The suburban commons by Virginia Santilli

the book

the postcards

the drawings

Suburban shopping centres are the main attractor, socially and commercially. Overcoming the scale of small town centres and providing a common regional place, these world interiors of capital are building a new territorial identity. Nevertheless, today online shopping is denaturating shopping centres, turning them into entertaining centres. The project deals with very different scales to envision a future scenario for the Western European dispersed city and to frame to future the role of the mall for these territories. The suburban commons proposes a mediation between the public, the private and the collective to imagine a new regional centre that breaks the sole commercial function and provides a place to gather, a space of appearance, linked to its territory. It imagines a sustainable, convivial scenario that rethinks the shopping centre and prepares the territory for a possible post-mall phase.

7 Prolegomenon. On the approach, the method and the role. 17 Introduction. 21 A Western-European process of suburbanization. The dispersed city. 25 The centrality of the shopping mall. A world interior of capital. 37 The specific case of Camposampierese. 63 Future scenarios for the dispersed city. 72 microstories. 97 The suburban commons 104 Villa urbana 126 Villa rustica 131 Reflection 139 Images 141 Bibliography

Prolegomenon On the approach, the method and the role 1

/ List of phases

1 The structure of the following narration is inspired by Bergson’s Matière et mémoire and reflects my fascination of mixing literary narration and concise scientific assertations. The prolegomenon has been written under the supervision of Prof. Hans Teerds.

Architecture from contamination Architecture through observation Architecture as narration

/ List of assertations

Architecture from contamination 1.1

The territory is made by different geographies

1.2

The study of the territory reaches its highest point when contaminated with other disciplines

1.3

Connecting disciplines is the main capability of the architect as intellectual

1.4

The power of architecture from contamination and mediation

Architecture through observation 2.1

Each research starts trough observation

2.2

The architectural project demands contextuality

2.3

Architectural design as a collective project

2.4

The fallacy of over-specialization

Architecture as narration 3.1

The need for narration

3.2

The project as a form of narration

3.3

The refuse of strict planning for the contemporary project

3.4

The flexibility of narration leaves space for appropriation

Architecture from contamination It fascinates me to look at the territory as a set of geographies that intertwine with each other. As it is an extremely complex system, to be able to analyze thoroughly the territory, it is necessary to dissect it and then to reconnect the several elements of the same narration. Each of these narrations I name it geography. There is a geological geography that concerns the history of the physical, chemical and biological changes of the territory. There is an environmental geography that analyses the condition of external factors such as air, water, minerals at any time. Man-made geographies also represent a layer of the territory such as the built environment or a semiotic geography. Nevertheless, there is a set of geographies that does not 2

This key of interpretation of the territory arose during a conversation with architect Fabrizio Barozzi in 2013.

strictly concern the physical space, as a human geography or a cultural geography. In this view, the key difference is that the territory is a priori of a cultural or aesthetic judgment, whilst the geography is made subjective through the eye of the observer. The

territory is made by different geographies.2

The study of the built environment was born as a retrospective discipline towards the action of building and comes from the convergence of different disciplines together. In De Architectura by Vitruvius (I Century B.C.), the author defines the role and the profession of the architect and states that it is necessary to have notions on geometry, mathematics, medicine, anatomy, optics, law, theology and astronomy. The treatise itself wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have been written without the careful observation of the existing architecture and the study of the above-mentioned disciplines. In the same way, urbanism is rooted in other disciplines: topography, military science, geology, economy, sociology. The study of the territory requires the ability to manage complexity and to comprehend the different geographies (see 1.1). Especially since the current education of architecture and urbanism is increasingly specializing into branches and sub-professions, it is fundamental for me to reclaim the importance of its transdisciplinarity. The study of the territory reaches its highest point when contaminated with other disciplines. The disciplines and geographies involved in the morphology of the territory state its complexity. It is clear that the capability of who studies the territory is complete when is able to gather knowledge from other disciplines. Therefore the capability to manage this complexity of cities and territories comes from the ability to make links between these different disciplines. Understanding the different geographies of the territory allows who studies it to consider it as a whole. I reckon that the difference between the architect and the engineer lays in the capability of the architect in making connections, in having a broad, complete view of the territory to, then, develop the project. Figures as American urban theorist Jane Jacobs and Italian urban designer Bernardo Secchi are examples of this attitude that can bridge different disciplines and very different scales. Connecting disciplines is the main capability of

the architect as intellectual. Connecting different disciplines also implies connecting different visions and create a mediation between them. At the moment the

architectural project is generated from a transdisciplinary mediation space assumes another layer of interpretation and meaning. This process is often intrinsic in the process of architecture due to the mediation between client and designer. Exactly in the moments when this transdisciplinary fields clash and the line between designers and commissioners blurs, space takes on an aura of potential poetics. A good example of it took place at the end of 1930s when architect Adalberto Libera engages a fertile and clashing dialogue with patron Curzio Malaparte for the design of a villa on a promontory overlooking the sea of Capri. It is not certain whether the Italian writer and intellectual overcame the decision of Libera or if the architect eventually accepted the critiques of Malaparte to the initial project and cooperated until the end of the construction, nevertheless it is evident that one of the most charming and famous villas of the XX Century was the result of a process of collaborative design. The

power of architecture from contamination and mediation.

Architecture through observation “We get out at the fourteenth floor; this floor is really there. It is in Sheffield, the entry to another School of Architecture. […] But there is a problem here as well because that ascendancy also signals literal and symbolic detachment. We look down at the city below and, at this distance, command it as an abstraction. The voices of people are lost; we just observe their functions. Buildings are reduced to form, roads to flows of traffic. Noises are measured, not listened to. 3

Jeremy Till, Architecture Depends, Cambridge (MA), The MIT Press, 2009, p.7.

Shapes are classified by type, not sensuously enjoyed”.3 As Jeremy Till denounces in “Architecture Depends”, architectural education is, in its Western modern paradigm, isolated from reality. Secured in its monumental buildings, often in campuses outside the city, students look through books and websites previous example of architectural masters, but lack to understand the life of buildings in the everyday life, after the first perfect photoshoot. This entails an increasing number of projects conceived for one or two nice images, but no attention to the experience of the building, the materiality of it the sounds, the smells and other sensorial perception excluding the

sight.4 At the same time, often, no contingency of the everyday life and unpredictability of reality has been taken into account in the design phase for a long time. Sparkles of reaction to this approach can be seen today, but I would say that it is still the leading doctrine. I believe that the phase of observation of the territory, the people and the environment is a fundamental phase of the research and constantly need to be recalled to the development of a project. For instance, the way space is appropriated by its users and by the environment itself is central to the formulation of any architectural project. Each research starts with observation. If the observation of space is the starting point of architectural research, the observation of a definite space (or series of spaces) is the starting point of the architectural project. From the most utopian project to the most pragmatic one, there is always a context to relate or depend on. The idea of context has many different facets, it can be a physical context as well as socio-economic context, a political context and so on. In my project I started by having as a context a socio-economic condition (the arrival of Marshall Plan funds to European countries after the destruction of the Second World War), then I studied how this condition affected certain portions of the territory (suburban area that was rapidly urbanized in that time frame) and finally I carefully observed how one of this series of spaces has been since then, how it is today and how is going to be in 50 years. An architectural project would have been possible to be done at any of these three stages with a different degree of specificity but the same extent of contextuality. Sometimes architecture is defined careful to the context when only based on the morphological context of the space surrounding the project. The meaning I give to contextuality is deeper than this attitude and it is the result from the first phase “architecture from contamination” (the study of the multidisciplinary layers that influence reality) and “architecture through observation” (the genealogy of the project as a result of a careful observation of reality). Contextuality involves the way people use space, the way the different geographies of the territory come together ( 1.1) and the way different scales overlay in the same space. When all these variables are observed, in my

4 As Pallaasma states, the strong ocularcentric tradition has always existed in Western thinking, but I would speculate that it increased because of the late manner of architectural education.

opinion, the project can consciously start to come to life. The

architectural project demands contextuality. For the architect as intellectual, the act of connecting disciplines and the observation of the territory keeps his subjectivity as a filter to look at reality. Nevertheless, this subjectivity is a lens to focus on the object observed and not blind authoriality. The architect embodies 5

In the previous draft I used the term “reader” that I now substitute with the term “observer” to differentiate it from the meaning that Elizabeth Keslacy gives concerning the use of gaming techniques in the article Fun and Games: The Suppression of Architectural Authoriality and the Rise of the Reader. The role of the designer in my view is akin to Keslacy’s, but the tools are different. KESLACY, Elizabeth. Fun and Games: The Suppression of Architectural Authoriality and the Rise of the Reader. FOOTPRINT, [S.l.], p. 101-124, dec. 2015.

the role of the observer.5 This observation is a constant exchange with the reality observed. Interviews are perhaps the main tool and show how the observation is never self-referential, but in a constant exchange. The architect works for the society and uses its capability to connect discipline and to observe to develop the project. Nevertheless, the project, because of its development through the observation and exchange, is not an individual activity but a shared gesture with and for the actors of the territory. In the last decade, due to an increasing awareness of this matter and the increasing experimentation on bottom-up projects, few urbanist and architects started taking into greater account the phase of approach to the site. Projects as Play The City show how the participation of the different actors in the project is so important that needs special capabilities and tools to become a specialization itself. Through the act of playing, entrepreneurs, developers, citizens, contractors, investors, institutions and other actors involved in the process of new projects come together to imagine future scenarios for the city and the territory. Even though Play The City uses a very specific tool, the strategy and vision of architecture as a collective project can be pursued in other ways and should be aimed by practices.

Architectural design as a collective project. All disciplines are increasingly specializing and architects and urban planners are looking at the project site with a zoomed-in lens. As I already stated, I firmly believe in the intellectual role of the architect. I reckon that the difference between the architect and the engineer lays in the capability of the architect in making connections, in having a broad, complete view of the territory. It lays in the economic and social understanding of the area and in the use of design as a political tool. Examples as Play The City are extremely relevant because they show new strategies for valuable approaches, but I reckon that

practices should use the same care for the territory and its actors in each project. I firmly believe that at the moment knowledge is becoming so specifically divided into sectors, the value lays in the capability of connecting and observing knowledge. The fallacy of

over-specialization.

Architecture as narration “Less and less frequently do we encounter people with the ability to tell a tale properly. More and more often there is embarrassment all around when the wish to hear a story is expressed. It is as if

6 BENJAMIN, Walter, Der Erzähler. Betrachtungen zum Werk Nikolai Lesskows, in: Orient und Occident, 1936, introduction.

7 BENJAMIN, Walter, Experience and poverty in Selected Writings: Volume 2, part 2, 19311934, Boston, Harvard University Press, 2005.

something that seemed inalienable to us, the securest among our possessions, were taken from us: the ability to exchange experiences”.6

In the first half of 1930s, Walter Benjamin focuses on

the theme of experience and the connection between experience and narration. According to him the collective trauma of the First World War led to the impossibility to make experience.7 Consequently, the crisis of experience causes and involves the crisis of narrating. Decades after, Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben resumes Benjamin’s theory on the experience and links it to the end of the Twentieth Century.8 He states that contemporary human is incapable to make experience, not anymore because of a collective void as the First World War for Benjamin, but due to the modern overexposure of information that we are witnessing today. 9 “Standing face to face with one of the great wonders of the world (let us say the patio de los leones in the Alhambra), the overwhelming majority of people have no wish to experience it, preferring instead that the camera should”.10 The overexposure of stimuli Agamben writes about is even

8 AGAMBEN, Giorgio, Infancy and history. On the destruction of experience, Verso publications, London, 2006.

I wrote about this parallel between “black and white blindness”, linking Benjamin’s and Agamben’s theories on experience through the words of Portuguese writer José Saramago, in my theory thesis at TU Delft in Spring 2017. https://www.academia. edu/36069382/Of_archit ecture_and_experience (accessed, 22-03-2018).

more actual today and it deeply affects the way people experience space in their everyday life. If Benjamin already said that “architecture has always represented the prototype of a work of art the reception of which is consummated by the collectivity in a state of distraction”, today this distraction is amplified by the overwhelmed amount of inputs we receive from the

world.11

Consequently to the incapability of making experience reaches its peak the lack of narration. The need for narration.

