized area, in villages scattered along the Balbia, we can glimpse, here and there, fragments of Piacentini’s dream and we can imagine and perceive, by means of the debris, the wreckage and the actual ruins of that modern Italian Utopia, i.e. the familiar, essential features that make this dream the logical, material prolonging of an architectural idea that has been nurtured on the drawing table by several generations of young promising students (Muratore, 2001, p. XIII). Starting from these words by Giorgio Muratore we’d like to focus on Italian architecture in the “fourth shore” during the Thirties; most of it is now crumbling, but still inspiring with its aesthetical values and poetical meanings. These modern vestiges now appear to us as both metaphysical and romantic. A vision that had been built and then destroyed, but still visible, understandable and still speaking to us: De Chirico-like arches rarefied and enhanced by the African sun; buildings dazzled by history; peeled walls that unveil their entrails/innards. This is what remains of the Italian colonial villages of the recent past, blown away by the wars, someway deeply connected to Roman architecture. Di Fausto, Di Segni, Pellegrini, Rava and above all Limongelli, were not only building designers but also ruin designers, following John Soane’s example. The blinding light of the African Mediterranean glorifies these metaphysical architectures; we can perceive a totally unique attitude towards the modern, which is specifically Italian. This is what we can call an architectural approach seeking the Degree Zero of architecture.Bones sinking like stones in the desert sands. Stones sinking like bones into time and into the sun.

01. Presence on the site of Ile-de-Nantes of industrial remnants converted into industrial museum and contemporary buildings (residential and office buildings). Varvara Toura, 2023.

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V. TOURA

The Industrial Remnants: Memories of the Past, Assets for Urban and Territorial Re-design The Case Studies of Nantes and SaintOuen in France Varvara Toura Architect engineer and Urban planner. Researcher in social sciences specialized in industrial heritage and sustainable development. PhD in urban studies conducted at EHESS/ Géographie-Cités in France.

Keywords: Industrial archaeology, City skeleton, Urban renewal programs, Memory culture, France Abstract André Corboz in his article "A good use of historical sites" develops a model of city planning based on the conservation of cultural goods. Considering Corboz model of city planning as a critical alternative to the productive rationality of common urbanization, the paper tries to answer the question of how industrial remnants, which marked the urban landscape, could lead to cities’ re-design and to the redevelopment of deindustrialized cities. The purpose is to question the appearance of new territorial policies of urban renewal, by focusing on the cases of Nantes and Saint-Ouen in France, in which the industrial heritage, a remnant of the past, is associated with sustainable urban planning programs and citizen engagement. Through a descriptive-analytic method the paper defines industrial memory culture as a system which includes: 1) the preservation and rehabilitation of isolated bones like industrial buildings and 2) the preservation and reintegration into the urban fabric of entire neighborhoods, where lived and worked the industrial workers. In the two case studies, the analytic method is used in order to investigate the ways in which the inscription of industrial remnants within the perimeter of urban renewal programs contributed to territorial transformations and economic redevelopment after several years of decline. The performed analyses included a combination of statistics techniques (diagrams of demographic evolution) and qualitative methods (interviews). The conclusion of the research is that the preservation and reuse of industrial remnants could lead to cities’ re-design, through the presence on the same urban fabric of buildings from different eras (industrial and contemporary), and urban growth through economic activities linked to culture and research (industrial museums, universities, research centers).

01. A graphic view of Kandovan, and cone-shaped dwelling plans and section. Photos and Drawing by the author.

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G. TARKALAM

Kandovan’s Morphology Unearthing the City’s Architectural Skeleton Ghazaleh Tarkalam Department of Architecture and Industrial Design, Faculty of Architecture, University of Campania, Italy.

Keywords: Morphology, Kandovan, Cone-shaped architecture, Skeleton Abstract Kandovan is a remarkable ancient village in the province of East Azerbaijan, Iran. Because of its unique cone-shaped architecture and distinctive social consistency, it has been continuously inhabited for nine centuries. It is said to have been partially formed by volcanic remains from powerful Mount Sahand eruptions hundreds of years ago called Karan. With over 800 years of history, this place is home to at least 670 people. The aim of the study was to investigate the morphology and spatial features of Kandovan village, along with the compatible architecture that exhibits appropriate integration between the living spaces for inhabitants and the environment—a significant source of wonderment and fascination. Morphology studies how shape emerges in the constructed world in architecture. The assessment of the physical and structural components of Kandovan was initially conducted using a descriptive-analytical method. Data was collected from various sources, including written materials, library research, online resources, articles, and related magazines. Findings showed the morphological and space features of Kandovan: the natural body of the litter, limited openings and skylights, combining the manufactured place with the natural site, the simplicity and smallness of the interior spaces, the use of dry rock walls next to the bed and natural walls are to complete the nature and most importantly, placing it under the hard volcanic layer as the main cover of the complex. By understanding the form and features of Kandovan s rock architecture, we conclude that Karans, as the bone-like outcropping stones due to natural factors, have adapted themselves to nature and have directed the dynamics of the village over the years.

