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"Characters in Search of an Author". Human figures and storytelling in architectural design communication
Full text linkIn a presentation drawing, human figures have a natural attitude to work as an optical reference to measure the design space and to provide a sort of instructions to use it, but over the centuries, their agency has been multifaceted. The practice of photo-collages, which was fed by photography and cinema development, has recently spread thank to the digital techniques and human figures in architecture renderings seem to have become as fundamental as a top-modes for a fashion magazine cover. Besides providing a recognizable mark to the design entry, selecting peculiar figures can visually connect a design to a specific place and time, working as a cultural, situationist and sensorial agent. This seems to be true particularly for the cultural typologies. In renderings of museums, theatres or libraries, often ordinary people are integrated by figures of artworks and celebrities, like in Alberto Campo Baeza and Raphael Gabrion’s design for a Louvre new building in Lievin, France, whose figures are placed in the renderings not only to explain the functions but also to remind the ambiguous threshold between representation and reality
La rampa e il piano inclinato nella città del Novecento
Full text linkUsati tradizionalmente per lo spostamento di animali, veicoli e merci, la rampa e il piano inclinato hanno accompagnato la crescita degli spazi urbani nel XX secolo e lo sviluppo di tipologie innovative, che segnano la transizione architettonica dal paradigma industriale a quello ambientale. Attraverso la rilettura di una serie di progetti chiave, l’autore descrive la loro evoluzione da dispositivi funzionali a estetici ed etici, rivelando il loro ruolo nel rappresentare e promuovere differenti idee di umanità.Traditionally used for the movement of animals, vehicles and goods, the ramp and the inclined plane accompanied both the growth of urban spaces in the twentieth century and the development of innovative typologies, which marked the architectural transition from the industrial paradigm to the environmental one. Through the reinterpretation of a series of key designs, the author describes their evolution from functional to aesthetic and ethical devices, revealing their role in representing and promoting different ideas of humanity
Piazza Borghese. Spazi pubblici nel centro storico di Roma.
No full textLa rivista di proprietà della Sapienza A&A Architettura e Ambiente n° 21 del mese di giugno 2010 dal titolo : “Piazza Borghese spazi pubblici nel centro storico di Roma” a cura di Daniela Fondi e Fabio Colonnese, edita da Palombi, è costituita da un fascicolo di pagine 64 corredato dal suo foglio-manifesto formato UNI stampato fronte/retro. I testi e le immagini sono il risultato della sintesi di un lavoro di ricerca che prosegue ininterrotto da quasi tre anni, un lavoro che pone al centro dei suoi interessi una porzione del centro storico romano, innervata da un teorico percorso che taglia la valle tiberina e collega l’altura di Trinità dei Monti con quella del Colle Vaticano. Un percorso che affonda nei canyon barocchi del tridente, ri-affiora sotto i platani di lungotevere e si arrampica dentro Castel Sant’Angelo per giungere “in volo” lungo il Passetto sino alla mole di San Pietro. Si tratta di una passeggiata reale e virtuale al tempo stesso, per una miriade di ragioni: innanzitutto perché è un percorso nuovo, potenziale, ma di fatto pronto per essere sperimentato in continuità e utilizzato da tutti; poi perché consente di leggere l’originale morfologia naturale della valle e di valutarne i quattro livelli in cui i flussi e le attività umane l’hanno organizzata nei secoli. Dapprima “l’autostrada” fluviale, cancellata dai muraglioni garibaldini, poi la quota romana, ancora fruibile nelle parti medioevali, a seguire il piano rinascimentale, occasionalmente sollevato per collegarsi ai ponti, ed infine il livello aereo del Passetto e degli altri ponti in quota tesi tra i “piani nobili” dei palazzi del potere. Ma tale percorso è significativo soprattutto perché tocca elementi che provengono da epoche distanti fra loro, la cui stratificazione ci ricorda l’attitudine di Roma a ricostruirsi su stessa, oggi di fatto congelata; poi perché tale percorso mette in relazione la città sopravvissuta con quella perduta dei porti e dei mulini e con quella solo sognata e progettata da artisti e amministratori: esso infatti rivela una straordinaria capacità di segnare la “distanza”, lo scarto temporale e culturale che ci separa, oggi, dalle infinite storie registrate nei manufatti edilizi del passato e che solo in parte sono documentate ed ancora leggibili. Per questi ed altri motivi viene indagato tale articolato percorso, scegliendo in questa occasione di metterne in evidenza l’architettura del “costruito nuovo” che si sta realizzando in un rapporto articolato di continuità/discontinuità con l’architettura che si ricrea e si reinterpreta all’interno del “costruito esistente”, per avere l’opportunità di parlarne con attualità. I capitoli in cui è articolata la rivista sono dedicati all’inquadramento storico, all’analisi critica e alla presentazione di proposte progettuali di riqualificazione di alcuni spazi toccati dal percorso. Sono illustrate alcune esercitazioni progettuali, oggetto di Tesi di Laurea, applicate all’area compresa tra via Tomacelli e l’isolato di S. Giacomo, mentre