10 AGAMBEN, op. cit., p. 15.

I would speculate that this lack of narration affects the architectural field in the way the project is thought. The necessity and the rapidity to give a quick spatial answer that focuses on the aesthetic paradigm rather that the analysis of the territory is to me one of the main issues today in architecture. This problem comes along with the impossibility of the architect and urbanist to imagine and narrate future scenarios. The quote from Benjamin’s “Storyteller” in the previous paragraph can be easily applied to architectural design today. I reckon that our generation largely lacks the capability to imagine the evolution of everyday life in 10, 20, 50 years and are satisfied by rendering a new building into the present way of living. On the contrary, I reckon that the aim of the architecture project is to shape the change of how the city and the territory will be lived and the imaginative power of the architect is the main tool for this. In my project, the main output of the research phase has been imagining how future life will shape the territory and, at the same time, how an architectural intervention can play a role in the transformation of everyday life. A series of microstories has been imagined to envision the change of space and society. The first part of the project itself lies in the capability to narrate the future. The project as a form of

narration. Envisioning the project through microstories forces the architect to reach a great level of detail to reflect on everyday elements of the future way of living without the necessity of forcing the strictness of planning. It allows to understand which are the critical points and the improvement to be made that will influence the transition between present and future, but it leaves rooms to the uncertainty of reality and freedom of users. A traditional, comprehensive urban masterplan as it was done until a decade ago would result completely anachronistic today. This is why it is necessary to read, to study and to translate the territory in a much deeper way to find out the crucial points to intervene on wisely. First of all, because the public economic resources are not enough anymore for great interventions and architectural intervention are now often related to the metaphor of acupuncture. Secondly, because the world is changing so fast (politically, culturally and economically) since the great development of telecommunications on that a large, “definitive” intervention may

risk to result obsolete within the time it is finished. Lastly, because contemporary architecture learned from modernism and postmodernism that a top-down approach only isolates our discipline away from its users and that a project is successful not only according to its mere aesthetics, but also to its capability to be appropriated and used by people. The refuse of strict planning for the

contemporary project. The narration as a tool to design and to envision future scenarios is connected with the need for the architect to observe and be on the field. The idea of the architectural project as a collective project (ď&#x192; 2.3) does not only apply to the observation phase of the design, but also to while envisioning future scenarios and formulating the project itself. This takes place when the architect does not dictate how to live and how to act to the future users of the project but leaves room for the unpredictability of the appropriation. Nevertheless, it is important to underline that the act of leaving space for appropriation does not mean giving away a part of your responsibility as an architect, but accepting the contingency of real world. Microstories always carry an element of exemplification of the uncertain that remains flexible, differently from a masterplan. The flexibility of

narration leaves space for appropriation.

Introduction

The simple needs of automobiles are more easily understood and satisfied than the complex needs of cities, and a growing number of planners and designers have come to believe that if they can only solve the problems of traffic, they will thereby have solved the major problem of cities. Cities have much more intricate economic and social concerns than automobile traffic. How can you know what to try with traffic until you know how the city itself works, and what else it needs to do with its streets? You canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t. (Jane Jacobs, Death and Life of Great American Cities, 1961)

The following essay concerns my interest in suburban shopping malls and the way they relate to the territory, the populace and the institutions. The set of transformations they meant for the territory on a social, economic and political level and the way they affected the everyday life of suburban areas stimulated my fascination and criticism at the same time. I first approached this topic in 2014 at IUAV in the course of urbanism by Paola ViganĂ˛. Observing the cittĂ diffusa, my attention was caught by the mall in the centre of the territory where a large part of the population was gathering and that was replacing the old town squares. When I decided to carry on that analysis for my graduation project at TU Delft I understood that I had to reverse the order of the research and start from the genesis of the mall, its typologies and its evolution and also the economic, social and political resonances it generates. When this topic started unfolding its complexity and became clear, then I went back looking at the suburban territory.

From this different point of view, I reconsidered the meaning and origin of the dispersed city, slowly getting distance from the theories of Bernardo Secchi and Francesco Indovina. The study of the two topics, European suburban shopping malls and European dispersed city, both autonomous yet constantly overlapping, was always anchored to the case of the Federazione dei Comuni del Camposampierese, a territory of 15 by 15 km in the North East of Italy that in 2008 asked to be considered as a whole, as a city. The analysis and the study phase gathered sources from different disciplines: not only architecture and urbanism, but economy, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, geology, engineering and literature, among others. As it was explained in the prolegomenon, the transdisciplinary nature of architecture is one of the main features of our field and the capability of connecting these practices is one of the most important competencies of the architect. The project was generated from the observation of the territory and it first dwelled on the regional scale, imagining a future scenario for this area to evolve and survive the challenges of climate change. Through narration, this vision brought topics as economy, work, living, moving and gathering to the detail of everyday life, but leaving space for the uncertainty of reality. When the territorial vision was defined, the architectural intervention started to be thought with the aim to investigate how architectural interventions can affect macro dynamics on the territorial layer and solve issues that go beyond the spatial configuration. I reckon that over the last decades, architects and urbanists observed carefully the effect of globalization on the city, but the effect on the countryside has been neglected. As a general theme, this project wants to light up how the suburbia is tied to the city as an invisible machine that works for it and, at the same time, is affected by the same powers with extreme vulnerability. The relevance of the project lays in providing an alternative to the homogeneous capitalistic interiors of the mall, both spatially and theoretically, but not creating a tabula rasa as it is usually done, but working with the positive aspects that the suburban shopping centre

provided to the local community (e.g. the need for a new centrality). The reason for this comes from my interpretation of the architectural and urban project as a collective project that includes the public, the private and the people. Moreover, I think it is extremely important today to define future strategies and develop a future vision for the dispersed city, which is a common European situation and that will soon need to adapt and survive the challenges of climate change and sustainability.

A Western-European process of suburbanization

After the Second World War, a reform of the international economic relations took place, led by the United States of America, within the interests of American capitalism and in order to support the rebirth of European economies. In July 1944 the Bretton Woods system was introduced and the International Monetary Fund was created, for the purpose of establishing an adequate amount of global foreign exchange reserves and of ensuring the stability of exchange rates. Moreover, the World Bank was founded with the task of granting loans to single Countries to encourage their restoration and development. Western European countries largely made use of the international funds through the European Recovery Program (also called Marshall Plan), whilst USSR prohibited all the States under their influence to be part of the plan. Between 1948 and 1952 United Kingdom, France, Italy, the Federal Republic of Germany and the Netherlands collected the most of the 13 billion dollars that were sent by the United States, partly as material support (agricultural production and machinery).12 The effect was not only to relaunch European economies, but also to make them homogeneous and complementary to American economy. In the meanwhile, when World War II finished, American soldiers returned to their homeland expecting the peaceful reward that the State promised: a job and a piece of land in the tranquillity of a single house away from the city. An enormous process of suburbanization started, encouraged by the switch of war industry to automobile industry and internal development industry (public buildings and transport infrastructure).

12 Marshall Plan funds data (Millions US Dollars): UK 3176, France 2706, Italy 1506, West Germany 1389, Netherlands 1079, Greece 694, Austria 677, Belgium 556, Denmark 271, Norway 254, Turkey 221, Ireland 146, Yugoslavia 109, Sweden 107, Portugal 50, Iceland 29.

Within the process of reconstruction of European countries the importance of infrastructure and the possibility of suburbanization as a cure to the increasing density of cities and their poor quality of living, was also brought to Europe. The constitution of new infrastructure and the spread of the automobile triggered the intensification of suburban sprawl. As economist Richard Porter stated: “The automobile made suburbia possible, and the suburbs 13

PORTER, Richard, Economics at the Wheel. The costs of cars and drivers, Emerald Group Publishing, 1999.

made the automobile essential”.13 Nevertheless, the difference from American suburban sprawl is the role of land developers, that in the United States massively divided the territory into equal plots and single-family houses, whilst in Europe this step didn’t take place. In countries as the United Kingdom and The Netherlands the state created this new suburban conglomerate (named New Towns), in other countries as Italy and France there has been a singular appropriation of the soil by families and communities. In both case the role of private land developers as in the United States was absent. This can be clearly seen by the rigid morphology of the American sprawl and the rather natural one in Europe. In the north-east of Italy the rich and productive area of sprawl between Padua and Venice reacted to the dependency to the cities and eleven scattered towns congregated into a Federation in 2011 and ask to be considered, economically and politically, as a whole. For this reason this territory will here be called dispersed city. What I am interested in is a geography that has been shaped by global processes and how areas with different histories and cultures today can be considered parallel because they have undergone the same transformation of the world economy. I reckon that architects and urbanists have been observing the effects of globalization on the city for the last decades, but the effects on the countryside have been

14 SASSEN, Saskia, Overview of Global Cities, from The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo, New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press, 1991, pp. 3-12.

neglected. By the early 1980s the productive apparatus started being pushed away from the city. It was slowly hidden as an invisible source of fuelling for the city, from the countryside. As Saskia Sassen states in The global city: “Cities such as Detroit, Liverpool, Manchester, and now increasingly Nagoya and Osaka have been affected by the decentralization of their key industries at the domestic and international levels”.14 The same process happened to Venice

Marghera and, on a smaller scale, Padua. Part of these heavy industries was brought to the countryside, were they steeply increased the number of jobs within the dispersed city, which became more and more independent from Padua. Territories

that

underwent

similar

processes

dispersed

suburbanization in the two decades after World War II are: the East region of England in the United Kingdom; the subregion (landstreek) of Drenthe and the subregion of Limburg in the Netherlands; the Wallonia region and the province of Limburg in Belgium; the Westphalia region in Germany (historically the Ruhr area); the region of Hauts-de-France (previous Nord-Pas-de-Calais and Picardie regions) in France; the Camposampierese area in the Veneto region in Italy.

I. Different morphology of Americal and European division of land in suburbanization processes

The centrality of the suburban shopping mall: a world interior of capital

On the 14th of September 1996, the Belgian newspaper De Standaard announce the grieving march for the girls of the suburban sprawl around Liège, victims of a psychopath serial killer. To the cars, trucks and motorcycles participating in the parade was given as a point of departure “Biggs shopping mall, which has one of the largest parking lots in the whole of Limburg”. This episode fully shows how in European suburban areas the shopping mall and its acres of asphalt started playing a role which goes beyond the commercial activity. In rural areas and hinterland landscapes, the great scale of the mall overcomes the small scale of the human settlements and starts playing a social role, defining a new centrality. Within the process of suburbanization defined in the previous chapter, the commercial fabric arose in the larger villages and along the main arteries. Nevertheless, the population of these areas, equipped with cars, mostly remained commercially dependent to bigger urban areas. Isolated commercial activities never flourished in the diffuse city and are now completely perishing (especially everything which does not concern food). The emergence of shopping malls was revolutionary in these suburban areas. Firstly, it embodied a piece of the city at hand: bigger shops (e.g. supermarkets) with lower prices and a much greater variety of products. Secondly, it functioned as a commercial centre with a high density of shops (it works the same in cities, but if in cities there are the main central shopping streets as an alternative, in the suburban sprawl the lack of density didn’t allow these places to be born). It permitted the clients to shop different categories of product without the necessity of

driving ten minutes to a shop and the other. Lastly, it provided commercial activities whose scale overcame the smallness of the scattered towns of the diffuse city. In many of these areas, the emergence

shopping

centres

produced

increase

densification in the vicinity, as if it embodied a new centrality. In 1978 an avant-garde Shopping Centre was built on the highest point of Milton Keynes, a British new town 80km north-west of London that was founded in 1667 (third and last wave of new towns). It was supposed to be a common space, open all hours, designed not just for purchasing but for real popular interaction. In ten years, since the opening of the shopping mall, the population increased from 50.000 to 150.000 inhabitants and MK Shopping Centre became the main commercial and social hub of the town. Despite British new towns cannot be considered as diffuse city nowadays, in the 70s this mall played in this suburban settlement the same role that other shopping centres played in European diffuse cities. An interesting change in the role of suburban shopping malls took place during the first decade of the XXI Century. In my opinion two different crisis for shopping malls can be identified: one external and one internal. The external one affected the real estate market. Since the 2008 crisis, the number of new projects for both shopping centres and retail parks shrunk to one 15

Source: RegioData.eu http://www.regiodata.e u/en/news/1026europe-shoppingcenter-industryshrinks-to-one-third (accessed November 29, 2017).

third in seven years.15 The internal one affected the visitors and is the one I am interested in. The Great Recession of 2008 affected all European citizens and especially the middle class of society - small entrepreneurs, farms and landowners, small businesses: exactly the inhabitants of the diffuse city. The average spending per person decreased slightly, but moreover it condensed it a certain piece of the market: the income of fast-fashion clothing retail companies (e.g. Inditex, H&M) doubled between 2008-2015, whilst logo-based stores (e.g American Apparel, that boomed in the US in the early 2000s) dropped after the 2008 crisis. This means that the shops of many smaller companies that were figuring in the mall remained vacant. If we put these data together with the boom of online shopping that we witnessed over the past decade and that we are witnessing now, a

II. Milton Keynes shopping centre in 1970s, UK

number of shops that are forced to close in malls increase and are going along with square meters of storages unused. Following this observation, to me it is plausible that within the next decade physical shops will mainly be a window to show and try products, but the main percentage of sales will take place online. This process will empty the most of the mall’s storages and new hubs for national and regional distribution will be built. It will be a challenge for architects to intervene in these spaces. It is interesting to observe that despite the economic recession and the middle and low-class crisis, a number of visits to the shopping mall never decreased. Shopping centres are turning to entertaining centres. Bar, restaurants, spa, even chapels; concerts, lectures and debates take place in malls, whose parking is overflowing with cars on Saturdays and Sundays. The role of the shopping centre is still, of course, commercial and devoted to consumerism, but at the same time, it plays an important role in the social and relational field. Especially within the diffuse city, the shopping mall is the only entertaining centre that overcomes the scale of the village and brings together a broader part of the society. What I reckon as the problem is that people are clearly looking for a new centrality in these areas which does not exist, so that the mall has been distorted in a space in between the commercial and relational field. Nevertheless, this place educate new generations to see the duality of common space and commercial space as indivisible, which is a very accepted view of our time. To clearly outline the main transformation of shopping centres I will indicate a few concise points: 1 – Shopping centre turns into entertaining centre 2 – Shopping on-line turns shops into a window to try products 3 – Shops work as a platform to be visible, less commercial area needed 4 – Storage spaces are being emptied

5 – Shopping centre’s space needs to be flexible for events and temporary changes

The suburban shopping mall can be considered as an abstract entity, as a global capitalistic interior: a place guided by the global market that is a framework of a generalized indoor reality, the same repeated everywhere. Philosopher Peter Sloterdijk, in “In the world interior of capital” gives an accurate overview of the history of globalization and defines globalization as the indirect cause of a peculiar dissolution of the social field.16 He writes “Weakening or dissolving the link of places and selves can allow us to see the two positions that reveal the structure of the social field in an almost experimental state of

SLOTERDIJK, Peter, In the World Interior of Capital, John Wiley & Sons, 2014.

disintegration: a self without a place and a place without a self”.17 The first extreme dissolution is the self without a place, mainly portraited by the Judaic diaspora: “nomadizing or deterritorialized groups construct their symbolic immunity and ethnic coherence not – or only marginally – from a supporting soil”.18 On the other hand, the second dissolution, which is the most related to this research: the place without a self.

