Past Present and Future of Public Space | 2014 | Bologna | Vol. 1 by City Space Architecture

Past Present and Future of Public Space International Conference and research group on art, architecture and urban design

2014 | Bologna | Vol. 1

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City Space Architecture

Non-profit Cultural Association Operational headquarters via Paolo G. Martini 26/d 40134 Bologna (ITALY) Legal residence via Saragozza 135/2 40135 Bologna (ITALY) T/F +39 051 6142934 www.cityspacearchitecture.org info@cityspacearchitecutre.org

Organization Scientific Coordinator & Conference Chair Luisa Bravo

Founding Member and President of City Space Architecture, Italy

Scientific Committee

Margaret Crawford University of California Berkeley, USA Marc Crunelle Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium Mirko Guaralda Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia Maria Hadjisoteriou University of Nicosia, Cyprus Nilly R. Harag Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem, Israel Karin Hofert Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain Konstantinos Ioannidis University of Stavanger, Norway Richard Ingersoll Syracuse University in Florence, Italy José Manuel Madrigal Lebanese American University, Lebanon Roberto Mingucci Università di Bologna, Italy Valentina Orioli Università di Bologna, Italy Piero Orlandi Institute of Cultural Heritage, Emilia-Romagna Region, Italy Angela Petrou University of Nicosia, Cyprus Joaquim Sabaté Bel Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain Rania Sassine Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts, Lebanon Claudio Sgarbi Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada Hendrik Tieben Chinese University of Hong Kong, China

Steering Committee Antonio Caperna International Society of Biourbanism, Rome, Italy Giuseppe De Luca Università degli studi di Firenze, Italy Pietro Garau Biennale dello Spazio Pubblico, Italy Manfredo Manfredini University of Auckland, New Zealand Saverio Mecca Università degli studi di Firenze, Italy Raffaele Milani Laboratorio di ricerca sulle città, Università di Bologna, Italy Pierluigi Molteni Accademia Belle Arti di Bologna, Italy Raffaella Radoccia Biennale dello Spazio Pubblico, Italy

Organizing staff | Founding Members of City Space Architecture Camilla Carmagnini, Valerio Francia, Simone Garagnani

Volunteers | Members of City Space Architecture Danilo Calza, Olimpia Cermasi, Eleonora Fabrizio, Simone Fenu, Alessia Francia, Luca Poni, Silvia Tagliazucchi, Ivo Tudgiarov, Francesca Zoboli.

Welcome address Luisa Bravo Conference Chair Founding Member and President City Space Architecture, Bologna, Italy Welcome to the “Past present and future of public space” international conference on Art, Architecture and Urban Design. Today we are hosted in this beautiful palace that once was the main building of the Alma Mater Studiorum University of Bologna, the most ancient European University, founded in 1088. I’m the Founding Member and President of City Space Architecture, a non profit cultural association, based in Bologna, who promoted this conference. I’m the Scientific Coordinator of the international research project “Past Present and Future of Public Space” and I’m glad to give you my personal welcome to Bologna and to the conference. “Past present and future of public space” is an Italian project, that I developed during the past two years as an academic postdoctoral research activity, at the Department of Architecture, University of Bologna, under the supervision of an international Scientific

Committe and with the support of a Steering Committee. The project was presented for the first time in Italy at the Biennial of Public Space in Rome, in 2013, during a special international session. The project has already involved more than ten prestigious Universities and a large number of international scholars and professionals, public administrators, artists and designers, photographers and film-makers, together with national important institutions. The aim of the project is the exploration and discussion of new dimensions of public realm, intended as results of research activities, through a multidisciplinary approach on public space and related topics, comparing theories and projects with advisors and correspondents from different contexts. Starting from last year, 2013, the project has been supported by City Space Architecture, with the intent to create a network of people from all over the world discussing about architecture and urban design, with a specific focus on public space. All registered authors and participants at this conference are now members of this network. So welcome to our Association, you are now officially enrolled as City Space Architects! The conference themes seek to provide a window for a broad investigation of different approaches in urban design and architecture, with emerging concepts,