l’ultimo capitolo è dedicato a Borgo, che rappresenta il terminale di tale percorso virtuale, per il quale si propone una ipotesi di riassetto delle percorrenze pedonali utile per far rivivere l’antico attraverso il contemporaneo. Ma i capitoli collocati nella parte centrale della rivista sono dedicati alle vicende di Piazza Borghese e dello stesso Palazzo, recentemente oggetto dei lavori di manutenzione straordinaria, alle strade e ai larghi ad esso adiacenti, indagati sia approfondendone l’excursus storico, che ne evidenzia il carattere di “unicità” rispetto agli altri vuoti del centro storico, sia raccontandone le più recenti mutazioni, il loro formarsi e trasformarsi nel tempo per arrivare fino ai giorni nostri, in termini di usi, di flussi, di aspettative e di percezioni. Nel progetto sono state recepite e tradotte in forme concrete le esigenze e le aspettative di natura qualitativa, funzionale e formale più volte espresse dalle varie categorie di utenti direttamente interessati ai lavori di riqualificazione
Knowing (by) building. Full-scale models in design space envisioning
No full textItalian architect Umberto Riva has often expressed his secret wish to be allowed to build a former project, experience it and demolish it in order to re-build it with an higher acknowledge. Such a rare privileged condition is partially achieved by architect’s working back on his works years later or by his direct decisional engaging in the building phases. In the continuous research for the most exhaustive and involving envisioning tool, able both to give back the artist a wide spatial knowledge of his own design and the client a heartening image of his endeavour, full-scale modelling can offer a very realistic experience of a project. Mock-ups were used by Renaissance and Baroque artists to design the visual corrections to be applied to their geometric proportionated buildings, but they can be conceived as a direct-forming tool as they can convey unpredictable feed-backs to their author as well as productively involving clients in a participated design process
‘Captions Not Included’. Notes on the Architects and ‘Their’ Images
Full text linkArchitects not only produce images of their projects but also take pictures of the reality around them, eventually appropriating of pictures made by others. In particular, this process of mediated assimilation of reality is quite hard to define as it follows many different criteria that tend to turn the pictures themselves into analogical devices oriented to the design development. Often, a fundamental step of the process is to make them wordless images by removing (intentionally or not) the caption. This action opens the pictures to a wide range of interpretations and uses (as well as misinterpretations and abuses) that are part of the omnivorous creative process of the architects. In order to frame the phenomenology of this process in the extended field of the 20th century art production, this article proposes a chaotic assemblage of major and minor episodes whose considerations indirectly reflects both the mostly unconscious process of the architects and the ‘under-construction’ mental scheme of the author. In this sense, this early, partial, subjective map provides no answers but questions and conjectural work-areas to be tested through further connections and developments
Forgery and Narrative in Architecture Design Communication
Full text linkAlthough in the wake of the tradition of photomontage and collage, the communication Alberto Campo Baeza and Raphaël Gabrion adopted to present their architectural proposal for a new facility building for the Louvre in Liévin demonstrates an innovative connotative power of intertextual elements added to the basic renderings. In particular, artworks and cinema-referred elements added to the perspective renderings are used to unfold their semantic range, to orient the reception and to discuss on the threshold between fictive and scientific, where forgery can be paradoxically used to tell the truth
Grids and Squared Paper in Renaissance Architecture
No full textSquared and graph paper played an important role in the practice of architects, both in the analysis and measuring of the human environment and ancient monuments, and in the design process. They have been addressing not only the graphic procedures but also the architects’ way of thinking, like every tool does. In the centuries that preceded the industrial production of squared paper, which began by the late 18th century, drawing a grid onto a sheet often involved the superimposition of graphic, procedural and philosophical intentions at one time.
The idea of the square grid in architecture is generally linked to Greek civilization, mathematics, the Hippodamian city, and the square module of Hellenistic temples, but is also intertwined with the Roman centuriatio and the medieval ad quadratum composition. It is possible that in antiquity architects used squared panel as a design support but squared paper did not appear before the Renaissance. Even at that time, it was mainly used by artisans who worked with fabrics and tapestries. Apart from the perspective applications of the grid, the painters learnt to transfer and enlarge small sketches onto the walls by associating grids of different sizes, while Albrecht Dürer, in some famous engravings, adopted it as a graduated picture plane to illustrate how to reproduce three-dimensional elements onto a two-dimensional support in a pseudo-scientific way.