They (the places without a self – ed.) constitute places with which people do not usually develop any cultivating relationship, let alone attempt any identification. This applies to all transit spaces, in both the narrower and wider sense of the term, be they facilities intended for traffic such as train station, docks and airports, roads, squares and shopping centre […] Such places may have their own atmospheres – but these do not depend on a populace or collective self that would be at home in them. […] They are the alternately overrun or empty no man’s lands; the transit deserts that proliferate in the enucleated centres and hybrid peripheries of contemporary “societies”.19

17 Ibidem, p.150 I reckon that here Sloterdijk does not intend the self as one community, but as the genus loci, the spirit of the place, which includes the multiversality of selves that inhabit a territory.

Ibidem, p. 150.

Ibidem, pp. 151-152.

III. Shopping centre common places: generalized indoor reality

These

spaces,

which

definition

strictly

connected

anthropologist Marc Augé’s “non-places”, are the result of global economic processes and market strategies.20 In the suburban territory, the shopping mall, a place without a self is creating a common culture and identity, by being the gathering place par

20 AUGE’, Marc, NonPlaces. Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity, London, Verso books, 1995.

excellence. The shopping mall works on two different scales: the scale of goods, which is behind the scene and behind the presented space, is a global scale: products are designed in the United States, manufactured in China and sold in Europe. The other scale is the scale of the visitors and it is a regional scale, which is extremely important for these areas because allows the possibility to overcome the small scale of villages and small towns. The mall system also rigidly divides the interior to the exterior, intended as the part presented to the customers and the invisible part designated for supply, management and others. The suburban shopping centre is perceived by clients as a space that is only interior, as other public interiors such as airports and hospitals.21 This characteristic supposes that there is no link between the building and its surroundings and that it works as an autonomous interior enclosed by parking lots. I see this physical and metaphorical detachment of the shopping centre from the territory as a limit and a future vision for suburban shopping mall should reconsider this issue.

To conclude, I will refer to the very beginning of this chapter: it is interesting how the same newspaper, De Standaard, on the same day announced another march with the same objective. The second march was taking place in the central streets of Brussels, starting at Flagey Square. A silent march in the public space par excellence, leading physically and symbolically to the Justice Palace. Such a space is missing in the diffuse city and it is not possible to recreate it.

PIMLOTT, Mark, The public interior as idea and project, Jap Sam Books, 2016.

Widespread suburbanization

Peak of the exponential increase of car sales

Western European dispersed city

Universal ownership of the motor car

The right to buy becomes one of the major points of Thatcherism in UK

OIL CRISIS beginning of the lasting formula that ties suburban new towns and shopping malls (the new centre)

Marshall Plan ESCALATORS (worldwide use)

BAR CODES invention

Growth of department stores

Air-conditioning introduction

Wal-Mart: $1 billion in sales

(to dissipate heat from the new lighting)

Lijnbaan, Rotterdam | J. Bakema Shouthdale Mall, Minneapolis | V. Gruen: first enclosed mall Gruen builts

over 50 malls in ten years

Shopping Town USA, V. Gruen

1950

Milton Keynes Shopping Centre

First WalMart big box value retailing opens in Arkansas

1960

(largest regional shopping centre: 140898 m2

West Edmonto Mall: largest mall a

First duty free shop in Shannon Airport, Ireland

establishment of â&#x20AC;&#x153;superâ&#x20AC;? regional cen

The heart of our cities, V. Gruen

1970

1980

Political and historical facts European planning legislation tightens up, preventing further suburban retail and protecting the viability of towns and the countryside

Public opinion turns towards a preference for open street retailing

multiscreen cinemas in shopping malls

Wal-Mart: $25 billion in sales

Projects

Crisis of logo based clothing retail companies

less need of storage spaces

Great scale diffusion of fast fashion clothing retail companies (e.g. Inditex, H&M) with quick manifacturing at an affordable price ONLINE SHOPPING booming

Wal-Mart: $165 billion in sales

Airport retailing in Heathrow T4 an Gatwick South

FINANCIAL CRISIS of 2007-8, followed by the great recession

Shopping centres turns to entartaing centres

â&#x20AC;&#x153;DEAD MALLSâ&#x20AC;? CRISIS IN USA

and f ntres

Mall of America, Minneapolis

1990

one mall on five closes

2000

2010

Circular economy: ReTuna Shopping Mall, Sweden

Dreamland amusement at White Marsh Mall, Baltimore

2020

IV. Shopping centre evolution: a timeline

SUPERREGIONAL SHOPPING CENTRE/

REGIONAL SHOPPING CENTRE/

SM SH

GLA: OVER 74.000 M2

GLA: 37.000 TO 74.000 M2

GL 40

PRIMARY AREA SERVED / RADIUS: 10-20 KM

PR /

FULL LINE DEPARTMENT STORE / JUNIOR DEPARTMENT STORE / MASS MERCHANT / FASHION APPAREL

FU DE JU ST CH AP

TYPICAL CONFIGURATION: ENCLOSED ON ONE LEVEL

TY TI ON

WAASLAND SC, BELGIUM / GLA 69.000 M2 51°09’11’’N 4°09’13’’E

LE ITA 45° 11°

PRIMARY AREA SERVED / RADIUS: 40 KM THREE OR MORE ANCHOR STORES / FULL LINE DEPARTMENT STORE / MASS MERCHANT / FASHION APPAREL TYPICAL CONFIGURATION: ENCLOSED WITH MULTILEVELS SM SOUTHMALL, MANILA / GLA 205.000 M2 14°26’01’’N 121°00’40’’E

V. Shopping centre typologies

MALL REGIONAL HOPPING CENTRE/

LA: 20.000 TO 0.000 M2

RIMARY AREA SERVED RADIUS: 10-20 KM

ULL LINE EPARTMENT STORE / UNIOR DEPARTMENT TORE / MASS MERHANT / FASHION PPAREL

COMMUNITY CENTRE/

NEIGHBORHOOD CENTRE/

GLA: 9.300 TO 32.500 M2

GLA: 2.800 TO 13.900 M2

PRIMARY AREA SERVED / RADIUS: 4-10 KM

PRIMARY AREA SERVED / RADIUS: 5 KM

DISCOUNT DEPARTMENT STORE / SUPERMARKET / DRUG / HOME IMPROVEMENT / LARGE SPECIALTY-DISCOUNT / APPAREL

YPICAL CONFIGURAION: ENCLOSED ON NE LEVEL

TYPICAL CONFIGURATION: ONE FLOOR / STRAIGHT LINE, LOR U-SHAPED

CENTURIE, PADUA, ALY / GLA 23.000 M2 °32’22’’N °55’24’’E

MERCATONE UNO, PADUA, ITALY / GLA 23.000 M2 45°41’06’’N 11°57’22’’E

CONVENIENCE SHOPPING FOR THE DAY-TO-DAY NEEDS TYPICAL CONFIGURATION: STRAIGHT LINE / NO MALL AREA ALì SUPERMERCATO, PADUA, ITALY / GLA 2.900 M2 45°34’46’’N 11°48’27’’E

100 m

200 m

500 m

VI. Global and local scale of the shopping mall, connecting goods and users

The specific case of Camposampierese

The area of Camposampierese is a square of about 15 x 15 km in between Padua and Venice. It includes eleven municipalities: (north to south) Piombino Dese, Loreggia, Trebaseleghe, Villa del Conte, Camposampiero, Santa Giustina in Colle, Massanzago, San Giorgio delle Pertiche,

Borgoricco, Campodarsego

and

Villanova

Camposampiero. The total population in 2017 is 100.000 inhabitants. 22

The evolution of the territory The area was first inhabited by the Romans. The territory north to Padua was entirely divided into plots for retired soldiers in a process named centuriatio (centuriation) following the battle of Philippi (42 b.C.). The land was divided in unit of 20x20 actus (about 35x35m) and each colonist was entitled to one or more units. The soil was drained and used for agriculture and livestock farming. This configuration of the territory remained the same until the mid-V Century, when the barbarian invasions reached the region. Part of the population escaped towards the lagoon, where small settlements lived fishing and handling saltworks, and contributed to the foundation of Venice. Padua lost the political and administrative role and the area was integrated into the Duchy of Treviso. The land underwent recurring flooding and the western part was covered by a thick brush: during the whole Longobardic domination (V-VIII Century) the area was left abandoned. In the XII Century Padua gained power again and the territory was allocated to rich feudal landowners linked to the Carraresi dynasty. Camposampiero became an important center with

22 Precisely 100.647 inhabitants. Piombino Dese 9.558, Loreggia 7583, Trebaseleghe 12.927, Villa del Conte 5.549, Camposampiero 12.056, Santa Giustina in Colle 7.212, Massanzago 6.067, San Giorgio delle Pertiche 10.171, Borgoricco 8.765, Campodarsego 14.638 and Villanova di Camposampiero 6.121. Source: demo.istat.it (accessed 22-12-2017).

VII. (In the previous page) Model of the genesis of the Venetian territory. In the centre: walled Padua, on its right the villages along via Appia (Campodarsego, Camposampiero). Model by Virginia Santilli, NiccolĂ˛ Fogolari, Alessandro Modonese, Francesca Angelillo (2015).

a monumental castle. The absence of villages and farming over the previous centuries allowed the retention of the centuriation infrastructure. Between 1300 and 1400 new flooding and the spread of the plague caused a sharp drop of the population and the transformation of the land to swampland. Nevertheless, in the early XV Century, Venetians acquired the area and started a process of reclamation and bush felling, moreover the overflowing rivers (Muson and Brenta) were diverted: the region became organized and cultivated again. Many rich Venetian families, as Cornaro, Contarini, Giustinian and Moro, built significant villas in the area which gave birth to growing settlements and villages. When Venice fell (1797), the Napoleonic Code was introduced and the rural area was managed by the young laic town of Borgoricco. In 1861 the region became part of the Kingdom of Italy and the land use increased for farming purposes until the territory was fully recovered during the fascist regime. During the first half of the XX Century the area developed one of the most productive agriculture of the country and the first industries emerged. After the second World War the Marshall Plan provided the necessary funds to build a widespread car infrastructure in these areas, also as a kind of reproduction of the American suburban dream which was completely extraneous to the European community and society at the time. The new network triggered a process of densification with single-family houses, one independent from the other, diffused in the whole territory. Contrary to the American suburban sprawl, land developers (or government) didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t divide pieces of land it into equal plots, but it was a much more individual and spontaneous process. At the same time, the industries that were being pushed away from the city of Padua and new spaces of production established on the main axes of the scattered territory, intertwining with the process densification. Today the main industrial production concerns the manufacturing sector, the metal and mechanical sector and the building sector. I find particularly interesting is the coexistence in space of the productive process and the consumption stage, which rarely takes place in modern cities in this percentage. The interior and the exterior world of capitalism, to put in in Sloterdijkâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s words, exist side by side.

VIII. Built fabric of the Camposampierese region. Castelfranco Veneto on the north, Padua on the south. Cittadella on the north-west and the metropolitan area of Venice on the east.

