Post-Modern Urban Space Design. Genealogies

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genealogie

. antonio di campli


genealogie

corso di architettura degli spazi sperti 2013/2014 universitĂ di camerino /scuola di architettura e design laboratorio di progettazione urbana C proff. gabbianelli / di campli prof. antonio di campli Ascoli, 7 novembre 2013


spazi aperti

spazi estetizzati / interior design (urbanesimo liberale) spazi di condivisione (diffusio di micro utopie)


Superkilen Architects: Topotek 1 + BIG Architects + Superflex Location: Nørrebro, Copenhagen, Denmark Client: Copenhagen Municipality, Realdania Budget: 11 MIO USD Area: 30,000 sqm Year: 2012


It is divided into three main areas: The Red Square, The Black Market and The Green Park.” The Red Square designates the modern, urban life with café, music and sports The Black Market is the classic square with fountain and benches. The Green Park is a park for picnics, sports and walking the dog. “The people living in the immediate vicinity of the park relate to more than 50 different nationalities. Instead of using the designated city objects/furnitures used for parks and public spaces, people from the area was asked to nominate specific city objects such as benches, bins, trees, playgrounds, manhole covers and signage from other countries. These objects were chosen from a country of the inhabitant’s national origin or from somewhere else encountered through traveling. The kilometer-long “Super Park”, which consists of three themed parts--”Red Square”, “Black Market”, and “Green Park”--is dotted with various pop artifacts and cultural mementos “sourced” from the home countries of the area’s inhabitants. Here, you’re just as likely to stumble across manhole covers from Paris and Islamic tiled fountains from Morocco as you are (ironic) neon Communist signage from Moscow and curvy benches from Brazil.


Rather than fashion a park ex nihilo--one that would inevitable contain elements of distinctly Danish design-the collective decided to draw on Nørrebro’s “local intelligence”, gathering elements, experiences, and memories from all over the world in one “curated” park for the people by the people, so to speak. Superflex organized five groups of people to travel back to their native lands, where they selected various urban souvenirs for inclusion in the Superkilen.


The Red Square A red carpet covers the entire square, the lines and edges creating a big red pattern. If entered from Nørrebrogade the square is an open space, serving as an extension to the activities in the nearby hall.


The red square is defined by a street in each end and building and fences along the sides. The edge is moving in and out – and we have tied the area together by connecting the surrounding given lines and edges in the big red pattern. A big red carped stretched out between all sides of the square. Fitness area, Thai boxing, playground (slide from Chernobyl, Iraqi swings, Indian climbing playground), Sound system from Jamaica, a stencil of Salvador Allende, plenty of benches (from Brazil, classic UK cast Iron litter bins, Iran and Switzerland), bike stands and a parking area. Only red trees except the existing ones.



Market/culture/sport – the red square As an extension of the sports and cultural activities at the Norrebrohall, the Red Square is conceived as an urban extension of the internal life of the hall. A range of recreational offers and the large central square allows the local residents to meet each other through physical activity and games. The colored surface is integrated both in terms of colors and material with the Nørrebrohall and its new main entrance, where the surface merges inside and outside in the new foyer.



Facades are incorporated visually in the project by following the color of the surface conceptually folding upwards and hereby creating a three-dimensional experience. By the large facade towards Norrebrogade is an elevated open space, which almost like a tribune enables the visitors to enjoy the afternoon sun with a view. In addition to the cultural and sportsfacilities, the Red Square creates the setting for an urban marketplace which attracts visitors every weekend from Copenhagen and the suburbs.







The bollards from Ghana




Urban living room – the black square This is where the locals meet. There are benches and barbeque facilities, tables for playing backgammon and chess, and a Japanese octopus playground. The pattern here is composed of white lines, which curve around the furniture to highlight it. A large area on the square is covered by a multifunctional rubber surface to enable ballgames, markets, parades, and skating rinks in winter etc. Mimers Plads is the heart of the Superkilen Masterplan. This is where the locals meet around the Moroccan fountain, the Turkish bench, under the Japanese cherry-trees as the extension of the area’s patio. In weekdays, permanent tables, benches and grill facilities serve as an urban living room for backgammon, chess players etc.


