1,721,019 research outputs found
About local centralities coming back: identity and proximity or otherness and openness in the city project
No full textThe contents and modes of ScAR research—on schools as activators of territorial resources in space and society—offer the opportunity to reflect on words and concepts at the fore in current urban planning debate and practice. If today the importance of neighborhoods and local centralities finds a renewed affirmation, the concept of identity appears to be a ‘false friend’, and that of proximity expresses an ambiguous tension in the face of the ‘openness of the city’. The activities brought into play by the ScAR project question the very concept of ‘belonging’, promoting an active interpretation of the urban landscape and a critical construction of the imaginary of one’s own experience. The chapter is structured in four sections. The opening one briefly discusses the potential of schools as territorial hubs. The second section addresses the urban perspective of ‘proximity’, while the city as a mosaic of local living environments is the topic of the third. The final section contrasts otherness and openness of the city with the recent vogue for identity- and proximity-based planning
Introduction. Cultural Heritage Education in the Everyday Landscape
No full textHeritage education applied to the ‘everyday landscape’ encourages young people to rediscover, interpret and communicate their own local heritage, reinventing it to the future. Involving schools in this process means putting them at the centre of a process of engagement, active understanding, critical knowledge, signification and responsibility with respect to their own everyday urban environment, and having them enjoy all this. This approach promotes the knowledge of a little-known and little-valued heritage even in weak urban areas and vulnerable local societies, increasing the active citizenship of students and their families to the territory. This book is inspired by the three-year ScAR research project – “Schools Activates Resources. Stitching up the lost heritage of the suburbs” – carried out by a group of researchers from the Politecnico di Milano in the southern peripheral districts of Milan, a context marked by spatial and social criticalities. In line with the European Landscape Convention, the project embraces cultural landscapes and heritage as a system of values identified by populations and in constant evolution. Tangible and intangible heritage elements fuel the promotion of intergenerational and intercultural dialogue and represent an opportunity for resilient social and territorial development. This book provides a reflection on the research work carried out and the viewpoints of the various contributors involved, and collects the testimonies of the protagonists of similar experiences, proposing an interdisciplinary perspective on the themes addressed by the project
Urban Interstices in Italy: Design Experiences
No full text“Urban interstices”—their design—are the topic of this book.
What are urban interstices? What different issues, opportunities, roles, and concepts do they deal with?
The book’s five chapters written by urban planners, architects and interior designers provide five different views and keys—Urban rewriting, Architectural threshold, Green rooms, Connecting publicness, Ephemeral devices—and draft a possible path to sound the spectrum of urban interstices’ design in Italy.
Urban space can be “interstitial” in its ambiguous capability of signification in the sense-making process; that is, in the double valence of a mute void—space without signification—or meaningful room—a small and dense universe of suspension. Sometimes the project for interstitial spaces aims to transform the former into the latter. Sometimes, on the other hand, the project makes the interstice an interface, connector, exchanger, membrane, space of interrelation. So that urban interstices become alternatively thresholds and pulsating rooms, and urban catalysts activated by specific design moves and devices. And somehow they also speak of a general “interstitial” condition of urban space today.
The critical path proposed here is based on the review of seventy contemporary Italian cases. A collection of sixty projects is provided in the second part of the book, while ten cases—two for each thematic key—are explored in brief monographic essays and by interviews with the authors of the projects. They are the subject of the photographic essay, Visual narration, put in the middle of the book
The City as a Learning Context. Lessons of Citizenship through the Design of Public Spaces
No full textThe urban experience is a journey into diversity; it can educate to be partic-ipating and respectful citizens. By understanding urban spaces as learning landscapes, and their design as an educational device, the chapter describes how city environment can act as a complementary setting to classroom ac-tivities. Starting from the assumption that real-world learning can help tack-le educational poverty, the conceptual frame of educating cities and its long-lasting fortune among urban planners provide the background of a training experience carried out in Trieste with secondary school students, where interactive and reflective learning happened in public spaces. Its out-comes were discussed further with secondary school teachers, offering clues for their use in formal curricula, in order to fight against the early leaving of students with a migrant background. As the American planner Kevin Lynch – whose cognitive theories were taken as a reference – pointed out, the ‘openness of public space’ depends on its being open to actions that are freely chosen by people, and are linked to movement, visual exploration, and social interaction. Diving oneself in city spaces; nurturing the ability to explore and listen to others' urban tales and perceptions; showing how to transform places to make them more welcoming: these are all ways of sharing the urban experiences made by people with different biographies, cultures, bodies and habits, and of understanding the plural meaning they give to ‘public’ space. The chapter investigates how these concepts can lead to a deep rethinking both of educational approaches, and of the physical re-lationships between schools and urban space
The Value of Getting Your Hands Dirty: Landscape as Heritage in Education
No full textThe topic of landscape is not sufficiently addressed in the Italian school; the focus should include both the landscape perception and reading and the management and care activity. Peri-urban agricultural landscapes, often residual and degraded, can offer the opportunity to discover a heritage of tangible agricultural permanencies and intangible knowledge. They are ordinary places, close to schools and residences, often hidden in the dense city. An experiential activity was carried out during the recovery phases of the water meadows of the Lambro Park in Milan. The ancient farmers taught the gestures of ancient crafts to adults and children, thus encouraging intergenerational rapprochement between the elderly and young people and between farmers and citizens. While the restoration of this historic and identity agricultural common good of Milan agriculture was carried out, the basis for its management over time and its social sustainability were laid: people with fragility were employed, a professionalizing course for watermen was created and educational activities for students of various schools and different grades have been organized. The first results of the experimental activity conducted in 2022 are presented here
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