1,358,410 research outputs found
Urban interiors
No full textIn the present-day city, the quality of the places is not just the result of its architecture but is increasingly linked to a diffused urban landscape; a sort of Buzz design, the definition Andrea Branzi uses for the shower of small and medium-size projects that contribute to creating a new level of expression and culture of the urban setting. The new nature of urban areas leads to some reflections about the competencies that are necessary for their organic planning, not strictly imposed from above, but acting more through an integrated system of micro-interventions that are better apt to deal with the characteristics of volatility, temporariness, and velocity of adjustment, typical of the postmodern era. Planning expertise, capable of connecting different disciplines in a context marked by complexity, generating a global transformation through local and specific interventions, from interiors to urban landscape, applying the concept of “see small to see more.”
The essay aims to investigate the design approach to urban transformations through the interpretation of several theories including Ugo La Pietra's interior through exterior, the urban leftovers theorized by Luciano Crespi, and the in-between spaces identified in Giovanna Piccinno's publications. Through a critical reading, the text identifies how the design of interiors and spaces becomes, therefore, a tool for urban space’s re-development through different approaches linked by a single crucial theme: the centrality of space’s user, according to the Global Public Space Toolkit (2016), which defines a public place, “a portion of an area or location designated or available for or being used by someone. Place comes to existence when people give meaning to a part of a larger space. Places that have a strong sense of place have an identity and character felt by local inhabitants “.
The importance of urban space, meant as a connective space, a space of sociality, a space of connection between public and private, emerges even more strongly in these years in which the health emergency has led, on the one hand, to an increase in the use of the outdoor space as an appendix and an alternative to confined space, and, on the other hand, to regain the meaning of place dedicated to the community, a platform of personal and physical relationships and a medium for the recognition and sense of belonging of the inhabitant.
“In contemporary societies, public space has become a medium, a tool, an enabler, a place where everybody should feel included and have the possibility of personalizing, reclaiming and conquering it. At the same time, public space is the best platform for designers to think about the future of cities. It is the ideal framework for testing and prototyping new ideas and possibilities, and creating future scenarios that can then be shared, discussed, and debated. Public space should be the place where individual and societal freedom is most represented and by rethinking and re-shaping it, designers are affecting people’s present and future lives. In this framework, design is a powerful and meaningful instrument to transform public space from a mirror in which society is merely reflected into a tool that can change society in a collaborative way. However, design should not be approached only as a physical and material intervention. The way in which urban transformation processes are conceptualized and ignited can also be designed and curated to foster an augmented citizenship more active and conscious.” (Tato et alii 2020)
L: Space and technology as facilitators of new hybrid learning experiences: the Politecnico di Milano’s Innovative Classroom Project
No full textInterior design is less and less reduced to the mere physical component of space and is instead increasingly projected towards an ‘environmental system’ made up of space, services, communication, and technology. The book highlights the close interconnections between the design of spaces, the creation of services, the application of communication systems, and the exploitation of technologies, allowing us to reveal the tensions and interactions that are unleashed depending on the prevalence of one or another design discipline and the scale at which they take place
Cosmopolitans of regionalism: dealers of omnivorous taste under Italian food truck economic imaginary
No full textCultural omnivorousness has gained relevance as a suitable theory to explain contemporary patterns of consumption, but the actual dealing of omnivorous taste by economic actors and businesses has been mostly overlooked. Through ethnographic research, this article explores how Italian gourmet food truck operators concretely produce claims of authenticity for omnivorous seekers. First, the adoption of the perspective of food truck operators highlights the reflexive and market-bounded nature of the omnivorous taste reproduction. Moreover, “being authentic” becomes an imperative for tastemakers, imposed by the economic imaginary. Finally, the centrality of regionalism in the Italian production of authenticity suggests that localism, too, has been subsumed by global food imaginaries and that regionalism expresses a cosmopolitan attitude. Taken together, these findings allow the integration of existing theory of food cultural omnivorousness: “gourmet” food must be authentic to be recognised by omnivores and distinctive to be successful on markets
The aesthetisation of artisanal food in the urban Hipster Economy
No full textThe advent of the twenty-first century has given back to artisanal products their honoured place back in post-industrial society (Kroezen et al., 2021) in the heart and palate of consumers. The urban ‘hipster economy’, especially food and beverage sectors, is leading this phenomenon (Ocejo, 2017). Chris Land (2018) defines this movement as ‘neo-craft’, describing how the preservation of traditional craft imaginary combines with innovative, skilful manufacturing of high-quality products.