01. Jacopo de Barbari (1498-1500), Veduta di Venezia a volo d’uccello | Bird’s Eye view of Venice, Londra, British Museum, Department of Prints and Drawings, inv. 1895,0122.1192-1197. Authors elaboration.

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F. DAL CIN, C.V. MONTEIRO

Essentials in Face of (Climate) Change Venice as a Planetary Metaphor Francesca Dal Cin Assistant Professor (since 2023) at Alasala College of Architecture and Design, in Dammam (Saudi Arabia). Graduated in Architectural Science with Urban Planning specialisation from the Architecture University of Venice, Iuav (Italy), in 2017. In 2022 she finished her PhD in Urbanism at the Faculty of Architecture, University of Lisbon (Portugal), with the thesis Streets by the sea. Type, limit and elements. Since 2017, she has been a member of the CIAUD research centre, - Faculty of Architecture, University of Lisbon (Portugal). Cristiana Valente Monteiro Architect, Master in Architecture and Urbanism by the Lisbon School of Architecture, Universidade de Lisboa, with the final master’s project entitled Entre o mar e a terra. Monumentos para um futuro incerto. At present, she is a PhD candidate in urbanism at (FAUL). Since 2021 she has participated in conferences and published articles for journals and magazines in the area of architecture, urbanism and design.

Keywords: Coastal cities, climate change, sea level rise, Venezia Abstract In the climate change transition, we are experiencing in which coastal cities will have to undergo transformation processes in order to persist, Venice assumes the role of a planetary metaphor – as defined by historian Bevilacqua – for all those cities that cannot change, but must. As Tafuri argued in his lectio magistralis Le Intercoenales albertiana. Il motto Quid Tum – held at Palazzo Badoer, Venice, on 7 January 1993 – it is necessary to “sharpen one’s eyes to see as much as possible; beyond the indications that are given.” The winged eye becomes a metaphor for Tafuri to encourage students to exercise observation as a phenomenological method of reading and understanding reality. Therefore, there is the necessity to recognise the forma urbis, too often hidden under the patina of the imago, in the transformations that have occurred in the contemporary urban landscape. Aware that the orderly cataloguing and classification of the elements that compose and define urban form makes it possible to recognise the essential resources for urban and architectural design. Essentials in face of (Climate) Change. Venice as a Planetary Metaphor aim is to highlight public space as a structuring element of the city, a skeleton, through the decomposed representation of the city in layers. The chosen layers – built up area, urban layout, singular elements – permit understanding the spatial relations between public space, singular elements of the city (such as representative and religious buildings) and water channels. In conclusion, in this study the urban form of Venice will be analysed as an emblematic case through which to read and decode by comparison the urban forms of other cities vulnerable to the rise in the average sea level. Recalling the words of Aldo Rossi, it can be said that it is in Venice that it is still possible to “seek a utopia that unhinges design choices and decrees that l’éphémère est éternel” (Tafuri, 1980, pp. 7-11).

01. Limit. Brushed mild steel construction. Author, 2023.

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J. ACOTT-DAVIES

The Reciprocal Interplay of Body and Space: a Phenomenological Exploration of Time as the ‘Backbone’ of Architecture James Acott-Davies PhD Fine Art candidate at Cardiff School of Art and Design. He fuses the realms of fine art and space exploration in architecture through multidisciplinary practice-based research enriched with phenomenological concepts towards an alternative approach to how we view space.