IX. Evolution of the territory. On the top, second marcophase: centuriation of the landscape and first agricultural production. Lower, sixth macrophase with the territorial federation and the shopping centre in the middle. 42

In 2011 the eleven municipalities asked to be considered as a city. In the absence of an official political recognition, the administrations voluntarily decided to fuse into a Federation. Since then, the municipal funds and the deliberations are managed by the council of the eleven mayors that takes place in Camposampiero. Many functions have been centralized, there is one police force, one central education institution, one hospital, and so on… In 2012 a shopping mall of 25.000 square meters of gross leasable area was open on the main north-south artery, in the area of San Giorgio delle Pertiche. The small-scale commercial fabric in the town centres that was already ailing is now perishing. The shopping mall brought a completely new scale on the territory that perfectly matched the request of the area to be considered as a whole, overcoming the small scale of the single villages. Exactly because it provided this regional scale the shopping mall became the new centrality for the local population and started having a role in building up an identity. The mall is today the main attractor, both commercially and socially, leaving the town squares empty and filling up the parking area on the weekends. It is interesting to observe how the dynamics concerning the evolution of shopping mall I wrote about in the previous chapter are visible in the Camposampierese. Two different stages of the mall can be seen today. The shopping mall “Il Parco” on the route between Camposampiero and Massanzago was established in 2006 with a hypermarket of 6000m2 as backstone and a dozen shops on the side. In the same parcel, another building of 4000m2 was designated as storage space. The shopping mall became popular among the populace of the surrounding towns because of the big-scale supermarket, but only for few years. When in 2012 “Le Centurie” shopping mall opened in the centre of the Federation, “Il Parco” started losing its users. It could not switch to entertaining centre, as Le Centurie quickly understood to do, and the multinational hypermarket was soon replaced with another of the same kind. In 2011 the owner decided to sell the building that, with the help of the Federation, was acquired by a national hypermarket chain. The storage building wasn’t considered useful and was partially turned into shops; nevertheless being distant from the core, the local shops closed within a year. Today “Il Parco” strikes to survive and the

Andrea Zanzotto Perché siamo

Andrea Zanzotto Because we are (translation Ruth Feldman)

Perché siamo al di qua delle Alpi su questa piccola balza perché siamo cresciuti tra l’erba di novembre ci scalda il sole sulla porta mamma e figlio sulla porta noi con gli occhi che il gelo ha consacrati a vedere tanta luce ed erba

Because we are on this side of the Alps on this small rise because we grew up among November grass the sun warms us at the door mother and son at the door we with eyes the frost has consecrated to see so much light and grass

Nelle mattina, se è vero Di tre montagne trasparenti mi risveglia la neve; nelle mattine c’è l’orto che sta in una mano e non produce che conchiglie, c’è la cantina delle formiche c’è il radicchio, diletta risorsa profusa alle mie dita a un vento che non osa disturbarci

Mornings, if it’s true, the snow of three transparent mountains awakens me; mornings there’s the kitchen-garden that fits into a hand and yields only shells, there’s the ants’ cellar there’s the red chicory, prized resource prodigal under my fingers, under a wind that doesn’t dare disturb us

Ha sapore di brina la mela che mi diverte, nel granaio s’adagia un raggio amico ed il vecchio giornale di polvere pura; e tutto il silenzio di musco che noi perdiamo nelle valli rende lento lo stesso cammino lo stesso attutirsi del sole che si coglie a guardarci che ci coglie su tutte le porte

The apple I enjoy tastes of hoar-frost, in the granary a friendly ray lies down and the old newspaper of pure dust; and all the silence of moss which we lose in the valleys slows the same walk the same muffling of the sun that catches itself looking at us that catches us at all the doors

O mamma, piccolo è il tuo tempo, tu mi vi porti perch’io mi consoli e là v’è l’erba di novembre, là v’è la franca salute dell’acqua, sani come acqua vi siamo noi; senza azzurra sostanza vi degradano tutte le sieste cui mi confondo e che sempre più vanno comunicando con la notte

Oh mother, your time is small, you take me there to console myself and there is the November grass, there the frank health of water, there we are healthy as water; all the siestas in which I lose myself and which are always communicating more with night step down to that healthy blue substance

Né attingere al pozzo né alle alpi né ricordare come tu non ricordi: ma il sol che splende come cosa nostra, ma sete e fame all’ora giusta e tu mamma che tutto sai di me, che tutto hai tra le mani

To haul neither from well nor Alps nor to remember as you don’t remember; but the sun shining like something that belongs to us, but thirst and hunger at the right time and you mother who know everything about me, who hold it all between your hands.

Con la scorta di te e dell’erba e di quella lampada precaria di cui distinguo la fine, sogno talvolta del mondo e guardo dall’alto l’inverno del nord.

With you and the grass as guide and that precarious lamp of which I perceive the end, I dream sometimes of the world and look from on high at the northern winter.

global. shopping mall

international. industrial production

regional. densification

national. infrastructure

regional. agricultural production

municipal. small villages

X. Coexistence of different scales on the territory according to the different phases of evolution.

storage building is vacant (illegally used as covered parking by the employees of the mall that enter cars from a tiny backdoor). On the other side Le Centurie shopping centre is today the successful mall. Its switch to entertaining centre attracts users from the whole federation for concerts, food tasting and other events. Moreover, it gathers people from the whole territory that only use it as a point to gather. Nevertheless, Le Centurie represents with its structure an old-style suburban shopping mall with a very rigid and fixed plan: events have to take place in the corridors, since 2012 many shops had to divide their space with other commercial activities because the commercial area exceeded their need, and most of the storage spaces are unused. Activities for electronic devices, decor and clothing are the ones affected the most by shopping online: the products displayed are mostly just to try and there is no need to have products stored. Moreover, Le Centurie is a closed-box system that fully relies on mechanical ventilation and lighting and is energetically wasteful. I reckon is important to keep both into account in the analysis of the territory as they represent in the same area two different stages of the shopping mall evolution.

The social issue In the Secchi-Viganò understanding of the dispersed city as an isotropic territory, the geographical and morphological layer of the 23

VIGANO’, Paola, The project of Isotropy, Rome, Officina, 2011.

Camposampierese becomes predominant.23 The homogeneity of the territory, accentuated by the modular division originated by the

centuriatio, becomes the main lens to look at it and intervene on it through the project.

Water and road networks create the same conditions, more or less, in all of the territories, whatever the direction and wherever the point of observation may be. […] The utopia of an isotropic organization appears in the character of this territory of dispersion. […] Starting from the waters, or from the diffused mobility network,

it is possible to return to more traditional themes of urbanism— to the role of public transport; to the fragments of houses, warehouses, industries, schools, sports fields, playgrounds, and public green; and, to the basic elements of the modern welfare state, often marginal and dispersed, that already present an impressive isotropic distribution. They match with a mesh of railways, tramways, and waterways. Isotropy can be used as a device to implement equal rights and democracy, as a figure of political rationality. 24

Ibid., p. 20.

Nevertheless, I would speculate that the same importance is constituted by the human geography of the users who live the area that subconsciously reacts to the isotropic nature of the territory and seek for a centre. I use the term “centrality” to designate a place for citizens to come together and fulfill their need to come together and appear in society.25 The set of these centralities represent “the commons”. The increasing need of people to establish a centre can be individuated in the everyday life of the inhabitants that choose the central shopping mall to gather, but it is also reflected in the institutions that represent the citizens and in the choice of joining the municipalities into the federation. Therefore, my lens to study the Camposampierese focuses on the theme of the commons of the territory today. The process of densification after World War II, triggered by the public, but then left to the privates, resulted in a lack of common space. The condition of dispersion and mixité of Camposampierese results in a landscape of private properties. To this situation is extremely connected to the interpretation by Richard Sennett of Levinas’ neighbor theory. Sennett applies to the urban condition what Levinas states in two essays of 1998 “Otherwise than being or beyond essence” and “Entre Nous. Thinking-of-the-other”, divesting it of the metaphorical layer of obsession and justice for the neighbor that comes from the Israeli-Palestinian case.26 Sennett states:

25 The term appear is used following the acceptation of Hannah Arendt of the public space as a space “where I appear to others as others appear to me, where men exist not merely like other living or inanimate things, but to make their appearance explicitly” (Arendt, Hannah, The Human Condition, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1958).

26 LEVINAS, Emmanuel, Entre nous. Thinking-ofthe-other, New York, Columbia University Press, 1998. LEVINAS, Emmanuel, Otherwise than being or beyond essence, Pittsburg, Duquesne University Press, 1998. “He is precisely other. The community with him begins in my obligation to him. The neighbor is a brother. A fraternity that cannot be abrogated, an unimpeachable assignation, proximity is an impossibility to move away without the torsion of a complex, without "alienation" or fault. […] The other, my neighbor (le prochain) concerns, afflts me with a closeness (poximité) closer than the closeness of entities (pae-ens). The relationship with alterity. which is what escapes apprehension, exceeds all comprehension, is infiitely remote, is, paradoxically enough, the most extreme immediacy, proximity closer than presence, obsessive contact. […] The response which is responsibility, responsibility for the neighbor that is incumbent, resounds in this passivity, this disinterestedness of subjectivity.

For Levinas the important thing is the dash that separates I and thou. This means that there is an unbridgeable difference between people when they come together. They don’t integrate, they don’t unite, they don’t form a community, instead, they become neighbors to each other. The concept of neighbor for Levinas is somebody who is aware of another intensely, but is separated by that dash from ever fully becoming one with them. […] It requires skill to be intensely aware of somebody else, to interact with them and yet not to try to abolish between self and other. The Levinasian version of the neighbor allows strangers to remain stranger to each other, which doesn’t suppose that the local community is ultimately the ethical foundation of the city.27 Since the first decades of densification, the society evolved and the relationship between people and places also changed. Citizen started seeking for common spaces and started building a shared identity, claiming a status for the Camposampierese area no longer as a satellite territory of Padua. At the same time, the network of small-town squares turned out to be insufficient for the dispersed urbanization and the division of the territory by privates did not leave the growth of any public space along the infrastructure. While the political life of institutions moved to a territorial level and gather within the walls of the municipality of Camposampiero, the active life of citizens disappeared along with the shift from municipal to territorial scale. At the same time, the need for people to overcome the small scale of the town squares and the longing for a common centre turned the shopping mall into the main space of appearance. Nevertheless, the hygienical and presented space of the mall and its complete devotion to market strategies and commercial purposes deprived the space of appearance of its political implications.

It [the space of appearance] does not survive the actuality of the movement which brought it into being,

but disappears not only with the dispersal of men — as in the case of great catastrophes when the body politic of a people is destroyed — but with the disappearance or arrest of the activities themselves. Wherever people gather together, it is potentially there, but only potentially, not necessarily and not forever.28

The central shopping mall Le Centurie in Camposampierese is today a potential space of appearance for citizens. However the threshold between potentiality and actuality does not depend on the activity of people, but the non-democratic space of the mall – “who buys can stay” – where every activity outside the guideline of the need to purchase is seen as unnecessary and detrimental. ( Chapter 2) This analysis aims to investigate the possibilities to elevate the private commercial space of the shopping mall into a space of democracy and conviviality, where citizens can have a common space to be “together in the manner of speech and action”. The space to purchase will not be erased, it would be anachronistic and against the will of the society, the goal of the project is to give the possibility of an alternative. The evolution of the contemporary mall from shopping centre to entertaining centre shows that a percentage of users today frequents the mall for purposes that are not commercial, but are cornered into a script that allows no alternative.

I live in Santa Giustina in Colle – says Christian, 16 years old – I come here to Le Centurie about every Saturday with my cousin to meet up with some other guys. We just hang out in the parking and the porch. Usually one of us agrees with his father to accompany us, because without a car it is difficult to reach. (From the interviews carried out during the fieldtrip, 18th November 2017) Two friends of mine, a couple, go to the shopping centre on Sundays – states Paolo, a pensioner living between

Sennett, Richard, The Open City at GSD Talks, 23 October 2017. https://www.youtube.co m/watch?v=7PoRrVqJFQ&t=1020s (accessed 11-03-2018).

Arendt, Hannah, The Human Condition, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1958, p. 199-200.

Piombino Dese and Loreggia â&#x20AC;&#x201C;, they seat at a table of the bar for maybe two or three hours with the kids [the grandchildren]. They have a coffee and see people passing by, as if it was the centre of the town, but inside the shopping mall. (From the interviews carried out during the fieldtrip, 20th November 2017)

Concerning the societal structure of the territory, the demography 29

All following demographic datas come from ISTAT (Italian National Institute of Statistics). Demo.istat.it (accessed 20-03-2018).

matter is significant.29 The population increased steadily from 1961 to 1991 with an incremental growth of +40% per decade. In 40 years the population changed from 30000 people mainly living in the town centres to 85000 whose half on the dispersed territory. During the 1990s the growth substantially slowed down until 2009 when, for the first time, the yearly percentage change dropped below zero (peak 100000 inhabitants). As on a national scale, the natural increase rate went negative since the first decade of the XXI Century, consequently the population is aging. I would speculate that the economic crisis of 2008 also had an impact, pushing away people with lower income looking for jobs. In 2011 the population was 97646 inhabitants. From 2013 onwards the population started increasing again, amply due to the intensification of migratory fluxes from North Africa and Middle East. In 2017 the population reached the peak of 101647 inhabitants,

All datas are taken from demo.istat.it (accessed 17 March 2018).

with 10% foreigner residents.30 The new migrant population revitalized the economy of the industrial and agricultural productivity in the last decade (of course to fully grasp these dynamics, the matter of underpaid job is relevant), but at the same time the hostility towards immigrants increased. In a territory managed by the far right-wing party Lega Nord episodes of segregation and racism are sadly usual. The shopping centre also acts on this aspects, building up a racial identity and reinforcing segregation. The project aims to erase the barriers between different communities of residents and work on the social and economic integration of foreigners and to address the living conditions, often extreme. One of the issues of the territory that mostly affect the migrant population is what I called the â&#x20AC;&#x153;rupture between education and

XI. The fabric, the grid and the shopping centre

employment”. In an interview for Antennatre, the President of the cooperative of local artisans Sartor states: “We must resume the link between the school that trains young people and businesses that need manpower. Today in our territory we have the paradox of unemployed young people and companies looking for work. We need to rethink the vocational training system and the business system to encourage them to accommodate young people for apprenticeships, 31

Interview to Vendemiano Sartor (President of Confartigianato Treviso) by Lucio Zanato (Antennatre). Source: https://www.youtube.co m/watch?v=DpEhB3nY N8c (accessed 05-042018).

so that they can find them ready to work”.31 The same problem affects adults that seek a job and receive no training to be qualified. The only CPIA (Centro porvinciale per l’istruzione degli adulti: provincial centre for adults’ education) in Camposampierese closed in 2015 but it is extremely valuable for the territory, both for the young population that finished school and want to work in the area, that for adults that need a job. The workshops should not only be held by public employees (as it was before) but also from local companies that in this way can easily qualify users for the job needed. This centre will also play an important role concerning integration of different communities and will allow migrants to have qualification papers to get fairly paid for what they are owed. It can be speculated that the Camposampierese is a society that never passed through the preindustrial convivial phase – to put it in Ivan Illich’s terms –, but it is an industrial and dispersed kind of city of the XX Century that was established by an industrial society that aimed to give birth to a private productive landscape. On the other hand, the dream of the “metalmezzadro” as a figure that works in a factory (from “metalmeccanico”: metalworker) and at the same time can cultivate his the vegetable garden (from “mezzadro”: farmer) has seemed

possible

Nevertheless,

today

paradigm new

for

the

generations

contemporary

are

questioning

city. the

fragmentation of the industrial society and the absence of conviviality.