opening session

Archiginnasio Library Stabat Mater

25 June 2014

Piazza Galvani 1

cultures and models, trying to establish a fruitful collaboration with art. In response to the call for proposals, we received 120 abstracts, from Europe (Italy, The Netherlands, Switzerland, Norway, Spain, Portugal, UK, Greece, Germany, Cyprus, Turkey, Bosnia Herzegovina), from the Middle East (Lebanon, Israel, Saudi Arabia), from China (Hong Kong), from Taiwan, Australia, United States of America, from South America (Brazil, Colombia) and from New Zealand. Every abstract proposal was assigned to three different reviewers from the Scientific Committee and evaluated and selected through a blind peer review process. One last thing. During the past few days, we received several emails from authors that couldn’t come to Bologna and attend the conference. They say that they are willing to come “next time”. Well, I don’t know if there will be a next time, but at least we are happy and really very proud for what we reached today. So it seems the best is yet to come!

Urban visions for the architectural project of public space I would like to start my presentation by reminding ourselves that enhancing sociability is the main aim of urban design for public spaces. Since the beginning of 2000, our research within the Department of Urbanism at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia has been oriented to study the transformation of public space in different cultural contexts, starting with the European one. A Doctoral course entitled Public space: experiences, projects and management collects the ongoing outcomes of this research line. We are interested in how urban, architectural or landscape design are able to produce or restore urbanity in the city, that is to strengthen urban and social relationships within the public realm. Urban and social relations are in fact closely related, as the two faces of the city, the long term vis-Ă -vis between urbs and civitas. In this research on public space we have considered several phenomena in the last decades. Among them: - the implementation of comprehensive policies to improve public space in many compact inner cities around Europe. - the transformation of large metropolitan open spaces into new potential public spaces of the regional city. - the configuration of metropolitan nodes as collective places. Squares and facilities in central cities constitute metropolitan nodes too, but new kinds of nodes are emerging as social spaces in the regional cities. The present contribution is focused on the last question: how urban design can contribute to generate rich collective places in contemporary metropolitan nodes. We propose a reflection on some guidelines based on a historical overview of the relation between architecture and public space.

Estanislau Roca Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya Escola Tècnica Superior d’Arquitectura Barcelona, Spain

Keynote speaker

Degree in architecture (1973), PhD (1993) with Cum Laude qualification, unanimously. Estanislau Roca currently teaches at the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Barcelona (ETSAB), Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain. He is Professor of urban planning and design at the Department of Urbanism and Regional Planning. In 2011 he received the Quality Award in Teaching. He is the author of “Montjuic, the mountain of the city” (1995) and of many other books. He also works as a consultant and urban planner and public space designer for public administrations, mainly in Spain. He won the First prize in the competition for the architectural and urban development of the City of Justice in Barcelona (2002) and l’Hospitalet de Llobregat, awarded with the 2010 RIBA Award and the 2010 World Architecture Festival Award - Civic and community, in collaboration with David Chipperfield and b720 Architecture. Triennial Award for the best research in Science of Architecture “Lluis Domenech i Muntaner” (1996), by the Catalan Studies Institute. Medal of Honor of the international prize “Europa nostra” (1995) for the intervention in the vaults of the Roman circus in Tarragona.

Interdisciplinary approaches to researching urban space. A perspective from Hong Kong

Since public space plays an important role in an increasingly urbanized world, its various aspects and conditions have been explored from different academic perspectives. While advanced digital tools enable us to analyze and simulate urban environmental conditions, emerging citizen movements also employ social media to transform public space. While increasing commercialization under different prevalent forms of capitalism blurs the boundaries between the public and the private, continued verticalization of cities generates new typologies of public space on multiple layers. At the same time, an earlier, predominantly Western spatial discourse opens up to include nonWestern conditions and the manifold understandings of public space in different cultures. This presentation chooses Hong Kong and the Pearl River Delta Region as examples to explore how new conditions of public space are addressed in current academic research: What are the approaches adopted? Are they able to re-combine disciplinary knowledge to produce a more adequate understanding of new urban conditions? And can they provide operational guidance to the pressing public space issues at hand?