Keywords: Space, Body, Cubism, Phenomenological, Experience, Time Abstract The spatio-temporal experience of Architecture cannot be simply quantified by the measurement of time. This paper cuts architecture ‘back to the bones’ by delving into the binary relationship of the body and architectural space, emphasising the phenomenological experience of time that unfolds within it. It draws upon the perspectives of architectural theorists, such as B. Zevi, and the influence of Cubism in shaping an understanding of space and time. This paper highlights the limitations of verbal description in capturing architectural experiences and duration, emphasising the significance of authentic sensory encounters. Furthermore, it explores the role of movement and transition in the lived experience of architecture and how the concept of the fourth dimension plays a pivotal role, emphasising once again the importance of the role of the body in architecture. Ultimately, this paper underscores the central importance of the body as the ‘backbone’ for perceiving and engaging with architectural space.

LIMBS

01. Collage by the authors: X-ray of a hand with the Victorian poem “X-Actly So!”.*

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D. DINCER, B. J. DUNSTAN

X-ACT Desire Lines of a Healing Bone Demet Dincer Senior Lecturer in the School of Built Environment, Faculty of Arts, Design and Architecture at the University of New South Wales, Australia. Belinda J. Dunstan Academic in the Faculty of Arts, Design and Architecture at the University of New South Wales, Australia, and the Principle Lead for the UNSW Creative Robotics Lab.

Keywords: Desire Line, X-Ray, Urban, Fracture, Remodelling Abstract This chapter is a comparative analysis of the healing process in bone fractures and the development of urban desire lines. Our visual and theoretical analysis makes references to medical imaging, artworks, poems, urban photography and diagrams, to anatomise the entanglement of these processes. This paper refers to X-rays as a primary tool to initialize the discussion and illustrate the aesthetics of fracture healing while emphasising the visible-invisible shifts that give way to both bone healing and the accumulated expression of desire in urban landscapes. Our anatomisation expands upon key stages present in both processes; The Fracture, the X-ray, Desire, Hematoma and Remodelling. The stages of analysis are detailed in the form of diagrams and collages with annotations, uncovering the roles of desire, intimacy, visibility and invisibility, process and remaking in the formation of bones and the urban landscape. Inspired by the physicist Wilhelm Röntgen’s invention of what he preferred to be named the ‘X-ray’ and a poem from 1896 entitled ‘X-Actly So!’, this paper aims to conduct an ‘X-act’ to make visible the invisible, by offering an in-depth reading of the intimate world of bones. We examine the artwork 11B Larch weg (i) by Igshaan Adams (2019), in developing a discussion of the de/generative nature of desire lines in articulating both a ‘fracturing’ and rebuilding of the city, and the desiring development of a new path, or woven work. The authors advocate for a transdisciplinary research approach to freshly dissect historically siloed subject matter by employing architectural theoretical lenses to promote the aesthetics of fracture healing and examine medical processes to illuminate hidden truths of urban occupation.

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M. ASTONE

From Rubble to Ruins The ‘Cavalleggeri Christs’ of from Isolated Elements to Urban System Michele Astone PhD in Architecture. Theories and Project at the DiAP of the Sapienza University of Rome and research fellow in Architectural Design at the DiCEA of the Federico II University of Naples.

Keywords: Ruin, Rubble, Trace, Cavalleggeri Christs, Overseas Exhibition Abstract The Rione Cavalleggeri d’Aosta in Naples features the remains of a cableway, designed by architect Giulio de Luca and inaugurated in 1940, that connected the Posillipo hill to the Fuorigrotta district. After its decommissioning in 1961, the two stations and the three cable pillars can still be seen among the buildings. These pillars, because of their shape, are called by the Neapolitans “Cristi” (such as “Christs”), changing their “urban status”: they are “sculptures”, rubbles of a disused infrastructure whose linear relationship is now imperceptible becaming isolated elements whose systemic significance is now lost. Only a bird’s-eye view can reveal to us a hidden trace among the neighbourhood’s built-up area, allowing us to understand the relationship that holds together these different isolated elements. This study-case of “The Cavaleggeri Christs” makes it possible to highlight the ability of the project design to bring order to the “rubble” of contemporary abandoned architecture by re-relating the remaining elements, turning them into “ruins” with an historical value and recognition. The trace that the city can hardly reveals is the bet to win with design actions, re-proposing new urban meanings through which useless elements, once structuring the form of the city, can emerge.

01. [in]visible city I. Author’s collage with Constant and Friedman’s fragments.

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M. FIERRO

Infrastructure for Informal Inhabit [In]visible Paradoxical Cities Around Global Urban Skeleton Maria Fierro Graduated cum laude in Architectural and Urban Design at the University of Naples “Federico II”. PhD candidate in architecture with a research on the relationship between urban project and informal settlements.