I intend it to mean autonomous and creative intercourse among persons, and the intercourse of persons with their environment; and this in contrast

XII. Urban sections: the town square and the shopping centre

that in this way can easily qualify users for the job needed. This centre will also play an important role concerning integration of different communities and will allow migrants to have qualification papers to get fairly paid for what they are owed. It can be speculated that the Camposampierese is a society that never passed through the preindustrial convivial phase – to put it in Ivan Illich’s terms –, but it is an industrial and dispersed kind of city of the XX Century that was established by an industrial society that aimed to give birth to a private productive landscape. On the other hand, the dream of the “metalmezzadro” as a figure that works in a factory (from “metalmeccanico”: metalworker) and at the same time can cultivate his the vegetable garden (from “mezzadro”: farmer) has seemed

possible

Nevertheless,

today

paradigm new

for

the

generations

contemporary

are

questioning

city. the

fragmentation of the industrial society and the absence of conviviality.

I intend it to mean autonomous and creative intercourse among persons, and the intercourse of persons with their environment; and this in contrast

31 Interview to Vendemiano Sartor (President of Confartigianato Treviso) by Lucio Zanato (Antennatre). Source: https://www.youtube.co m/watch?v=DpEhB3nY N8c (accessed 05-042018).

with the conditioned response of persons to the demands made upon them by others, and by a manmade environment. I consider conviviality to be individual

freedom

realized

personal

interdependence and, as such, an intrinsic ethical value. I believe that, in any society, as conviviality is reduced below a certain level, no amount of industrial productivity can effectively satisfy the needs it creates among society's members. (Ivan Illich, Tools for

ILLICH, Ivan, Tools for Conviviality, New York, Harper & Row publishers, 1973, p. 11.

Conviviality, 1973)32

Therefore I reckon it is possible to speculate that a future vision for the dispersed city based on more equal division of tools for production and the safeguard of small local producers can be promoted in front of the world competition. After all, one of the strengths of this territory is the fact that the enormous amount of production exceeds the needs of the population, therefore it is a city that in certain sectors can aim to become self-sufficient. Becoming a

convivial

society

the

black-and-white

divisions

between

industrialists and working class will be blurred, as the division between native citizens and immigrants (that today represent a large part of the working class that in the last five years revitalized the local economy by working for minimum wage).

The possibility of a convivial society depends therefore, on a new consensus about the destructiveness of imperialism on three levels: the pernicious spread of one nation beyond its boundaries; the omnipresent influence of multinational corporations; and the mushrooming 33

Illich, op. cit., p. 43.

professional

monopolies

over

production.33

Nevertheless, I believe that the shift to a convivial society can take place only as a result of a collective project and therefore it will imply

a mediation between different parties: the public, the private and the populace. This is how I position my project on the territory (and towards the shopping mall, for instance) and, even if it, in general, is a much more moderate approach than Illich’s, can be reflected by his words:

A convivial society does not exclude some high-speed intercity transport, as long as its layout does not in fact impose equally high speeds on all other routes. Not even television must be ruled out— although it permits very few programmers and speakers to define what their viewers may see—as long as the over-all structure of society does not favor the degradation of everyone into a compulsory voyeur. The criteria of conviviality are to be considered as guidelines to the continuous process by which a society's members defend their liberty, and not as a set of prescriptions which can be mechanically applied34

The economic issue The private landscape of the dispersed city is an industrial landscape.

During

the

process

densification

the

Camposampierese, the economic system and the housing pattern were established in the same timeframe. This led to a coexistence in space of the productive process and the consumption stage, which rarely takes place in modern cities in this percentage. The interior and the exterior world of capitalism, to put in in Sloterdijk’s words, exist side by side. Nevertheless the territory witnesses a rupture between production and consumption. This means that the majority of the products produced are exported and the majority of products bought in the area are imported. There is a disjunction within the local economy. The central shopping mall is the emblem of this phenomenon as all the goods presented and sold in its interior are imported from a global network.

Ibid., p. 24.

Concerning agricultural production, it can be seen that the 6% of local agricultural products are sold in these areas and, at the same time, only the 3% of products are produced locally. This depends on the system of the biggest farmers’ cooperative (and the only one of the area): Consorzio Agrario del Nord-Est, that loans equipment and machinery to farmers and the collect the whole production to sell it outside the region, mainly abroad. However, sparkles of sporadic resistance can be seen by an alert eye. A few small-scale farmers decided to sell locally directly from the farm.

My father and I – says a young farmer working in the family field – do everything by ourselves. We sell the vegetables we produce to local consumers who know us and sometimes we bring the products to a biological market in Treviso. We only cultivate Trevisano chicory, spinach and beetroot, but of a very high quality. (From the interviews carried out during the fieldtrip, 14th November 2017) Most of our clients know us and buy products directly from the farm – states the owner of Azienda Agricola Ballan, Camposampiero – because our products are way better than the ones you find at the Saturday market. Here we all know each other and we support each other as we can. Clients usually ask us to keep on the side certain products for them to pick up on Saturdays, it’s the easiest way because they usually work during the week and we are a shop open every day from 9am to 7pm. (From the interviews carried out during the fieldtrip, 19th November 2017)

From time to time it can be seen a small truck parked on the side of the road selling few local products. At the intersection of two provincial roads, in the municipality of Trebaseleghe, an isolated

XIII. (In the previous page) Agricultural production of the territory per 100.000 quintal. vegetables in greenhouses 111.009 | fresh fruit 330.784 | wine grapes 650.423 | vegetables in open field 1.461.988 | cereals 7.256.706

small vending machine 24/7 sells fresh milk produced by a farm nearby.

I always come here to get milk – says a man that arrives in the area of the vending machine in the late evening with two plastic bottles – it’s fresh and healthy and the machine is open 24 hours a day, so I can stop by coming back from work when supermarkets are already closed. And my children love this milk. (From the interviews carried out during the fieldtrip, 15th November 2017)

At the same time, many consumers complain that it is very hard to buy local products if you don’t know the producers yourself. A recent increase of awareness can be seen among the local population.

It’s not easy at all – answers the barber on the main square of Piombino Dese concerning where to buy local agricultural products in the vicinity –. The only possibility is to go directly to the farmers, but you have to know them and you need a car for sure. And there aren’t many around here, I know that there is one on the provincial read to Trebaseleghe or in the direction of Loreggia, but it’s at least 10 minutes away by car. Otherwise it is very difficult. Also, all the products sold at the market on Saturdays here are all coming from Southern Italy or Spain. The ones in the supermarket I don’t even have to tell you that are not from the area… I know that some people go to the biological markets in Treviso or Castelfranco, but I have never been there. (From the interviews carried out during the fieldtrip, 14th November 2017)

RE GI O NA L

PROVIN CIAL 8 %

GI RE

18%

AL ON

% 25

IONAL 23%

L NATIONA

MUNICIPAL 3%

PROV INCIA L9

MUNICIPAL 6%

INTERNAT

55%

ON AL

19%

import

INT

NA TIO

NA L

40%

NA TI

export

C I

XIV. Rupture between production and consumption: data on agricultural production and scheme

Source: http://www.comuniitaliani.it/statistiche/vei coli.html (accessed 2003-2018). Studies about Italian mobility habits by ACI Censis in 2008 Automobile Report Car as Respondable Freedom.

The energetic issue Concerning energetic consumption and pollution, the European dispersed city in general and the territory of Camposampierese in particular are one of the most wasteful types of city. Being a city built for cheap fuel where the automobile infrastructure is the predominant and in certain parts of the territory the only one existing, still today car is by far the most used mean of transportation. Today in the northern area of the province of Padua there is an average of 660 cars over 1000 inhabitants and according to a pool private cars

Studies about Italian mobility habits by ACI Censis in 2008 Automobile Report Car as Respondable Freedom. 37

ISPRA (Istituto Superiore per la Protezione e la Ricerca Ambientale), Italian Emission Inventory 1990-2014, 2016. Source: http://www.isprambient e.gov.it/files/pubblicazi oni/rapporti/IIR_2016_. pdf (accessed 20-032018).

are used 5.3 days a week.35 Asking car users why they don’t use public transport in the area, the 34.9% answered “there is no link and the connections are not good”, the 23.7% replied “stop far away from home or place to work/study” and the 21.7% “infrequent connections”.36 It is evident that there is a lack of planning of public transport that will have to be faced in any project for the area. Today road transportation is the main source of CO2 emissions in Camposampierese, followed by energy industries for public electricity and heat production.37 Whilst local industries are increasingly regulated concerning the carbon footprint and many are replacing fossil fuel energy with other sources of energy, the data concerning CO2 emissions in the residential and commercial sector are alarming.38 What is certain is that European emissions standards for the EU and EEA member states are increasingly stringent and the disperse city will inevitably have to confront to the goal of 98 grams of CO2 by kilometer by 2020, for instance. 39 New scenarios for this

Ibid.

39 European Commission press release database, http://europa.eu/rapid/ press-release_IP-07155_en.htm?locale=en (accessed 01-04-2018).

change have to be considered soon for the Camposampierese to survive. In the same way residential and commercial sector have to find a more sustainable way to get electricity and heating, shopping malls in primis that are today consuming closed-boxes. Another important issue is the amount of waste produced by industries and privates in the area. In the ISPRA report it can be seen that the collection of organic waste works relatively well with the 45,7% of waste separate collection, nevertheless, the collection of

ISPRA, Rapporto rifiuti urbani, edizione 2017. Source: http://www.isprambient e.gov.it/files2017/pubbl icazioni/rapporto/Rappo rtoRifiutiUrbani_Ed.201 7_n.272_Vers.Integrale_ rev08_02_2018.pdf (accessed 01-04-2018).

other materials such as Plastics, Wood & Metal the percentages are low (respectively 6,6; 3,9 and 2,9).40 This shows that the door-to-door service for daily waste is the only efficient one, but there is no

collection point for other kinds of waste (for example waste deriving from construction sites is one of the largest).41 This aspect will also need to be taken into account in the project as it shows an important opportunity. As the largest local industries in Camposampierese treat materials such as plastics and glass, it can be foreseen that a public waste collection centre for certain materials can be directly

connected to local industries to recycle materials (as it is currently working in Zuid-Holland through Avalex). This process would also benefit these industries that will have to respond to EU policies for waste and recycling materials such as plastics and glass and will help to rethink the future of local industries in a more sustainable way.42

http://community.sea ttletimes.nwsource.com /archive/?date=199311 07&slug=1730467 (accessed 01-04-2018).

http://ec.europa.eu/e nvironment/waste/targe t_review.htm (accessed 20-02-2018). http://ec.europa.eu/env ironment/waste/legislat ion/index.htm (accessed 20-02-2018). https://www.ellenmaca rthurfoundation.org/pub lications/the-newplastics-economyrethinking-the-futureof-plastics (accessed 20-02-2018).

Future scenarios for the dispersed city 43

The dispersed city is everywhere a form of urbanity shaped by cheap gasoline. Its development and survival have been made possible by conditions that are no longer valid and feasible. Today it is necessary to imagine possible ways for this kind of territory to develop further, to face the challenges of climate change and to turn it into a sustainable ecosystem. To think about the future of this territory I am asking myself two questions: 1 – How can this territory develop in a sustainable way. 2 – How can this territory be fully considered a city, as they are asking to be. The answer to these two questions most of the times overlaps and coincide.