The square can be spotted by the big, dentist neon sign from Doha, Qatar. Brazilian bar chairs under the Chinese palm trees, Japanese octopus playground next to the long row of Bulgarian picnic tables and Argentinean BBQ’s, Belgian benches around the cherry trees, UV (black light) light highlighting all white from the American shower lamp, Norwegian bike rack with a bike pump, Liberian cedar trees. To protect from the street ending at the north east corner of the square and to meet the wishes from the neighbors, we have folded up a corner of the square creating a covered space. Unlike the pattern on the red square, the white lines on Mimers Plads are all moving in straight lines from north to south, curving around the different furniture to avoid touching it. Here the pattern is highlighting the furniture instead of just being a caped under it.







Sport/play – the green park The soft green hills appeal to children, young people and families. Many of the sport facilities have been moved here, with brand new pitches for hockey and basketball. The area also attracts people for picnics, sunbathing or just taking a nap on the grass. The activities of the Green Park with its soft hills and surfaces appeals to children, young people and families. A green landscape and a playground where families with children can meet for picnics, sunbathing and breaks in the grass, but also hockey tournaments, badminton games and workout between the hills.


Armenian pic-nic tables


Russian pavilion



The neighbors asked for more green so we ended up making the green park completely green – not only keeping and exaggerating the curvy landscape, but also painting all bike- and pedestrian paths green. From Tagensvej at the very north, the park is welcoming with a big rotating neon sign from USA, a big Italian chandelier and a black Osborne Bull from Costa del Sol (a wish from a Danish couple living in the area!). Armenian picnic tables next to Mjølnerparken with South African BBQ’s, a volcano shapes sports arena for basket ball and football, a line dance pavilion from Texas, muscle beach from LA with a high swing from Kabul, Spanish ping pong tables and a pavilion for the kids to hang out in.


A world exhibition at nørrebro Superkilen is a park that supports diversity. It is a world exhibition of furniture and everyday objects from all over the world, including benches, lampposts, trash cans and plants – requisites that every contemporary park should include and that the future visitors of the park have helped to select. Superkilen reattributes motifs from garden history. In the garden, the translocation of an ideal, the reproduction of another place, such as a far off landscape, is a common theme through time. As the Chinese reference the mountain ranges with the miniature rocks, the Japanese the ocean with their rippled gravel, or how the Greek ruins are showcased as replicas in the English gardens. Superkilen is a contemporary, urban version of a universal garden.


“Se la società occidentale talvolta proibisce agli immigrati di indossare quel che vorrebbero – dice Martin Rein-Cano di Topotek1 – il divieto è ancora più netto quando si tratta di lasciar passare i loro ‘oggetti’, piccoli o grandi. Penso al burqa, ai minareti, alle tante altre cose proibite in molte parti di Europa. Ma integrarsi significa anche poter ‘tradurre’ il proprio ambiente di origine nel posto dove si sceglie di vivere. E in questo processo contro l’assimilazione, la possibilità di portare ‘pezzi’ della propria cultura è centrale”. È l’accumularsi di questi “pezzi” sulla scena di Superkilen che affascina Bjarke Ingels, a lui interessa l’intersecarsi dei simboli, la loro interazione, anche qui vale il suo motto, “Yes is more”. Gli piace l’idea di aver potuto dire di “sì” a molte delle proposte arrivate, sulla base di un progetto che non teme l’affollamento e la sovrapposizione.


Una rilettura edonistica dell’integrazione sociale Cambiano le ragioni per tentare di realizzarla: “Non perché si deve, non perché è corretto, ma perché è utile, conviene, produce piacere e bellezza”. L’integrazione sociale è perseguita attraveso a un’atteggiamento giocoso e sexy che esalta le differenze presenti nel quartiere rispecchiandone il potenziale; ciò che è in genere considerato complesso, problematico, diventa una risorsa cui attingere.