Hendrik Tieben The Chinese University of Hong Kong School of Architecture Master Programme in Urban Design Hong Kong

Keynote speaker

Architect, urban designer, and Associate Professor at the School of Architecture of The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). He received his architectural education in Germany, Italy and Switzerland. In his doctoral dissertation at ETH Zurich he studied the relationship of architecture, history, memory and identity in context of the German reunification. At CUHK, Professor Tieben teaches urban design, theory and criticism. His research focuses on issues of rapid urbanization, urban regeneration, heritage, and identity. He is a Founding Member and Academic Advisor of the Hong Kong Institute of Urban Design, a registered architect in Germany (AKNW), and has practiced in Europe and Asia. At CUHK, he is the director of the MSc in Urban Design Program. In his current research, Professor Tieben focuses on urban transformation, heritage and identity in Hong Kong and Macau.

Public-private interface? The challenges from Japan, Asia and the times of globalisation I’m presenting today fragments of an investigation into the concept of urbanity across cultural boundaries. It is deliberately ‘polemological’ as, in de Certeau’s way, it aims to open and offer to discussion a set of contentious issues, all in hope to “force theory to recognise its own limits”. My presentation consists of three segments. In the first segment, an investigation of spatial relationships between public and private realms in Tokyo is introduced, focusing at the questions arising from the fact that Japanese language does not have a word equivalent to the term “public” - which indicates the absence of, or at least an unusual situation with the concept of public. That opens a number of themes linked to globalisation, the processes of which usually take many concepts, including that of public sphere, as universal. The ensuing set of themes make the second segment of the presentation, exposing the conundrum of (dis)appearance of public, or equally dramatically that of private quality in a globalised world. The third part does not aim conclude, but to open the discussion by presenting some of the methodological propositions, results and current attempts towards exploration of public/private interface conducted within the major research project Measuring the non-Measurable (Mn’M) at Keio University, Tokyo (2011-14). The outcomes of the project suggest that, as in life sciences, urban research needs new frameworks capable to embrace the non-reductive, methodologically inclusive study of whole systems. That means a much-needed radical departure from current reductionist orthodoxies and includes recognition and multiplication of subjectivities, an appreciation of the fullness of human multisensory experience, and celebration of diversity and difference generated by concrete social and physical contexts of each urban situation. The presentation is illustrated with examples of innovative methods tested within Mn’M which, as in Kenzo Tange’s definition of good design, sought dialectical synthesis of tradition and anti-traditionalism (eg. Debordean dérive and the latest in EEG “visualizations of thought and thinking”).

Darko Radović Keio University co+labo Radovic Tokyo, Japan

Keynote speaker

Darko Radovic is a Professor of Architecture and Urban design at Keio University, and Visiting Professor at United Nations University IAS. He has taught, researched and practised architecture and urbanism in Europe, Australia and Asia, and held senior academic positions at the University of Belgrade, University of Melbourne, University of Tokyo, United Nations University and Keio University (current). His interests are at the intersections between environmental and cultural sustainability, measurable and nonmeasurable qualities of architectural and urban space, complex interface conditions between public - private realms. Since 2011, at Keio he heads a major international, interdisciplinary research project ‘Measuring the non-Measurable’, which focuses at the finest qualitative nuances of spatial experience – at scales ranging from broadest urban to smallest architectural details. He has published in English, Serbo-Croatian, Japanese, Korean and Thai. Darko’s books include “Green City” (2005, Routledge/UNSW Press); “Urbophilia” (2007, University of Belgrade, PAPS); “Cross-Cultural Urban Design” (2007, Routledge); “Another Tokyo” (2008, University of Tokyo, ichii Shobou); “eco-urbanity” (2009, Routledge); and the “Measuring the non-Measurable” research edition (Tokyo: flick Studio and IKI), including: “small Tokyo” (2011), “The Split Case: Density, Intensity, Resilience” (2012); “Intensities in Ten Cities” (2013), “Tokyo dérive: In Search of Urban Intensities” (2013), “Subjectivity in Explorations of the Urban: the Scream, the Shadow and the Mirror” (2014), and “In the Search of Urban Quality” (2014).