From import replacing to self-sufficiency The dispersed city is a very peculiar world exterior where wealth exceeds cheap labour and family industries replace multinationals. Inhabitants live two story family houses and are at the same time consumers of world interiors. The first scenario for the diffuse city concerns self-sufficiency. The current economic structure of the territory and its relation to the rest of the world is represented by a rupture between production and consumption. As it can be seen in

43 The term scenario is in the plural form not because two or three masterplans have been developed, but to preserve the uncertainty and unpredictability of imagining the future. The elements I will address in this chapter are part of my vision for the future of the Camposampierese and the dispersed city in general and how I reckon this territory can develop, but it is not the only possible future and they don’t have to happen all of them simultaneously. The imaginative capability of a designer is essential and is shown in the depiction of the details of future everyday life, but it is also essential to consider the openended possibilities of how the territory and the citizens to react to the interventions. No rigid masterplan will be developed throughout this project as the great modernist urban plans, because in a world that is changing extremely fast such a rigid scheme can turned out to be obsolete even before the end of the realization. I am convinced that the goal of this project is to show an alternative that is possible and beneficial for the territory, to provide guidelines for action and to “inject” a few interventions to

make it move in that direction. Afterwards, the role of the urbanist is to observe how the territory react and understand if and when the time for additional interventions comes.

the graph below local economy is today separated into two very different compartments. Products sold in the area are the result of global processes where goods are in one continent, manufactured in another one and sold in a third one. This model has started being questioned by the citizens of the area and is economically and energetically unsustainable. Allowing the possibilities for local producers to sell their own products in place

+ toPbe incentivized. C I reckon + doesPnot have to C be obstructed, but has that architecture, by providing a platform to sell and exchange locally produced goods can I trigger a process of change in the local economy. E the graph below local economy is today Eseparated intoI two SI very When local consumers can buy locally produced goods, the same different compartments. Products sold in the area are the result of products that were imported before will be unnecessary and will global processes where goods are in one continent, manufactured in trigger the so-called import-replacing process. The effect is another one and sold in a third one. described by Jane Jacobs in “The Economy of Cities”: This model has started being questioned by the citizens of the area and is economically and energetically unsustainable. Allowing the possibilities for is local sell their own as products in place The city stillproducers earning astomany imports it would does not have to be obstructed, but has to be incentivized. I reckon have, had this transferal not occurred. It is thus able to that architecture, by providing sell and exchange import other things, ina platform place oftothose now locally locally produced goods can a process change in the local produced. It trigger has only shifted of the composition of economy. its When local consumers can buy locally produced goods, the imports. […] Some of these new, shifted imports must same products were imported before will be unnecessary and will be that incorporated into the locally made goods and trigger services the so-called import-replacing process. The effect is that were formerly imported. […] The rest are, described by Jane“extra” Jacobsimports. in “The Economy of Cities”: in effect, They consist of increased quantities of things the city has continued to import (has not replaced), and also things the city did not previously at all. These extra imports into The city is import still earning as many imports as feed it would 44 the city’s economy. not occurred. It is thus able to have, hadlocal this transferal import other things, in place of those now locally produced. It has only shifted the composition of its imports. […] Some of these imports must The import-replacing will start new, with shifted primary goods, such as be incorporated into the locally made goods and agricultural products. It is the easiest transition, the territory is ready services that formerly imported.Agrario […] Thedel rest are, for it and citizens arewere asking for it. Consorzio Nord-Est will in effect, “extra” imports. They consist of increased be juxtaposed by an independent consorzio of single farmers that quantities things the city the has production continued to take care of theofproducts from toimport the sale to (has not replaced), and also things the city did not previously import at all. These extra imports feed into the city’s local economy.44

The import-replacing will start with primary

XV. Urban scale interventions: existing situation and frames goods, such as with future scenarios

agricultural products. It is the easiest transition, the territory is ready

64 for it and citizens are asking for it. Consorzio Agrario del Nord-Est will

be juxtaposed by an independent consorzio of single farmers that take care of the products from the production to the sale to

in effect, â&#x20AC;&#x153;extraâ&#x20AC;? imports. They consist of increased quantities of things the city has continued to import (has not replaced), and also things the city did not previously import at all. These extra imports feed into 44

JACOBS, Jane, The economy of cities, Random House, 1969.

the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s local economy.44

The import-replacing will start with primary goods, such as agricultural products. It is the easiest transition, the territory is ready for it and citizens are asking for it. Consorzio Agrario del Nord-Est will be juxtaposed by an independent consorzio of single farmers that take care of the products from the production to the sale to consumers in new platforms local for local centralized for the whole territory. Concerning the industrial productivity the transition will be more complex and sometimes not 100% possible. The first step involves raw materials. Let us take as an example the plastic industry, which is one of the largest on the territory. One of the most crucial changes in the future of plastic industry is going to be recycling: it will be essential to have a mechanism of collection of waste into categories that act on the whole territory and cooperate with local industries to supply used goods to recycle. Today the waste collection takes place only for household waste and it is brought to national waste collector. It can be easily imagined that a regional point for the collection and division of recyclable waste (especially building materials which are today the 40% of the total of waste) by the Federazione dei Comuni del Camposampierese and supply certain materials to local industries,

volume

for instance hard plastics and pvc to Plastotecnica Spa. Firstly, this process would align the production of the area to the EU requirements for sustainable waste management (that will need to be faced anyway) moreover it would broadly reduce the costs and the amount of import necessary to supply materials for each industry. As Plastotecnica Spa, other large industries such as Nuova Ompi Srl (glass), Carraro Spa (building materials) or Gruppo Padovana Spa (paper) can benefit from the same process. From this first stage of circularity, goods will first satisfy the local market and then export outside the region what is left. Of course not all the products needed in the area will be produced locally, especially in a first time, but it can be speculated that with time the city will be increasingly capable of replacing more and more goods. Local economy will get stronger and the transition between production and consumption will largely decrease marginal costs. Energy will also be increasingly produced on site. The use of 66

renewable energy sources such as wind and hydropower, solar energy and biomass use will progressively replace fossil fuel and nuclear energy both for private consumption and industrial ones.

(paper) can benefit from the same process. From this first stage of circularity, goods will first satisfy the local market and then export outside the region what is left. Of course not all the products needed in the area will be produced locally, especially in a first time, but it can be speculated that with time the city will be increasingly capable of replacing more and more goods. Local economy will get stronger and the transition between production and consumption will largely decrease marginal costs. Energy will also be increasingly produced on site. The use of renewable energy sources such as wind and hydropower, solar energy and biomass use will progressively replace fossil fuel and nuclear energy both for private consumption and industrial ones.

CO2 free landscape Another

important

feature

rethink

the

territory

transportation. Today private motor traffic is by far the main mean of transportation in the Camposampierese area and is the cause of a high percentage of CO2 into the atmosphere. The first important intervention is to imagine an efficient type of public transport that can work in this territory. The railway network works efficiently today to connect to Padua, Castelfranco Veneto, Treviso and Venice, but the link from train stations to the dispersed urbanization is lacking. 1 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Two lines of flexible electric buses, which have a fixed list of stops to follow, but in between stops then can deviate from the main route to serve the dispersed territory. Every bus stop will be connected to a railway station within 10 minutes bus trip. 2 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Creating a capillary bicycle network on the whole territory. Moreover, bike sharing points will be placed at every railway station and in the denser areas, such as town centres and focal points. Bicycle transportation is being used more and more in the last years, starting from new migrants who could not afford an automobile and then embraced by environmentally-conscious users, but the length of cycling paths is extremely limited and often dangerous. 3 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Driverless electric car can be very effective for this kind of territory where standard car sharing cannot work. The parking of the central shopping mall, assuming a decrease of car use, will be reused as a central parking for an electric self-driving car fleet to supply the whole territory.

At the same time incentives to buy electric cars will slowly allow sustainable automobiles to replace combustion engine cars. The 67 territory will pass through a CO2 neutral phase where new woodland surface is able to compensate CO2 emissions deriving from cars to then turn into a CO2 stage.

XVI. Future scenarios: a circular economy illustrated

a railway station within 10 minutes bus trip. 2 – Creating a capillary bicycle network on the whole territory. Moreover, bike sharing points will be placed at every railway station and in the denser areas, such as town centres and focal points. Bicycle transportation is being used more and more in the last years, starting from new migrants who could not afford an automobile and then embraced by environmentally-conscious users, but the length of cycling paths is extremely limited and often dangerous. 3 – Driverless electric car can be very effective for this kind of territory where standard car sharing cannot work. The parking of the central shopping mall, assuming a decrease of car use, will be reused as a central parking for an electric self-driving car fleet to supply the whole territory.

At the same time incentives to buy electric cars will slowly allow sustainable automobiles to replace combustion engine cars. The territory will pass through a CO2 neutral phase where new woodland surface is able to compensate CO2 emissions deriving from cars to then turn into a CO2 stage. Water mobility will also be incentivized, mainly for goods. For instance the network Muson Vecchio – Muson dei Sassi – Tergola water streams can be monitored to be safely navigable. Waste materials can be transported from the waste collection centre to the local industries through water mobility.

Education, employment and housing The main character of the future of the territory will be the increasing

mixité of functions scattered on the territory. The attraction of a territory with is embedded in the landscape, but at the same time connected and efficient as a city can be rediscovered in opposition to the man-made environment of cities. A rapidly rising number of jobs can be carried out location independent, not only in the creative industry, but in the health sector, in education and media: work is where wi-fi is.

The current commercial activities of the town centres that are perishing since the opening of the shopping mall (in the main artery of Camposampiero 20 activities closed between 2013 and 2016), will rent a small space to use as a platform to be visible, hand in requested products to clients and collect goods to work on. 45 In this way the space in the centre of the town won’t be necessary to be 69

rented anymore and both storage and workplace can be transferred home or in shared workspaces. This process allows the retailer to reduce costs, be more visible and work location independent.

where wi-fi is.

Source: Il Mattino di Padova (newspaper), June 17th 2016.

requested products to clients and collect goods to work on. 45 In this way the space in the centre of the town won’t be necessary to be rented anymore and both storage and workplace can be transferred home or in shared workspaces. This process allows the retailer to reduce costs, be more visible and work location independent. At the same time, the commercial spaces in town centres can be converted into new housing. For instance, newcomers as new residents from the city and immigrants can rent a flat that is cheaper than the usual single-family house in the low-density areas. Another important issue is education, which is today a main problem of the area. Only one high school institute is present in the whole territory today, in Camposampiero, that have 1755 students and 14 different kind of schools, dividend in two shifts a day. The population between 14 and 19 years old that resides in Camposampierese is of 7317 people. I would suggest that the best solution is having primary and intermediate school per area of the territory (Camposampierese north, south, east and west), whilst high school education scattered on the territory according to the type of institute (Scientific studies, classical studies, languages and technical studies). The universities network will remain on a regional level, in main cities where, with the efficient public transportation, will be feasible to commute; however due to the importance of the hospital and trauma centre in Camposampiero a specific faculty for sanitary professions may become a new important point for the region. A gap in the education in the area takes place concerning adult education. Such an institution would be extremely valuable concerning the problem that I identified as “the rupture between education and employment in the area”. Local newspapers show how there is a serious working problem for the young population that chose not to attend universities and immigrants whose ability are not recognized by the Italian law. At the same time companies do not find workers for low-qualification jobs. Without commenting on the substance of Italian high school system, it is necessary to establish a CPIA (Centro porvinciale per l’istruzione degli adulti, provincial centre for adults’ education). There used to be one in Camposampiero that has been closed for unknown reasons in 2015, but the main difference is that courses should not only provided by public 70

employees but by local companies that through workshops can easily qualify users for the jobs needed. This centre will also play an important role concerning the integration of different communities.

there is a serious working problem for the young population that chose not to attend universities and immigrants whose ability are not recognized by the Italian law. At the same time companies do not find workers for low-qualification jobs. Without commenting on the substance of Italian high school system, it is necessary to establish a CPIA (Centro porvinciale per lâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;istruzione degli adulti, provincial centre for adultsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; education). There used to be one in Camposampiero that has been closed for unknown reasons in 2015, but the main difference is that courses should not only provided by public employees but by local companies that through workshops can easily qualify users for the jobs needed. This centre will also play an important role concerning the integration of different communities.