Superkilen una sorta di up-date dei parchi romantici del passato: l’effetto sorpresa che nell’Ottocento si poteva ottenere importando una pagoda a Parigi piuttosto che ricostruendo rovine greche nelle campagne inglesi, sulla scena contemporanea di una società viaggiatrice e globalizzata, può essere prodotto solo con nuovi segni: insegne e cartelloni pubblicitari che per la maggior parte sono stati riprodotti dai progettisti, ricalcati da originali cinesi, piuttosto che statunitensi o russi, con precisione scandinava e per questo in qualche modo tradotti nei termini della loro nuova collocazione geografica e culturale. Sono queste le traduzioni, le traslazioni che interessano Martin Rein-Cano: combinandole insolitamente, spera di riuscire a far sentire a chi vivrà il parco una nuova forma di diversità, complessa, ibridata.


la cittĂ come paesaggio estetizzato > induzione al godimento


diversitĂ , multiculturalismo, coesistenza eccesso, saturazione, congestione ipernarrativitĂ dello spazio ibridazione/frammento/citazione carattere utopico


progetto degli spazi aperti spazio ludico spazio estetizzato dimensione politica dello spazio aperto nuovi commons (spazio aperto come macchina ecologica)

Ipotesi: questo insieme di temi si definisce tra gli anni ‘60/70 nell’ambito della Controcultura e della critica al discorso modernista >la svolta postmoderna


anni ‘60 contesto palinsesto caratteri locali diversitĂ memoria leggibilitĂ valore simbolico dello spazio

atteggiamento utopico ant farm / droppers


contro la tradizione del moderno


L’urbanistica del XX secolo, pur nelle sue molteplici sfaccettature si è inserita nel grande solco delle politiche redistributive e più precisamente del welfare. Anzi ne è stata nei migliori dei casi una delle più felici e durature esplicitazioni: non solo nelle politiche abitative, o nella estesa offerta di attrezzature e servizi materiali, ma anche e soprattutto nella costruzione di un nuovo suolo urbano ospitale e collettivo, nella ridefinizione dello spazio stradale, nella costruzione delleretiverdiurbane.Essahaoperatolarealizzazione di consistenti strutture di welfare materiale e positivo, ma spesso anche attraverso una azione minuta e interstiziale sugli spazi aperti.


Ludwig Hilberseimer, Project for a mixed-height housing development of row houses and apartment buildings Aerial perspective (circa 1930)



La costruzione del paesaggio industriale americano si è articolata culturalmente attraverso una stretta mediazione con il mondo della natura. Questo processo di definizione delle idee ha anche determinato una complessa situazione nell’elaborazione teorica degli stimoli sensoriali provenienti dal paesaggio. Gli sconfinati territori del wilderness e l’avanzare del progresso tecnologico mettevano a contatto sfere percettive contrastanti, che tuttavia la cultura americana ha sempre cercato di sintetizzare assieme. Leo Marx, autore del libro La macchina nel giardino. Tecnologia e ideale pastorale (1964), analizzando gli anni dell’Indipendenza americana e i successivi decenni dell’Ottocento, si è attentamente occupato di questi rapporti tra paesaggio naturale e progresso industriale. Leo Marx ha dimostrato infatti come in America l’idea dello sviluppo economico, durante la nuova era manifatturiera, sia stata ricondotta nell’universo simbolico del paradiso terrestre, del giardino incontaminato. Questa attenzione riservata alle macchine, intesa come elemento di novità e di rottura del mondo naturale, permea gran parte della letteratura americana dell’Ottocento: Basti pensare alla scena di Walden in cui, mentre Thoreau è immerso in sogno ad occhi aperti, s’ode il fischio della locomotiva che penetra nel bosco come il grido di un falco. Oppure il passo pieno di mistero di Moby Dick in cui Ismaele sta espolarando i recessi interni di una balena arenata, quando all’ improvviso l’immagine muta e lo scheletro del leviatano diventa uno stabilimento tessile del New England. O ancora, il momento drammatico in Huckleberry Finn quando, mentre Huck e Jim si lasciano trasportare dalla corrente, improvvisamente sbuca fuori dalle tenebre un battello a vapore che sfonda la loro zattera da parte a parte.