The architects, who used to entrust their design process to a few ratios between integers, used the grid as a modular and operational support for their drawings. Filarete used two types of square grid – one for the proportions and one for the scale drawing – while Bramante is the author of the famous half-plan for the new church of St. Peter drawn onto a grid, whose meaning and role is quite controversial. Certainly, Bramante also has the merit of teaching his numerous collaborators, such as Antonio da Sangallo the Younger and Baldassarre Peruzzi, the benefits of such a working method, which is testified by some of their designs. After his Italian travel, Philibert De l'Orme promoted the use of the square grid, too, and, in Nouvelle Inventions (1567), superimposes a grid on the table of the architectural orders and shows how to proportion the section of a church starting from a 7x7 square grid. Promoted by the circulation of treatises and prints, other innovative uses of the squared paper can be found in the work of north-European artists and gardeners, like Hans Vredeman de Vries and other Dutch architects who applied this tool to different design fields.
This article focuses on the role squared paper had in the Renaissance decades in contributing to the transition from an organic-anthropometric paradigm to a mechanical-mathematical one. The squared paper gradually became a specific design environment alternative to the Vitruvian addresses in which to size and assemble the components of architecture already disassembled and organized in the illustrated treatises. In following the operational logic of movable type printing and proto-industrial production, this design process became distinctive of the engineering schools, as already testified by the positions of Bernardo Vittone, in Istruzioni elementari and Istruzioni Diverse, contributing to their historical separation from the arts academy
Le Corbusier and the mysterious ‘résidence du président d’un collège’
Full text linkAt the very end of his travel to United States, Le Corbusier conceived and designed a modern villa that he lately inserted in the third volume of his Oeuvre Complete with the title ‘Résidence du président d’un college près Chicago’ and few words below describing it. He interpreted a simple request for suggestions by Joseph Brewer, the president of the Olivet College, Michigan, into an actual commission for a new house that responded to the kind of works he expected from his American admirers. He possibly designed it in a few hours’ time from Kalamazoo to Chicago but the autograph hand-drafted plans and bird’s-eye perspective view in the Oeuvre Complete congruently describe a well-thought project showing a number of affinities with his most celebrated European houses. The villa can be considered as an aware modular assemblage of parts that he had previously designed or even built, tied together by a long and suggestive promenade architecturale, to offer the “timid” American people a sort of full scale model to introduce them to his vision of modern life.
By analyzing Le Corbusier’s sketches and conjecturing both dimensions and missing elements from previous designs, a three-dimensional digital model has been elaborated to virtually visit the résidence and understand its fictive and educational value
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FISCAL FEDERAL N° 2 - REQUIERE INSTRUCCIÓN (S/p Infracción a la Ley 24.051 - Residuos peligrosos)
Full text linkLetter and court document. The letter is from Carlos A. Colonnese, Fiscal Federal Subrogante, to Dr. Jose Hector Perez, and is dated April 6, 2011. The court document is the Resolution rendered in the case number 318/08. The court that rendered the resolution is the "Juzgado Federal No. 2" (Federal Court #2) in the Province of Jujuy.La
Architettura terapeutica. Wayfinding e percorsi per i malati di Alzheimer
No full textIl morbo di Alzheimer procede per tappe e, a poco a poco, distrugge la memoria, la ragione, il giudizio, il linguaggio e, infine, la possibilità di effettuare anche il più semplice dei compiti. In un quadro patologico in cui gli effetti della malattia possono variare notevolmente da un individuo all’altro, così come da un giorno all’altro, l'obiettivo delle abitazioni specializzate è quello di ottimizzare le attività dei residenti con Alzheimer, in modo da consentirgli una vita quanto più autonoma in un ambiente dignitoso e familiare, perché proprio il mantenerli attivi costituisce a oggi la più efficace forma di contrasto e terapia. Per cominciare a concepire l’architettura come un sistema terapeutico attivo a tutti gli effetti, in grado di aiutare il malato e sorreggerne la memoria e l’equilibrio, c’è ancora molto da capire sull’impairment cognitivo ovvero su come funziona la percezione del malato, il suo processo cognitivo e di orientamento. Il primo passo consiste nel concepire l’intero ambiente, in tutte le sue più banali componenti, alla luce dei principi del wayfinding, di un orientamento spaziale basato su criteri percettivi scientifici e applicato alle sue difficili condizioni fisiologiche, soprattutto in virtù del fenomeno del wandering, il vagabondaggio senza meta dei malati di Alzheimer, che va ripensato come una risorsa, da incentivare e rendere sicura
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