Microstories: a future scenario for the dispersed city

1 - Waste collection centre next to the mall 2 - Transportation through Muson Dei Sassi canal of hard plastics and pvc 3 - Local industry Plastotecnica Spa on main axe north-south

1 - Foothold for local commercial activity (cobler) at the shopping centre 2 - Sale of the old commercial space in Camposampiero center, that turns into housing 3 - The shoe reparer works and shores products at home in the dispersed area of Camposampierese West 4 - The shoe reparer brings products back to the shopping mall on the Sunday after, with his electric car

1 - A migrant from Tunisia, recently arrives in the area is trained by a local company to find a job and by a non-profit organization to learn Italian 2 - He finds a job in the local industry Carraro Spa 3 - He travels by bicycle along the Tergola canal 4 - When he starts working and earning a salary he is able to afford a better living and rents a flat in the centre of Camposampiero

1 - A researcher for an economic company works location independent in the public library in the old storage 2 - He finishes working on the train on his way to the meeting 3 - In Milan the companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s monthly gahering takes place with all the location independent employees 4 - After the meeting he takes the trai back to Camposampiero where he books a driverless car to reach his home in the semi-dense area (main axe San Giorgio - Borgoricco)

1 - Local Farmer near Trebaseleghe 2 - The farmer brings himself the products of his field to the shopping centre for the weekly market of independent farmers at the central shopping mall 3 - The cooperative of indepentent farmers manages and helps farmers, moreover checks that all the products are good to be sold

FARMER

1 - The commuter leaves her home every morning at 8.15 am and by bikes arrives to the station, where she takes the first train to Padua 2 - From 9 am to 6 pm she works in the public administration of Padua Municipality 3 - By train and by bike she arrives home before 7 pm

1 - A wealthy family that lives in the chaos of Milan 2 - Every time they have holidays they go to their countryside house between Piombino Dese and Loreggia 3 - When holidays are finished they drive back to Milan with their shared-ownership electric car 4 - They rent the house on aribnb when they donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t use it to meet the running costs

1 - Even though her children moved to live to Padua, an old lady does not want to leave her house near Villanova, in the diffuse territory 2 - His nephew that studies nearby goes to visit her twice a week by bike and the walk along the Tergola canal 3 - Everyday a semi-public elderly service brings her meets her to the community centre in the old storage near Iperlando shopping centre where she meets her friends 4 - Every Sunday her family love to gather for lunch away from the chaos of the city in the coutriside

1 - Four children play in the garden between their houses on the diffused territory near Campodarsego 2 - When they grow up they attend the same intermediary school in Camposampierese West 3|3 - Few years later they choose to attend different schoools: a technical institute for agriculture on the dispersed territory near Santa Giustina in Colle and the classical institute in Borgoricco 4 - After school they still gather all together at the central shopping mall

1|1

2|2

4|4

1 - Due to the reputation of Camposampiereseâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; health professions university, people from Padua decided to commute to Camposampierese for education 2 - The institute is next to the hospital and is reachable by foot or by bus from Camposampiero train station 3 - In the meanwhile the hospital grows up opening a new trauma centre. Student carries out his internship in the afternoon 4 - At the end of the day he goes back to Padua by train

CAMPOSAMPIERO TO PADUA

1 - Protests of workers and citizens after 30 workers loose their job 2 - One of the workers with no longer a job goes to the educational centre at the old storage of the mall to check if any company is doing a workshop for newly available jobs. He is trained in a workshop sponsored by the local municipality and a serie of local indutries to learn about how to differenciate waste into the right categories 3 - Within weeks he find a new job at the waste collection centre

1 - A young couple who loves to travel in the nature spend a weekend in an agriturismo near Borgoricco 2 - In the afternoon they can walk through the vineyards and taste local products 3 - The beautiful canals crossing the Camposampierese are navigable again and they go for a morning in canoa 4 - The main attraction for the young couple is the new cycling path Treviso-Ostiglia along the old railway in the middle of the woods

The suburban energetic commonsand social alternative to the shopping An economic, mall

What interests me particularly is how interventions on the architectural scale can affect macro processes at the urban level. The architectural intervention is seen as an ecosystem in itself, but it is also an interior for the city and the territory, where it creates a social, economic, environmental resonance. What interests me is tracing the consequences of the architectural gestures. Therefore, alongside the development of an urban vision for the cittĂ diffusa, specific and crucial architectural interventions have been developed. The main question for me has been how to bring together to the architectural scale an intervention that works on the specificity of the Venetian dispersed city and at the same time provides an alternative vision for the shopping mall that can be used as a model for all Western Europe. The intervention on the mall system is combined with strategic interventions that can solve the issues of the territory previously analyzed. The project has been envisioned in different phases and stages, according to the amount of resources available (both of time and capital). The starting point was again recognizing the need for a centre asked by the populace of the federation and how this centre can serve a dispersed city. The idea of centre for the community was already there when I started observing the territory and it is the only place that brings together people from the whole territory and it is the existing shopping centre â&#x20AC;&#x153;Le Centurieâ&#x20AC;?. Nevertheless, as it has already been explained, it works as a centre for size and position, but it has an intrinsic limit of being a space totally deprived of its political implication where the citizen without the tool of language is

downgraded to customer. The goal has been to keep the qualities that the shopping centre provides for the territory, but at the same time propose an alternative to those social, economic and energetic components that damage the territory and its community. It is important to keep in mind that today the public administration and many local committees and cooperatives are fighting the mall because it does not safeguard the public good, but only the private interest. Nevertheless, it certainly answered to a weak point of the territory and the federation that intercepted the need of the people. On an economic level, the goal of the architectural intervention is to root the shopping centre to the territory it is in. If on the territorial scale the import-replacing theory has been suggested as an alternative model for the economy of the dispersed city for local products to replace imported ones, on the architectural scale the import-replacing is concretized by providing a platform to local commercial activities to be visible and to have a foothold to communicate with clients and sell products. These platforms are small and flexible areas, partly shared or alternated in time with other activities. Parallel to these footholds a market for locally produced agricultural products takes place. I reckon is very interesting how providing an accessible and engaging space for local customers to buy local products, as it is currently requested by citizens, can make a change in the economic structure of a territory concerning the consume of fresh agricultural products. The same goal is pursued concerning space: the critique to the suburban shopping centre as a generic indoor reality that could be placed anywhere is brought forward by opening the mall to the surroundings to connect to the genius loci of the territory. This action also has an energetic consequence in using natural light and ventilation to reduce the actual energy consumption. Moreover, the current strong separation between customers and suppliers will fade in the moment local producers and activities will have a space within the mall. If we speculate that the process of import-replacing will continue, the territory will arrive at a situation where producers and consumers will be the same people and automatically the spatial division between the “interior” and the “exterior” world of the mall will cease to exist. One of the main reference projects to economically root the shopping

XVII. Le Centurie (lower left) and Il Parco (upper right) shopping centres in Camposampierese

centre in its territory is the Sweedish project of ReTuna in Eskilstuna, the first “recycling mall” that repaired sell second-hand products collected from customers, local activities and municipal waste collection. What I find interesting about this initiative is how public, privates and customers cooperate together to create a commercial 46

https://www.retuna.s e/sidor/in-english/.

space that also benefits local economy and environment.46 Furthermore, ReTuna shows an interesting conjunction between the shopping centre and a public waste collection centre that perfectly matches my project concerning the aim of creating a waste collection that can supply private local industries. This juxtaposition works well in my case to take advantage of the mall’s turnout and strategic position. On a social level, the main goal is to recognize the shopping centre Le Centurie as the new centrality for the dispersed city, but at the same time to provide an alternative function to who frequents the mall as a place to gather and is then forced into the contemporary conjunction of common space and the need to buy. To break the mono-functionality of the shopping centre and place on the side alternative functions matches with the evolution on the mall into an entertaining centre and at the same time satisfies local institutions for putting the social good before the economic interest that would then soften the edges of the relationship with the shopping centre. For this transformation the main reference has been Lina Bo Bardi’s SESC Pompeia project in Sao Paulo: she gave birth to a commercial space for local activities in parallel for a leisure lung for the Brazilian metropolis. E new type of urban space emerged from different relationships between public, private and collectivity where production, consumption and leisure come together in the same place but yet remain separate in different spaces. What also strikes me about her project is that Bo Bardi designed the buildings in a state

SARA, Rachel, Citadels of Freedom: Lina Bo Bardi's SESC Pompéia Factory Leisure Centre and Teatro Oficina, São Paulo, article on onlinelibrary, 2013.

of incompleteness, so as to be ready for a collaborative occupancy in “recognition that the users’ experiences construct the architecture as much as the architect herself”.47 In the same way in Le Centurie shopping centre new open collective spaces are derived from the partial reuse of parking lots to create a new entrance and central public square that overcomes the scale of town squares but it is an independent space from the mall. The long-term goal of this

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intervention sits on the analysis that if the shopping centre replaced the small town square in the same way there is the possibility that if shopping centre doesn’t break its commercial mono-functionality it can be destroyed by online shopping. This intervention leaves space to both scenarios, the first where the commercial centre survives with a series of side facilities and the second where the shopping mall closes and the public square takes over the area to recreate the initial condition on a territorial scale. Concerning the interior of the mall an answer is given to the transformations of shopping that have been studied in the analytical phase: on the one hand, the objective is to make the space as flexible as possible to allow the alternation and the coexistence of shops and events. Flexibility is also necessary for the structure of shops: it has been noticed that the special configuration already changed several times from the moment Le Centurie opened in 2012. Today the structure is extremely rigid to the extent that the pillars of the supporting structure change position according to the division of the shops, but this does not respond anymore to the current use of the mall’s space. This flexibility has to be present also through time. It is likely that no certain activities need the space only for few seasons or few months a year or even few days a week. The flexibility of commercial spaces needs to enhance alternation between activities in time. On the other hand, storages remain vacant. Therefore, a new spatial configuration has been envisioned with almost no storage space where the empty depots are reused for common space. This set of interventions will represent the new territorial centre for the dispersed city of Camposampierese. I consider also important to intervene on the declined shopping centre “Il Parco” as it can represent a model to intervene on shopping malls on a different phase of the mall evolution. The approach will be similar. The building used as storage space, today vacant, will be turned into common space. However, considering the isolated position of this building in relation to the mall, the function is suitable for a change. The gathering space will be complemented by the learning centre for adults’ education that in the analytic phase appeared to be crucial to solve the social issue of the rupture

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between education and employment and to facilitate integration between the local community and newcomers. Beyond the relevance of proving that this kind of intervention on suburban shopping malls arenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t limited to one particular case (Le Centurie), but can be a model for different malls in a different stage of evolution, I have been extremely fascinated by the confrontation of these two different spaces. As Palladio, whose tradition is strongly linked to this territory, used to divide his villas into villa urbana (urban villas) and

villa rustica (rural villas), referring to Vitruvius tradition, the two 48

PALLADIO, Andrea, I quattro libri dellâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;architettura, 1570. VITRUVIO, De Architectura, 15 b.C. ca.

shopping malls Le Centurie and Il Parco play the same roles on the Camposampierese today.48 The first one works as the centre of the city and is compact and monumental; the second one, instead, on a smaller scale, opens up to the landscape and the peaceful rurality. Together they reflect the deepest soul of the dispersed city.

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XVI. Precedents: villa urbana and villa rustica. On the left, Villa Saraceno, on the right Palazzo Valmarana, drawing from Palladioâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Four Books of Architecture 103

Villa urbana Le Centure is the central shopping mall. Situated in the conjunction of the two main axes, near San Giorgio delle Pertiche. For this intervention the main question has been: how is it possible to envision a new territorial centre which is not merely private commercial space, but a space that can mediate between the private, the public and the collective. Today on one hand the public is fighting against the private shopping mall because it is making all local activities perishing, on the other hand the collective is asking for different activities and a different space, but the private does not mutate. Therefore my role as architect is two mediate between these three actors of the territory. PUBLIC

ARCHITECT

PRIVATE

COLLECTIVE

To achieve this goal I established four main points to intervene on: - Breaking the monofunctionality of commercial space. By reusing vacant spaces such as storages and unused circulation spaces, I inject new functions. - Allowing the flexibility of space. This stage takes place is different phases. First of all, the circulation is pushed towards the outside and a ring of semi-flexible space is inserted. Later, the flexible space comes in and takes more and more space, replacing the fixed one. - Injecting local activities, as it has been explained through Jane Jacobsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; import replacing theory. To heal the rupture between local production and consumption and to economically root the shopping centre in the territory it is in. This phase takes place on three levels: for local commercial activities to have a platform to be visible in the mall and to have a foothold to exchange products; for local

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agricultural producers to sell their products in place km0; for local industries to facilitate the reuse and the recycle of waste through a collection point connected to the mall. - Accessibility and sustainability. The interventions on the urban scale, also work on the architectural scale to root the shopping centre in the territory it is in. The space for slow mobility is planned: pedestrial ways and cycling paths, specially to connect the railway line. Two lines of flexible electric public transportation and self-driving electric cars on the side of the cars. Moreover, water mobility though canal Muson. With the new means of transportation is it possible to foresee a reduced use of the car and also the parking lots of the shopping centre can increasingly be reused for different functions. Finally, natural lighting and ventilation is brought into the shopping mall as well as renewable energy sources to make it

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I live in Santa Giustina in Colle. I come here to Le Centurie about every Saturday with my cousin to meet up with some other guys. We just hang out in the parking and the porch. Usually one of us agrees with his father to accompany us, because without a car it is difficult to reach.

Two friends of mine, a couple, go to the shopping centre on Sundays, they seat at a table of the bar for maybe two or three hours with the kids [the grandchildren]. They have a coffee and see people passing by, as if it was the centre of the town, but inside the shopping mall.

XIX. Extracts from the interviews carried out during the fieldtrip, 18th and 20th November 2017

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XX. Le Centurie intervention linked to the urban scale interventions. On the left, San Giorgio delle Pertiche town centre.

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FIXED SPACE 1

SEMI-FLEXIBLE SPACE 2

FIXED SPACE SEMI-FLEXIBLE SPACE

fixed Commercial space of which perimeter and internal walls are fixed.Requires mechanical ventilation and artificial lighting.

FIXED SPACE SEMI-FLEXIBLE SPACE

FLEXIBLE

semi-flexible Commercial space of which perimeter and walls are fixed, but internal walls (e.g. storage) are movable. Requires mechanical ventilation, but gets natural light. 2

SEMI-FLEXIBLE SPACE

FLEXIBLE

FLEXIBLE3

SEMI-FLEXIBLE SPACE

FIXED SPACE SEMI-FLEXIBLE SPACE

flexible Commercial space of which perimeter and internal walls are flexible. The shop area is partly incuded in the circulation area. Natural lighting and ventilation. 3

XXI. Transition phases of interior space from fixed to flexible. Time frame of the project.

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XXIII. Current state. Plan Le Centurie shopping mall. Courtesy Studio Abaco.