Negli anni dell’Indipendenza: l’industrializzazione, rappresentata efficacemente dall’immagine del treno che sfreccia via lungo i binari, costituisce una forza che minaccia l’immagine pastorale del paesaggio, ma allo stesso tempo fornisce un’occasione per percorrerlo. Georges Innes (1825-1894). Quando nel 1855 la Lackawanna Railroad Company commissionò ad Innes un’opera che raffigurasse la costruzione della ferrovia nel paesaggio, egli si trovò davanti alla stimolante impresa di poter fornire una lettura critica di quello che si andava costruendo. Dobbiamo immaginare che, come suggerisce Leo Marx nella lettura di questo quadro, il pittore non fosse così entusiasta di disegnare un treno mentre irrompe nel paesaggio, ma egli seppe coniugare le esigenze del committente con le proprie aspirazioni e con i propri sentimenti nei confronti della natura. Il quadro, intitolato Lackawanna Valley, riesce a mettere assieme un paesaggio bucolico e il nuovo mondo evocato dalla ferrovia. Il nuovo mezzo di trasporto non è un vero elemento di rottura, al contrario, comporta una fusione unificatrice. Per questo la macchina, e il treno in particolare, non contrasta con l’ideale pastorale e contribuisce a formare quello che Leo Marx chiama middle landscape. “La ferrovia è il veicolo prescelto per riportare l’America ad essere un’utopia pastorale” (Leo Marx).



pittoresco / pastorale


progetto degli spazi aperti: pretesa di universalitĂ . > spazio come oggetto simbolico



Bruno taut, Hufeisensiedlung, Berlin-Britz, 1925-1931




1966, Amsterdam Bijlmermeer





critica al modernismo


Aldo Van Eyck / Playgrounds

Team X


Aldo Van Eyck, Amsterdam Playgrouds anni ‘50 / ‘60


Between 1947 and 1978 Van Eyck designed hundreds of playgrounds. Of the grand total of 700, only 90 survived into the 21st century with their original layout. The first playground on Bertelmanplein was a test case. Van Eyck designed a sandpit bordered by a wide rim. In it he placed four round stones and a structure of tumbling bars. The pit was placed in the north corner of the square, diagonally across from three tumbling bars. Bordering the square were trees and five benches. The playground was a success. Many designs followed and, depending on the site, Van Eyck deployed a number of compositional techniques. For him the playgrounds were an opportunity to test out his ideas on architecture, relativity and imagination. Relativity in the sense that connections between elements were determined by their mutual relationships rather than by a central hierarchical ordering principle. Instead, all elements were equal: the playgrounds designed by Van Eyck were exercises in non-hierarchical composition. Different elements of the playgrounds represented a break with the past. First and foremost, the playgrounds proposed a different conception of space. Van Eyck consciously designed the equipment in a very minimalist way, to stimulate the imagination of the users (the children). The second aspect is the modular character of the playgrounds. The basic elements – sandpits, tumbling bars, stepping stones, chutes and hemispheric jungle gyms – could endlessly be recombined in differing polycentric compositions depending on the requirements of the local environment. The third aspect is the relationship with the urban environment, the “in-between” or “interstitial” nature of the playgrounds. The design of the playgrounds was aimed at interaction with the surrounding urban tissue. The temporary character of the intervention was part of this ‘in between’ nature, recreating space through incremental adaptation instead of the tabula rasa approach of modernism, in which the designs had an autonomy of their own, based on abstract data and statistics. Of course the use of empty plots was also a tactical solution. Because the Site Preparation Service of the Department of City Development, working together with local associations, wanted to give every neighbourhood its own playground, they often had to be placed in vacant, derelict sites.