Soft Infrastructure

Over the past few decades, an emerging suite of miniaturized, networked, and pervasive digital technologies has woven itself into our urban environment â&#x20AC;&#x201C; our buildings, urban infrastructures, objects, and communication devices. These digital technologies are embedding a new functional layer over our cities, and are creating a digital nervous system with which we interact on a daily basis. From hard, concrete infrastructure, our cities are now ever more informed by another kind of infrastructure lighter, ubiquitous, citizen-centric, knowledge-driven and ever changing. This new Soft Infrastructure creates a paradigmatic shift in the way in which citizens interact with their urban environments and across all aspects of urban research, including architecture, governance, infrastructure, transportation and urban planning.

Miriam Roure Parera Massachusetts Institute of Technology Senseable City Lab Cambridge, USA

Keynote speaker

Miriam Roure Parera is a research fellow at MIT’s Senseable City Lab, an architect interested in the creative application of technology within the built environment. Miriam holds degrees from Harvard University (MArchII) and Cornell University (BArch). In 2009, she joined the Office for Metropolitan Architecture in Rotterdam, where she worked as part of their creative think tank division, on projects that demanded applied architectural thinking, within and beyond built form. At Harvard, she explored the overlaps between design and technology, which led her to intern at Continuum Innovation in 2012 and to organize the first Harvard xDesign Conference in 2013. Miriam’s work has been published in A+U, FRAME, Harvard Publications, Dezeen, Archinect and other online platforms. She has received several awards including the Goldwin Sans Medal at Cornell, Dean’s List, and Full Scholarship by the Polytechnic University of Catalunya. Miriam has been an architecture guest critic at MIT, BAC, Cornell and Harvard University.

cinema session

25 June 2014

Europa Cinema

Presentation of ‘Urban Visions. Beyond the Ideal City’, a short film competition aimed at investigating the existing city, the connections, intersections and urban activities that take place inside it, seen through complex social issues, contexts and human geographies, with an emphasis on human relationships between individuals and to the urban space in which these relations move.

via Pietralata 55

‘Urban Visions. Beyond the Ideal City’ is a research project promoted by City Space Architecture.

guided tour

25 June 2014

Bologna Historic City

Special thanks to Giovanni Ginocchini, Director of the Urban Center Bologna, for an amazing tour in the city centre, discovering public spaces and recent interventions in the historic core promoted by the Municipality of Bologna.

social event

25 June 2014

Hotel San Donato Terrace

A special â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;aperitivoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; on a fantastic location, enjoying the skyline of the historic city of Bologna at the sunset.

special and parallel sessions

School of Engineering and Architecture University of Bologna

26 June 2014

via Risorgimento 2

We had a full day engagement into several academic - special and parallel - and non-academic sessions, including one art workshop and one art exhibition. This was the most attended day of the conference, with more than 100 participants.

New languages in the public realm. Hic svnt leones. The first lesson to learn, talking about architecture, is the meaning of space. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s made of emptiness and matter, feelings and emotions, light and shadow. Architects and designer begin their concepts from there, whose figure ground diagrams invert what to build with what is not built, planning space. Hacking the space means to creatively investigate those complexities through physical and digital tools, pushing our knowledge to the limit, considering space from several points of view, reinventing it, measuring it, expanding it or just connecting it to its relativistic companion: time. City Space Architecture is focused on each and every shade of technology that can tell, explain and document architecture. This is the reason why the Association opened a research and development unit dedicated to the exploration of tools, devices and methodologies related to the architectural scale and the study of living space.