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WEEK MONTH YEAR

Fixed commercial spaces Monthly commercial spaces

Flexible commercial spaces

Punctual commercial spaces

Weekly events

Daily events

Local market

Waste collecting point

XXIV. (Above, In order) Diagram of temporalities. / Fixed commercial spaces /Yearly commercial spaces / Monthly and weekly commercial spaces (e.g season) / Daily commercial space ( e.g. weekend) / Weekly events / Daily event / Local market / Waste collecting point (Below) Possibilities of flexible space configuration.

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XXV. Moving wall, narrative

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XXV. Moving wall, detail. XXVI. (In the next page) Le Centurie project, plan

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XXVII. (In the previous page) Le Centurie project, plan (focus). XXVIII. The ground: a short story on materiality. XXIX. (In the next page) Facade detail 116

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XXX. Le Centurie project, longitudinal and cross section. Above, focus of the sections

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XXI. Le Centurie project, vertical section, sketches and detail

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XXXII. Le Centurie project, axonometry of the three nodes: the piazza, the courtyard and the swimming pool

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XXXIII. Waste collection centre: view of the porch.

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XXXIV. Future commercial activities: two cases

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Villa rustica Il Parco shopping centre used to be the main mall in the area before Le Centurie was built. Today it is in a phase of decay and parly abandone. The main building hosts few shops, of which food superstore Iperlando occupies three quarters of the commercial area. A second building was built as storage when the mall first opened in 2005. In 2013 F.lli Lando spa. (company of Iperlando) bought the shopping centre from Lombardini Rezzato group, with the mediation of the municipality, saving 122 workplaces. In that moment, F.lli Lando tried to reuse half of the storage building for local commercial activities, nevertheless in 2012 Le Centurie shopping mall had opened and Il Parco couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t aim to be competitive anymore. Today the storage building is vacant and illegally used by employees as a covered parking, sneaking in from the back door with their cars. My intervention focuses on the vacant storage building of the shopping mall Il Parco. This building is situated on the edge of the lot, close to the tipical Camposampierese landscape of agricultural open field. In this case the function of the mall changes. Because of its state of decay, the new intervention goes beyond the commercial function, creating a new common place for the territory. Looking back at the urban analysis and the definition of a future scenario on the territorial scale, I decided to intervene on a space for location independent work and on the rupture between education and employment, connected to the issue of integration. The goal for this intervention, mainly inspired by Palladioâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Villa Saraceno, aims to bring together leisure and productivity, as the villa rustica does. The building is unfolded towards the landscape, opening the two sides of the building to the fields. The Palladian triadic division of space is projected also in the interior of the building, where a multifunctional foyer separates the area for the workshops from the area for the library. The three spaces meet again in the loggia that overlooks the cultivated landscape. As in the other intervention, the main vertical structure is kept untouched and the prefabricated concrete panels of the facade are partly reused in the interior. On the right of the building the agricultural fields enters the belly of the barchesse, whilst on the left a garden hosts the vegetation removed from the border of the lot and creates an intimate atmosphere to look at the landscape.

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XXXV. Il parco project linked to the urban scale interventions

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XXXVI. (Above) Villa Saraceno in The four books of Architecture by Palladio and (below) study of Villa Ragona from The four books of Architecture. XXXVII. (In the next page) Il Parco project, plan

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Reflection

On the method and the tools | architecture as observation and narration The line that separates research and design in this project is blurred. It has been blurred from the beginning because I first approached the topic of commercial spaces in the dispersed city in 2014, as often happens after some time passes, I was not aware anymore of what I

learned and what I knew. In a similar way has been blurry the transition between research and design phase, because I tried to see the research as an observation of the state of things with a constant projection to a future state. The usual questions of investigation â&#x20AC;&#x201C;

who, what, when, where, why â&#x20AC;&#x201C; have always been linked to the questions So? Therefore? During the important phase of study of the territory in situ, I tried to see the phenomena through the eyes of the different users. I talked to them, I interviewed them, I moved around by car, by train, by bicycle and by foot, I spent time in the crucial places (old and new) of the territory. I listened, I observed, I took photos, I wrote and I drew. Once I came back with my precious wealth of knowledge, I tried to trace possible future trajectories of the present: possible scenarios for the evolution of the territory based on the interaction between actors, the current use of space and of places, the change of customs and practices, national and international policies, etc. Thus, I translated my speculation in a research essay. I realized only during P2 presentation that writing was an excessively abstract tool to express such complexity and to imagine such changes in a tangible way. Nevertheless, I did not want to use mapping as a tool that in this

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case, I reckoned as too inflexible. During the delicate weeks after P2 I finally made the choice to draw a series of microstories as a tool to narrate future dynamics in a detailed way and at the same time expressing the broad view with the choice of the story and its point of observation. By drawing, I realized how microstories were such powerful tool to think and imagine very concretely how social relations can take place in space and that I was not only communicating a scenario previously thought, but that by drawing I was forced to think more, to imagine and, therefore, to design. Moreover, this method allowed the definition of a strong position towards the future, but at the same time safeguarded the possibility to account for the unpredictability of reality and the impossibility to dictate future.49

On the role | architecture as a collective act I see every architectural project as a collective act. From the observation of the territory to the design, the architect works connecting multiple disciplines, multiple scales and multiple actors. The role of the architect in this collaborative process is to gather the different positions and to mediate between actors, to ultimately understand the power of space in social relations. In this process, the intellectual role of the architect is necessary to link crossdisciplinary knowledge and the ability to work on different scales. In this project the attention to the different actors that play a role in the territory is crucial. The private, on one side, is funding, managing and benefitting from the creation of large shopping centres on the territory. The public, on the other side, that is instituting a common territorial identity, politically and economically, through the Federation of Municipalities of Camposampierese, and that is fighting the private investors of shopping malls to safeguard small business. Furthermore, the collective â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the inhabitants of the dispersed city â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and the importance of the customs and practices of the society in relation to space. The observation of the actors is never self-referential, but in a constant exchange with the world: the in situ experience of the field trip and the interviews have been a tool for

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this. For my project, the main goal has been imaging the best possible scenario of cooperation and mediation between these different actors and to study to which extent could architecture influence the balance of these relationships and solidify them into space.

On the process and position | contextuality, flexibility and crossdisciplinarity

In space: from the research to the design, I tried to keep a constant focus on the need for contextuality. The idea of context has many different facets, I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t only refer to the physical context, but also to the socio-economic context, the political context, the historical contextâ&#x20AC;Ś One of the key points of the design phase of the project concerning contextuality has been the necessity of intervening on two existing buildings. The current economic condition of the Western European suburban areas demands strategic interventions that can make improvements in short time and with moderate economic resources. Especially in the Italian case where for decades concrete has been poured without regulations compromising the beauty of the landscape, I think it is important to trigger a requalification starting from what is already there, at hand to be reused.

In time: since the beginning of the project, I always tried to keep my observation broad to define the extent of the phenomenon. On each phase of the project I referred to case-studies to always double check if what I was working on was an exception or a common situation. From this came the choice of working on two different buildings. My project is meant to be a model for future interventions, therefore intervening on two cases makes sure that I am not talking about one specific exception, but gives guidelines on how to reuse currently unused spaces of shopping malls, to make space flexible and to root it into the territory it is in. Moreover, the two cases I am working on are in two different stages of the evolution of the shopping mall: one is the territorial centre, the other one is decadent and partly vacant. The one project keeps the commercial function, the other one

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tackled a change of use; the one project is a metaphor of the villa

urbana, the other one of the villa rustica. In scale: I have been very attentive on the process of the project besides the final result. One of the key points of the process was the cross-disciplinary knowledge as background for the architectural project. This cross-disciplinary, broad view of the architect has been reflected also on the design applied to different scales. I tried to be extremely flexible in moving – and jumping – from a scale to another and I can state that the architectonical project was actually generated from the convergence of the territorial project (mobility, circularity and the future view for the dispersed city) and the detail scale. For example, once I defined the role of the shopping mall from a territorial view, I had few key-concepts (flexibility in space and time, multifunctionality, sustainability) that brought me directly to the definition of a set of key-details (moving walls, openable roof, permeable façade) to finally define the project on the middle ground of the architectural scale. I realized retrospectively that the definition of this approach had a very clear root: during the field trip, I visited for the first time Carlo Scarpa’s Tomba Brion and it was probably the strongest impact a building had on my way to conceive architecture. I was astonished by how every detail has such an incredible power on its own and at the same time all these elements are coming together so harmoniously in the building as a whole. I always worked conceiving the building as one unit where all the elements were coherent with the unit, but I see now how space can be much more interesting when the design starts from the identity of 50

In the end: drawing of Carlo Scarpa’s Tomba Brion I made during my visit in october 2017.

the element to come together into one.50

On the relevance | the social role of architecture Social relevance: I find my interest in architecture in its social resonance. To me, even the most private building – the house - is never merely private, but it’s an interior for the city or the territory and plays a role for the collectivity. Therefore, the primary relevance of the project concerns

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the territory and consists of investigating new species of spaces where social relations can be fulfilled at their best. For this reason, “The suburban commons” is the title of the project. “Commons” as the Latin “res publica” intended not only in the metaphoric acceptation, but also, and primarily, in the physical one: the common space. Indeed, the ultimate goal of the project has been to shape the future common places of the dispersed city which are coherent with the general vision for the territory and the mediation between actors.

Scientific relevance:

On the evolution of shopping centres:

The history of

the shopping centre – and more specifically suburban shopping centre – is relatively young, but it is already possible to trace a complex evolution of its system in less than a century. When suburban shopping mall arose, and still today when a new mall is built, the system of town squares and small public spaces succumbs and the local commercial fabric perishes. It became the main attractor, socially and commercially, and the collective centre of the territory. Nevertheless, the recent evolution shows how in Western Europe economic recessions and online shopping are currently reshaping the shopping centre, turning them into entertaining centres. Providing a model to intervene on the space of the shopping mall today means grasping the opportunity of rethinking the whole mall system, acknowledge the social importance they play in a suburban territory and at the same time mediating between the private, the public and the collective. It is important to underline that today the existing literature on shopping mall shows either projects that act with a tabula rasa method or projects that implicitly condescend with the mall as a homogeneous capitalistic interior. I believe it is relevant to give a model that is critical in a productive way and that mediate between the different actors of the territory.

On the dispersed city:

The research

departs from the definition of the città diffusa by Italian theorists Francesco Indovina and Bernardo Secchi and its relevance lays in the acknowledgment of the dispersed city as a common Western

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European urban phenomenon. The project focuses on the fragile environment that characterize this type of territories today and on the importance to develop possible future scenarios, in order to understand how these areas can survive the challenges of climate change and how they will confront with it. I reckon it is also relevant how in the end my interpretation of the territory diverges from the initial models of Indovina and Secchi and defines a new interpretation of the dispersed city. It differs from Indovina’s view about the genesis of the territory (according to me, strictly connected to the American influence in European economy after the second World War) and from Secchi’s perspective criticizing the prominent idea of “isotropy” to intervene on the area and pointing out an important system of spatial hierarchies and centralities that inhabitants established the territory.

On the values | love, hate and empathy During the last formal presentation, I have been asked if my fascination towards the social role of the suburban shopping mall was moved by love or hate. None of the two: my fascination is moved by empathy. I remember well the first impressions I had of the dispersed urbanization between Padua and Venice: the melancholy greengrocer was sitting on a plastic chair outside his shop on the main square of Piombino Dese, staring at the forecourt of the Church full of parked cars; a few children were playing on the sidewalk of a shut cinema of another town centre; the beautiful flat green landscape that you can only observe from the asphalt as parceled out into private properties. I perfectly remember the uncanny feeling in asking: “Where is everyone?” I had an answer arriving to the central shopping mall: the parking was overflowing of cars, the interior space was full due to a kids’ fashion show. Nevertheless, the uncanny feeling was still there: teenagers were meeting in the parking because “we don’t want to buy, we just want to walk around and meet people”, a woman was trying to cross the busy road that is dividing the mall from the way to the station, the security checked twice that I deleted all the photos of the shopping centre on my camera and

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walked me away from the parking for chatting with clients. I collected the experiences of all the people I met, and I started asking myself if architecture can actually intervene on space to provide a better background for social relations to flourish. Today, in the final phase of the project, I am aware that it can. To answer the question, my fascination corresponds to admiration for the mall as a social construct: when in 2018 relationship are widely virtual and the population is physically isolated and fragmented, the shopping centre still brings people together. At the same time, I am critical towards a capitalist globalized system which is the one of the malls, that widens the separation between different classes of society, segregating and strengthening racial stereotypes and irretrievably links the gathering space (the old public space, the piazza) and the capitalistic need to buy.

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XXXVII. Sketch of Carlo Scarpaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Tomba Brion, detail. Drawn during the fieldtrip in November 2017

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Images 1 (Above) Atlas of places | (Below) Google maps 2 Shopping towns Europe exhibition, Antwerp, 2017 7 Model by Virginia Santilli, Niccolò Fogolari, Alessandro Modonese, Francesca Angelillo made during Theory course of Renato Rizzi in IUAV, Spring 2015 8 Paola Viganò, The project of isotropy 12 Sections by Virginia Santilli, Ludovica Battista, Chiara Davino, Gianluca Masiero, Andrea Pizzini made for Paola Viganò urban design course, Spring 2015 16 Andrea Palladio, The Four Books of Architecture 18 Ground floor plan of Le Centurie shopping centre by Studio Abaco 36 Andrea Palladio, The Four Books of Architecture

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