Keywords: Glocal, urban infrastructure, other conditions, informal settlements Abstract In the complex contemporary urban system, cities lose their clear boundaries and extend to form a planetary urban network; meanwhile, the world population continues to re-spatialise. These complex mechanisms intersect in the phenomenon of urban expansion, of which infrastructural links – roads, elevated roads, railways - represent the skeleton. On a global scale, this giant skeleton crosses territories of multiple characters, catalysing fragments, and other conditions of contemporaneity, including informal settlements. The iconographic exploration talks about [in]visible cities between global and local that reinterpret the infrastructural framework as an infrastructure for inhabit, triggering unplanned spasms in the city system: paradoxes of city-making reported in paradoxical images assembling existing and imagined urban fragments. These images “push” design thinking towards the idea of architecture/infrastructure that seeks new spaces of utility.

01. The Lagni Regi intersects the railroad line through the CIS of Nola. Photography by the author with Sheet No. 185 of the 1956 Map of Italy, Nola IV N.O. Istituto Geografico Militare IGM, 2022.

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F. S. SAMMARCO

Lagni Regi Photo-Carto-Graphic Exploration of a Layered Spine Francesco Stefano Sammarco Urban planner, photographer and PhD student in Urban Planning in the 38th Cycle of DiARC UNINA “Federico II”. He’s involved in scientific research for which he’s the curator of photo reportage too.

Keywords: Urban Photography, Urban Exploration, Urban Planning, GIS, Maps Abstract The Lagni Regi are the majestic drainage works that solved the centuries-old problem of flooding that plagued the fertile lowlands of the Ager Campanus. This huge water machine has gradually become the skeleton of a territory sadly subdued by a widespread condition of decay, abandonment and pollution. This contribution presents an experimentation aimed at evidencing the urgent need to wander through places, searching for signs and memories buried by transformations, strengthening the photographic narrative of places in favour of increasing knowledge that encourages spatial reappropriation. It’s considered to be a necessary action not only to overcome the illusion that an urban and environmental redevelopment process can be initiated with only the zenith and technical control of data, in favour of a deeper understanding, but also and above all for the development of strategies suitable for the overall transformation of the area. The Lagni Regi are interpreted with the metaphorical figure from the backbone that represents the central role of this historic environmental infrastructure: like a sleeping giant it guards memories and conceals potential future images.

01. 25th Abstraction Bridge. Alcântara, Lisbon, 2023, Stefanos Antoniadis, property of author.

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P. VILLALONGA MUNAR, S. ANTONIADIS

More than Bones Lisbon Infrastructural Footprints Pablo Villalonga Munar ETSAB UPC, PhD, Post-doc Researcher Margarita Salas financed by UE – NextGeneration. Stefanos Antoniadis FA.ULisboa, DD PhD, Invited Assistant Professor and researcher at CIAUD – Center for Research in Architecture, Urbanism and Design.

Keywords: Portugal, Lisbon, infrastructure, topography, interface, gap Abstract From huge territories since our homes, built environment is full of heterogeneous objects, needs and situations to link at different scales. While each city has its own topography, historical layers, or physiognomy, infrastructures appear and overlap in many different ways, articulating a wide range of casuistries, connections and services. They are able to join and divide the form of a city, to impose or modify itself, to resist, absorb, or react to special conditions, to give sense or reference, to hold together the whole and the parts of urban realm, visible and invisibly. Beyond a unique function or form, they contain a latent dimension, a kind of non-tangible structural and fundamental path. Their response to change defines its range of determination and adaptation to the city, as well as their persistence among palimpsests. Infrastructure, responding to decades or centuries timescale, becomes site before place, projected strategies before built bones. Hills to climb, valleys to fly over, rivers to cross, plains to colonize are some of the moments in which infrastructure is deployed. Lisbon is an extreme habitat in this sense, full of exceptions and conflicts with rugged topography and heterogeneous urban fabrics that produce constant specific designs from recurrent abstract situations. Through different case studies in this city, it turns out different ways in which infrastructure can materialize. Like footprints to follow, these help to understand the reasons and dynamics of immense infrastructural frames or lines that envelop from a room, a city, to the whole world.

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URBAN CORPORIS - TO THE BONES

Hugo David Moline, Overcoming setbacks. Courtesy of the Author.