Simone Garagnani University of Bologna Department of Architecture Bologna, Italy

Invited speaker

Graduated in Architectural Engineering (University of Bologna, Italy, 2004), Simone Garagnani developed a Ph.D. research in Building and Territorial Engineering entitled: “Digital Models and Design Archives Integrated systems aimed to architectural documentation” (University of Bologna, 2010). He is currently associate Post-PhD researcher at the Department of Architecture, University of Bologna (Silab laboratory). In 2012 he has been appointed as a Visiting Scholar at the EECS department of UC Berkeley (USA) in order to improve his skills in laser scanning survey and digital modeling. He was researcher at the Interdepartmental Center for Industrial Research (CIRI) in Bologna, developing software and db methodologies BIM-related (2012-2014). Since March 2014 he is Research Unit Coordinator in the FIR (Future in Research) project entitled “Kainua. Restituire, percepire, divulgare l’assente. Tecnologie transmediali per la città etrusca di Marzabotto”, funded by the Italian Ministry of Education, Research and University. At the School of Engineering and Architecture, University of Bologna he teaches Drawing, Survey, Virtual Modeling and Computer Graphics. He is also owner of an engineering professional practice in Bologna, collaborating with several architectural and engineering firms all over Italy, developing three-dimensional analysis models, virtual CAD settings and renderings

Space, identity and conflicts Special session

Case studies on public space from the Middle-East and divided countries and territories. Moderator Jose Manuel Pages Madrigal Lebanese American University, Lebanon Speakers Rania Sassine Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts, Lebanon Nilly R. Harag Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Israel Maria Hadjisoteriou and Angela Petrou University of Nicosia, Cyprus Senada Demirovic City of Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Neuroergonomics and urban environment. Biourbanism for a human-centred sustainable design Special session Discussion on theory, output and development on a scientific experience based on: - a structural approach. Biourbanism and the laws of form - the contribution of Neurophysiology and Environmental Psychology to Urban Design - â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;design is out there alreadyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. Nature, information and effective creativity - Nature, History, Society. Biourbanism as Neuroergonomics in Design Moderators Stefano Serafini and Antonio Caperna, International Society of Biourbanism, Italy Speakers Eleni Tracada University of Derby, UK Menno Cramer, University of Sheffield, UK Katherine Donaghy Innovation Centre, University College Roosevelt, UK

gala dinner

26 June 2014

Hotel I Portici via Indipendenza 69

Amazing location for our gala dinner, at the fabulous â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Hotel I Porticiâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; in the city centre of Bologna. Special thanks to the chef Agostino Iacobucci for an unforgettable selection of delicious courses.

New urban configurations Special session

Invited speakers Pietro Garau Biennial of Public Space, Italy A charter of Public Space Richard Ingersoll Syracuse University in Florence, Italy Cities without people: the contemporary illusion of public space Min Jay Kang National Taiwan University, Taiwan The disenchanted public and the contested realm

plenary closing session

27 June 2014

Sala Borsa Library Auditorium Biagi Piazza Nettuno 3

exhibition

Museum of the History of Bologna Palazzo Pepoli

27 June 2014

via Castiglione 8

Opening of the photography research project ‘Pop-up City. Searching for instant urbanity’, developed in collaboration with the Italian photographer Fabio Mantovani. ‘Pop-up City. Searching for instant urbanity’ is a research project promoted by City Space Architecture and curated by Luisa Bravo. Exhibition set-up curated by Valerio Francia.

Past Present and Future of Public Space International Conference on art, architecture and urban design June 25-27, 2014

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