Aldo van Eyck. Drawing of sandpits, somersault frames, climbing frames, play tables, and climbing mountains. 1960 Van Eyck, like his friends Peter and Alison Smithson, was fascinated by the relationship between the child and the postwar city.


Isamu Noguchi. Playground



anni ‘60. la svolta postmoderna


1748, Pianta di Roma. Giambattista Nolli 12 fogli 208 cm x 173 cm


Arata Isozaki, Tsukuba Center, 1978-1983

citazione rovina ironia assemblaggio





L’architettura come corpo: Frankenstein


tsukuba tecnica dell’assemblaggio valore della memoria


Charles Moore, Piazza d’Italia, New Orleans, 1978



Not only was the Piazza ornamented, it appeared to be build of ornament. Lacking any sense of massing, the space reads more as an event than a built form.



Charles Moore, Piazza d’Italia, New Orleans spazio aperto come evento leggibilità e valore simbolico dello spazio


Ant Farm, Clean Air Pod.

This performance piece at UC Berkeley involved using an inflatable to critique environmental air quality and pollution. The architects created a situation where, conceptually, the entirety of the world’s atmosphere was poisoned, and the only clean air could be found inside the inflatable. In this way, they were also inverting readings of inside versus outside.


Ant Farm was established within the counter-cultural milieu of 1968 San Francisco by two architects, Chip Lord and Doug Michels, later joined by Curtis Schreier. Collective members believed both architecture and media could be created by anyone using cheap, readily available materials and skills taught ad hoc from one person to another. They created inflatable environments at numerous happenings, schools, conferences, and festivals Their work dealt with the intersection of architecture, design and media art, critiquing the North American culture of mass media and consumerism. Ant Farm produced works in a number of formats, including agitprop events, manifestos, videos, performances and installations. Their early work was a reaction to the heaviness and fixity of the Brutalist movement in contrast to which they proposed an inflatable architecture that was cheap, easy to transport and quick to assemble. This type of architecture fitted well with their rhetoric of nomadic, communal lifestyles in opposition to what they saw as the rampant consumerism of 1970s USA. The inflatables questioned the standard tenets of building: these were structures with no fixed form and could not be described in the usual architectural representations of plan and section. They instead promoted a type of architecture that moved away from a reliance on expert knowledge. Ant Farm produced a manual for making your own pneumatic structures, the Inflatocookbook. The inflatables thus constituted a type of participatory architecture that allowed the users to take control of their environment. Events were also organised inside the inflatables, which were set up at festivals, university campuses or conferences to host lectures, workshops, seminars, or simply as a place to hang out.


50x50 Foot Pillow, used as a medical pavilion at the Rolling Stones free concert at Altamont in 1969


Inflatocookbook, a guide to the design and making of inflatables. With illustrations drawn by the architects, as well as recipe-like text, the guide made these techniques available to almost anyone. Designwise, it was a first stab at zine aesthetics, with drawings and text collaged onto layouts.

Ant Farm, Inflatocookbook


In 1970, Ant Farm toured the nation in a Chevy van outfitted as a mobile television studio, taping their journey and demonstrating their inflatables at various stops along the way. In contrast to a sedentary lifestyle and mainstream, broadcast news, Antfarm’s mobility facilitated fresh sensory input and allowed for direct connection with many different people. According to founding Ant Farm member Chip Lord, the media van and inflatables exemplified “a larger theme in the counterculture of nomadics, constantly moving but somehow making community out of that process.”