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URBAN CORPORIS - TO THE BONES

TEMPORAL OXYMORON by Lelio di Loreto

“Je vais enlever les toits de cette superbe édifice national ... le dedans va se découvrir à vos yeux de même qu’on voit le dedans un pâté dont on vient d’ôter la croûte” (Alain René Le Sage, Le Diable Boiteux, tom. I, chap.3). Urban Corporis to the Bones is a collection of essays that explore the meaning of the reduction to the bone in the discipline of architecture in different ways. The selected articles follow this thread sometimes metaphorically, sometimes literally, and sometimes through sophisticated processes of abstraction, giving a varied picture of the issue. In this regard, I propose a brief reflection that I believe is useful to pose both as practitioners and as researchers in the discipline of architecture. In what way are we building? What are we leaving on the earth? And for academics and researchers, what kind of architecture are we sponsoring and placing under critical attention? To each his answer; however, here I would like to propose as an example the affair regarding the designs commissioned by J. Soane from J.M.Gandy for the Bank of England and their role in the constructive, creative and programmatic process of this architecture. The bird’s eye perspective above the building tells us of a building in a state of apparent ruin. The reference is to the Roman ruins that J. Soane himself constantly studied and Piranesi’s prevalent drawings at the time. The question becomes peculiar when we understand that the approach to the concept of ruin given to watercolour was never directly proposed by Gandy or Soane. Following Le Sage’s quotation, which accompanied the exhibition of the drawing at the

Royal Academy in 1830, the authors exhibited the illustrations to show what was under the roof of the building. It is, in technical terms, an axonometric cutaway, and as Daniel Abrahamson explains: “In this image - a combination of plan, section and elevation - the totality of Soane’s achievement is represented: interior and exterior, construction and decoration, substructure and superstructure, all publicly revealed like a model on a table-top” (Daniel Abrahamson, PhD thesis The Building of the Bank of England, Harvard, 1993, pp. 425-9). It is curious to note (albeit unspoken) both the intent of the authors to project the image of architecture in its state of glorious ruin as much as the observers’ ability to assimilate and conceptualise as in a “state of ruin” the “technical” representation of a newly built architecture. Provocatively, we are faced with a temporal oxymoron when we are led to superimpose a newly built architectural object’s figuration and technical explanation with the representation of architecture in its last stage. Reflecting on this operation, it seems possible to see in reverse all the ages and stages of the life of the building, like in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s story The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, later adapted into a film by Roth and Fincher. Here, we follow a path backwards where it is to be noted and emphasise how, within the complexity of the story’s central plot, what most upsets and draws the reader/viewer in are the inexplicably inverted beginning and ending acts. So, in our case, having overcome the upset at the reversal of perspective, it is difficult not to stop to think about what was said in the introduction: what are we leaving behind?

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URBAN CORPORIS - TO THE BONES

01. Petrified wandered, Cristina García Montesinos – Villa Adriana, Tivoli (Roma), Giugno 2021.

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URBAN CORPORIS - TO THE BONES

Shifting the reflection to the present day, as practitioners and researchers, we have to ask ourselves to what extent we can make a difference about the questions we ask. As human beings living on earth, how long should we stop to think about the usefulness of a building before building it and how long before demolishing it? We should be against stealing more soil from our planet overflowing with (often unused) buildings; first, think if it is possible to reuse, regenerate, and complete the existing heritage. What is the position of our profession towards the out-ofcontrol use of resources? To what extent can we be complicit in the building speculation that continues to eat up land with profit as its sole aim? Going back to the Bank of England, despite its undisputed historical and artistic value and the resources humans and naturals used to build it, it was demolished in 1920. In this narrative, the architect’s role could be described as exemplary because it is not essential that, in the end, Soane’s Bank of England never reached the state of ruin that he foreshadowed and that everyone dreamed of; he did his! He thought of his creature even at the point of death, in its last state, the most decadent but also the most visionary.

A book oN Architecture, Art, Philosophy and Urban studies to nourish the Urban Body.

The second volume of Urban Corporis, titled “To the Bones”, compiles reflections from architects, artists, and scholars who have extensively delved into the fundamental themes of contemporary architecture. By navigating a constant interplay between past and future, memory and innovation, and the realms of the natural, artificial, and virtual, these contributions put forth strategies for architectural, artistic, urban, and landscape projects that resonate with the fundamental principles shaping our built and perceived environment. They advocate for design approaches that synchronise with the foundational elements, referred to as “the bones”, that structure the landscape while promoting forward-thinking considerations.