[In]Formal. Lisboa

The city in the course of history has been described in many ways, it’s always tried to “tamper” and program it, but in fact it could compared to a large organism that evolves, mutes, splits, joins always to something unexpected, of unpredictable, but too many are the individuals and factors involved in it inside to allow us to fully control it.
If we return to consider the practice of walking as a primary the cognitive tool of the city, we can actually come across hidden, marginal ones that feed on residues, reality they had been forget or perhaps simply ignore: slums.
These small outbreaks stand out on the European urban landscape with an almost viral connotation, forming a constellation of parallel “small cities” that grow and emerge on unexpected land as mine exploded. Slums representing the provisionality of the city claim their right to appear.

In the ordinary city. New ways to trigger contemporary spaces of contact

This research aims at exploring the ordinary spaces of contemporary cities and at investigating the way in which nowadays social dynamics and contacts express themselves in the urban mileu. […] Although ordinary spaces seem to be significant only to a few segments of the urban population, they cannot be discarded or overlooked: the majority of city inhabitants still reside there. Their interpretation should be questioned right through the new tensions put up by the emerging contemporary urban system. On one hand, ordinary spaces are in contraposition with the rising networked space that concentrates around nodes and centralities. On the other hand, they are the terrain for proximity, still relevant even if mutated after technological revolutions. Ordinary spaces, then, are still alive and host new forms of living the public sphere. […]

‘It’s all very Orwellian’: readers on creeping pseudo-public space

Thanks to Matteo Robiglio

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/jul/25/orwellian-readers-respond-pseudo-public-space?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

City and Production in the Crisis Frame. Politecnico di Torino, EPFL Joint Project

In September, will start the research “City and Production” in the Crisis Frame, a joint research project sponsored by the Politecnico di Torino and the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and funded by the Compagnia di San Paolo. Below are the abstracts and objectives of the selected project.
The blog will take into account the research activities conducted within this project, closely related to the same workshops promoted at the XX SIU Conference (Rome 2017).

City and production 3

Below, we publish a quotation from Maurice Halbwachs (1938), “Morphologie sociale”, reported by Luciano Vettoretto, following the work of ws n. 9 Cities and Production of the XX SIU Conference (Rome 2017)

City and production 2

The aim of this note is to resume in some, few synthetic points, reasons and ways of ws n. 9 Cities and Production of the XX SIU Conference (Rome 2017)

City and production

Here below is an excerpt of the written notes to guide the discussion of the 9th workshop of the SIU National Conference, that will be held in Rome on 12-14 June 2017

Urban Interiors. A contemporary discourse about public space

On Saturday May 27th, during the Festival Architettura in Città 2017, took place the meeting of the exhibition “Urban Interiors: another form of public space” a dialogue between Cristina Bianchetti, which explained the concept of urban interiors in relation to the project of contemporary public space, Cecilia Guida (Cittadellarte – Pistoletto Foundation), who observed the space through the powerful glimpse of public art and Guido Montanari (City Councilor of Turin), who highlighted the current economic and political issues in respect to the redistribution of public resources.

Urban Interiors. Un’altra forma dello spazio pubblico

Dal 25 al 27 maggio si terrà, presso lo Spazio Festival Architettura in Città – via Quittengo 35, Torino negli orari apertura festival, la mostra sugli Urban Interiors.

Gli Urban Interiors sono spazi poco esposti e riparati. L’opposto dello spazio pubblico moderno: luminoso, trasparente, fluido.  Non definibili dalle connotazioni morfologiche, ma dagli usi, dalle relazioni, dai corpi che li abitano. Obiettivo della mostra è discutere dei modi in cui si riconfigura lo stare in pubblico nella città contemporanea.

Notes on the discussion at the Casa della Cultura on 9th May 2017 (2)

Giancarlo Paba: «Il libro di Cristina Bianchetti è paratattico: presenta una sorta di omologia strutturale, tra il modo di guardare il mondo, di osservare la sua diffusione, e il modo di descriverlo»

«Il corpo: la nostra geografia più intima, una autoarchitettura. Che per definirsi è anzitutto battaglia, lotta interiore, tanto nella costruzione individuale che nella costruzione sociale»