Ant Farm indeterminatezza flessibilitĂ partecipazione evento spazio aperto come interno nomadismo / vita comunitaria


Drop City, Trinidad, Colorado, 1965


Alla fine degli anni ’60 del Novecento, un piccolo gruppo di studenti dell’Università del Kansas e dell’Università del Colorado decide di riunirsi in comunità per sperimentare un modello di vita hippie, alternativo alla società tradizionale ispirati dagli happening di John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg, Allan Kaprow. Drop City era costituita da una serie di piccoli edifici che riprendevano le intuizioni strutturali delle cupole geodetiche di Buckminster Fuller. L’esperienza tuttavia non voleva semplicemente ripercorrere le avanguardie artistiche e tecnologiche dell’epoca, ma si propose di sostenere la cultura del reimpiego e del recupero di elementi altrimenti destinati “al rifiuto”, in una logica di espansione sostenibile e di utilizzo delle fonti naturali di energia.


“Turn on, tune in, drop out” Timothy Leary “Turn on” meant go within to activate your neural and genetic equipment. Become sensitive to the many and various levels of consciousness and the specific triggers that engage them. Drugs were one way to accomplish this end. “Tune in” meant interact harmoniously with the world around you - externalize, materialize, express your new internal perspectives. “Drop out” suggested an active, selective, graceful process of detachment from involuntary or unconscious commitments. “Drop Out” meant self-reliance, a discovery of one’s singularity, a commitment to mobility, choice, and change


The term “droppers” derived from neither Fuller’s ideal manner of deploying geodesic domes, nor from Timothy Leary’s motto. While both were important figures for the droppers, the reference came from an earlier practice of dropping painted rocks from windows in Lawrence, Kansas, to witness the effect on unsuspecting passersby. Their artistic pranks eventually evolved into elaborate multimedia environments complete with strobe lights, films, slide projections, and psychedelic music. Drop City began as a “dropping”; like a “happening” but with no distinction between art and life and reality.


Drop City > il mito rurale

lo spazio urbano come evento / happening


anni ‘80


Casabella 520/521, 1986

forme della rappresentazione del disegno urbano > abbandono dell’isotropia


il Moderno>

1

suolo come quantitĂ suolo come supporto la cittĂ come edificio che assorbe gli spazi aperti

2

3


la cittĂ per parti >

criteri di distinzione secondo caratteri visibili e riconoscibile e non secondo le categorie centro/periferia, cittĂ borghese / cittĂ operaia ...


articolazione degli collettivi e privati

spazi


spostare l’attenzione dall’edificio al suolo


“La città nella città” si propone come un nuovo modello per lo sviluppo delle metropoli; partendo dall’esempio di Berlino, La consacrazione di tale tema è resa possibile grazie ai lavori della Sommerakademie di Berlino del 1977 organizzata dalla Cornell University, La proposta prende come punto di partenza il calo demografico che sta interessando la città tedesca e si pone come obbiettivo una “riduzione controllata della densità di popolazione”. Le tesi centrali della proposta sono riferite ad alcune peculiarità riscontrate nel la morfologia urbana berlinese ricca di vuoti che hanno reso la città frammentata e differenziata atal punto da definirla una città arcipelago al cui interno si riscontrano una serie di isole urbane riconoscibili. A questa idea di città si affianca “l’arcipelago verde”, costruito sul suo negativo e nel quale trovano spazio le infrastrutture per la comunicazione e la mobilità ma anche parchi con attrezzature di svago, terreni agricoli con annesse residenze, come tentativo di riduzione dell’emorragia di abitanti che dalla città si spostano nelle zone limitrofe alla ricerca della tranquillità perduta. l’idea città è intesa come “reminiscenza di luoghi”, “è un’insieme di eventi, di pezzi, di frammenti in conflitto”, “è individualistica”. O.M.Ungers. Berlin as a Green Archipelago, 1977



David Harvey


Contextualism, historicism, the search for urbanity, regionalism, anti-universalism, pluralism, collage, self-referentiality, reflexivity, preoccupation with image/decor/ superficiality, depthlessness, ephemerality, fragmentation, populism, apoliticism, commercialism, loss of faith, and irony.

The critique of postmodern urbanism > Form Follows Fiction Form Follows Fear Form Follows Finesse Form Follows Finance


Whereas “modemism from the 1910s to the 1960s… responded to the challenge of establishing social order for a mass society; post-modemism since the 1960s…responded to the challenge of placelessness and a need for urban community” In contrast to modem urbanism’s insistence upon structural honesty and functionality, postmodern urbanism sought to satisfy needs that were not merely functional and to convey meanings other than the building tectonics; there was “a search for meaning and symbolism, a way to establish architecture’s ties with human experience, a way to find and express a value system, a concern for architecture in the context of society”.


As modernism’s minimalist tendencies grew ever more stifling, urban designers embraced maxim-alism and inclusivity, as expressed in the maxims “Less is a bore” (Venturi 1966). These reactions to modern urbanism have ushered in “a quiet revolution in how cities are made and maintained with the result that “repressive architecture and planning by great corporate or government bureaucracies is being replaced by more sensitive and varied alternatives” Although Contextualism can be “essentially elitist, esoteric, and distant” and can devolve into kitsch, it can also provide a sense of security and “rootedness”. the urban designer shifted from that of inspired genius, artist, or social engineer to that of a more humble, and at times servile, facilitator. THE RESULT A principal feature of postmodern urbanism is contextualism (historical, physical, social, and mass cultural), in contrast to modem urbanism’s break from the past and the site. The contextual attempts to gain inspiration from the site, the social context. Increased attention to the provision of traditional public space – parks, plazas, and squares – as well as to landscaping, has offered an antidote to the privatization and concreting of urban settings. Likewise, the effort to design “mixed-use” projects has provided an antidote to modernism’s rigid and anti-urban separation of functions. And while hyperreal environments may be criticized for being artificial, it can be argued that it is precisely that quality which people like about them. Accused of distracting people from the injustices and ugliness of their lives, of placating them, and of being places of “spectacle and surveillance”. The critique of postmodern urbanism as enhancing settings for consumption is a double-edged sword that really boils down to a critique of consumption.


Most of the more exemplary urban design initiatives are engaged in healing scars left by interventions of the modern era, when the building of railroads and highways was undertaken with little consideration for the surrounding communities and natural landscapes. Much of this work has to do with re-using abandoned transit corridors, designing new ones, and redesigning existing fabrics both urban and suburban, sometimes in collaboration with local communities. While sharing the emphasis on enhancing the public realm with the neotraditionalists, this tendency is not necessarily intent upon emulating past townscapes, but considers instead contemporary lifestyles and preferences and aspires to retain the valuable elements of modern urbanism and architecture. And rather than direct its focus to the traditional center, this tendency is more often concerned with the edge between the city, suburb, and countryside; between neighborhoods; and between functional uses, as well as the more metaphorical edges between disciplines, professions, and local communities. In its more extreme versions, it even champions the elimination of the traditional center, which brings with it old social inequalities. Speaking generally (not about urban design specifically), Foster describes this as a “postmodernism of resistance” or “reaction” entailing “a critique of origins, not a return to them”. Rather than preserve, renovate, or create a or a past, this urban design theory holds that we should focus attention on the edge/periphery/ border with an eye towards the future. Acknowledging that most biological activity occurs in nature where different zones meet, for instance, Richard Sennett maintains that “urban design has similarly to focus on the edge as a scene of life”.


Rem Koolhaas with Yves Brunier, Xaveer de Geyter


Contrastare la monofunzionalità, densificare l’edificato, costituzione di spazi aperti speciali. Lungo l’asse nord-sud sono localizzati nuovi edifici che ospitano attività terziarie e produttive; lungo l’asse est-ovest sono previsti servizi culturali e commerciali; vicino alla linea metropolitana ci sono gli impianti sportivi.Sono inoltre proposte nuove tipologie (ville urbane,case a schiera,ecc.) allo scopo di connettere il quartiere con altri tessuti edilizi verso il centro della città. La grande area verde si impone come sistema indipendente.







micro-utopie comunitarie playgrounds

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inclusivitĂ diversitĂ partecipazione nuovi commons


“Esto no és un solar” a Saragozza, è un processo di recupero di terreni abbandonati o in rovina nel centro della città, che sono trasformati in spazi pubblici, dotati di infrastrutture collettive, la maggior parte delle quali destinate ai bambini.


Lizon Tiju, Margherita Poggiali, Leticia Lozano, and Laura Mergoni, “Ombra Sopra,� Jesolo discarded umbrellas to create seating for an empty public square.


2008, madrid. lavapies nuovi commons



Esta es una Plaza es una pequeña multitud que se ha juntado en torno al proyecto de crear un espacio público en Lavapiés. El objetivo es un construir un lugar alternativo de ocio, socialización, intercambio y desarrollo de tejido social. Esta es una Plaza es un jardín comunitario donde reunirse, hacer deporte, jugar, organizar eventos, intercambiar tiempo y objetos. Esta es una Plaza es un huerto ecológico compuesto de nueve bancales productivos y uno para actividades didácticas con niños. Esta es una Plaza está abierta los domingos de 12.00 a 15 horas, aunque en verano abre también algún día entre semana por la tarde.



San Francisco, orti urbani


Parkcycle swarm is a mobile green space by rebar group + N55 rebar group, parkcycle, 2013, baku ‘parkcycle swarm’. consists of four small mobile parks, the project explores the possibilities of the public sculpture, while at the same time raising awareness of cycle-power and green space trough a participatory activity. ‘parkcycle swarm’ invites city dwellers to pedal the mini park lands throughout the city of baku




China. KIC Park by 3GATTI Architecture Studio The site was covered in a layer of timber, with bits folding away to reveal a living underworld made of grass and trees. A pleated wooden floor destined to be suitable for all the functions that are indispensible in a public area (seats, green spaces, pathways, publicity panels ‌). The image used by the architect to illustrate his idea - that of a sheet of paper cut and folded like a fan – brings to mind the epigenetic description that Deleuze gives of spaces characterized by the use of a fold: Development and evolution are concepts that have changed their significance, because today they designate epigenesis or the apparition of organisms or organs that are neither pre-formed nor built-in but formed from different objects that do not resemble them [‌] With epigenesis the organic fold is sought after, produced, and multiplied from a surface that is relatively flat and uniform








Raumlabor’s Spacebuster has been in the news a lot lately, when it made its way around New York City on a ten-day tour. Spacebuster is part of the German architects’ ongoing investigation of unused urban spaces, which started with inflatables in 2006 with the Kitchen Monument and includes last year’s Glow Lounge.


Their truck-towed events in New York included film screenings, performances and community meetings, the last under the BQE in Brooklyn the day before Spacebuster left town. Situated in a typically unused space, the community meeting used the opportunity to investigate other ways of doing the same. The possibilities of guerilla engagement with urban sites is certainly clear in Raumlabor’s latest undertaking; one need only drive the truck to a parking lot, underpass or some other un/underused site and take advantage of the bubble until the cops arrive. The fact that the air and inhabitants occupy the same space, a la Ant Farm’s and Jersey Devil’s inflatables, makes this design suitable for these temporary happenings, but not necessarily a good precedent for further architectural investigation beyond the engagement of urban sites.



Ecosistema urbano, Ecobulevar de Vallecas, Madrid, 2005











palinsesto / narrazione / riconosciblitĂ

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layering frammento caratteri del contesto materialitĂ



1991, West 8, Shouwburgplein, or “Theater Square,” Amsterdam








Edge Design Institute, Cascade Park, Hong Kong. The Cascade is a miniature urban park attached onto an existing staircase near the Centrium in the central district. Containing trees, greenery, and single and facing seats, the Cascade creates a layer of personal space on top of a functional passageway between business and shopping areas.



del modernismo cosa rimane? > progetti di spazio aperto come macchina ecologica




{

inclusività

micro-utopie comunitarie playgrounds

diversità partecipazione nuovi commons

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layering frammento

palinsesto / narrazione / riconosciblità

caratteri del contesto materialità

progetto post-moderno degli spazi aperti


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