Based on a corpus of 40 semi-structured interviews with neo-craft entrepreneurs, this conference presentation will illustrate some key insights from a forthcoming monograph – titled ‘The Hipster Economy: Taste and Authenticity in Late Modern Capitalism’. In particular, it will illustrate how neo-craft entrepreneurs operate as taste and cultural intermediaries (Gerosa, 2021; Smith Maguire & Matthews, 2012) to aestheticise food with an artisanal, authentic aura. To make sense of this process of aesthetisation, it is necessary to properly embed the aesthetisation of artisanal food into the complex entanglement of macro-level aesthetic regimes of consumption and meso-level economic imaginaries of consumption. In particular, the aesthetisation of artisanal food is one of the purest manifestations of a hip aesthetic regime of consumption founded on authenticity, and a neo-craft economic imaginary of consumption. The contextualisation into macro and meso-level taste and market processes highlights the contradictory stance of such aesthetisation processes, between (sometimes explicit) counter-cultural or post-capitalist aspirations and functionality to market processes of capital accumulation. The latter part of the presentation will then focus on the contradicting features of the aesthetisation process, with particular attention to issues of class inequality and heritage
The inherent tensions in the post-capitalist ethos of neo-craft entrepreneurs
No full textRichard Sennet (2008, p. 108) said that ‘by the mid-nineteenth century, [...] the
enlightened hope dimmed that artisans could find an honoured place in the industrial order’.
Still, the advent of the twenty-first century seems to have given back to artisans their honoured
place back in post-industrial society (Kroezen et al., 2021), particularly in the heart and palate
of consumers. Jobs like the bartender, the street food vendor, the tailor, and the glassblower,
have all become part of what Chris Land (2018) defines as the ‘neo-craft industries’, i.e.
alternative configurations of work combining manual skills and the preservation of traditional
craft imaginary with innovative, skilful manufacturing of high-quality products. They are
labelled as ‘neo’ because they do not embody a simple return to the past. They mythicise the
pre-industrial past, but are well embedded in the post-Fordist, neo-liberal economy, and some
of them even wish to go beyond it envisioning a post-capitalist entrepreneurial ethos. In the
words of Richard E. Ocejo (2017), neo-craft industries consist of old jobs reinvented and
transformed in the new urban economy.
Based on a corpus of 40 semi-structured interviews with neo-craft entrepreneurs
conducted for the author’s doctoral dissertation, this contribution illustrates some key
contributions from a forthcoming book titled ‘The Hipster Economy: Taste and Authenticity
in Late Modern Capitalism’. In particular, by analysing neo-craft entrepreneurs in their role as
cultural intermediaries (Smith Maguire & Matthews, 2012) and taste dealers (Gerosa, 2021), it
will explore how they constitute a potential alternative model of entrepreneurship, framing
themselves as social agents of change. Through their distinctive entrepreneurial action, they
aim to reach meaningfulness for themselves, provide authentic life experiences to their
customers, and realise a more ethical market economy detached from a purely capitalist logic
of profit accumulation. By doing so, they adhere, manipulate and circulate a shared ‘neo-craft
economic imaginary of consumption’, based on the polar star of authenticity. Nevertheless, the
ambiguous status of authenticity, at the centre of both projects of liberation from industrial and
capitalist alienation and of co-optation by large capitalist companies, introduces challenges and
potential contradictions in the neo-craft post-capitalist entrepreneurial ethos
Spectre. Le passeggiate di Mendes nei boschi narrativi, in Mario Gerosa (a cura di) James Bond spiegato ai cinefili, Piombino, Edizioni Il Foglio letterario, 2017.
No full textIl patrocinio a spese dello Stato per le vittime vulnerabili: un istituto soltanto di diritto processuale? Osservazioni alla sentenza della Corte costituzionale n. 1 del 2021
No full textThe Judgment No. 1 of 2021 of the Constitutional Court rules on the admission to the legal aid for the so-called vulnerable victims made by the art. 76 subparagraph 4-ter of the D.P.R. n. 115/2002 (called “Testo unico in materia di spese di giustizia”). This article briefly examines the constitutional foundation of this type of legal aid and explains why it could be considered not a processual institution (as the Constitutional Court did in the Judgment), but it is a substantial choice of the legislator to “promote” some victims respect other ones in consideration of their fragility, and this aim should contrast with the principle of equality. At the end, the Author highlights that the formulation of the art. 76, subparagraph 4-ter, should involve constitutionally problems in the part in which excludes from the admission to the privilege some victims potentially comparable with the admitted ones
A proposito di economia neo-artigianale: Il rinnovato interesse delle scienze sociali per la produzione ed il consumo artigianale
No full textDespite their marginalisation during the twentieth century, artisanal production and consumption are experiencing renewed significance. This article briefly reconstructs a genealogy of the recent debate on craft, examining in particular the distinctive features of the «neo-craft economy», marked by a strong symbolic dimension and a search for authenticity. The article identifies three key tensions within today’s neo-artisanal economy: the conflict with large-scale industries seeking to exploit the symbolic value of artisanal products for profit; the material and symbolic barriers preventing substantial components of the wider population from participating in the neo-craft economy in socially recognised and legitimate ways; the impact of the neo-craft economy on urban transformations. Ultimately, the neo-craft economy appears marked by a fundamental tension inherent in its nature: it serves as a potential frontier of resistance against industrial capitalism while also being a phenomenon that potentially perpetuates economic and social inequalities
The hidden roots of the creative economy:a critical history of the concept along the twentieth century
No full textThis article delineates a critical history of the economic imaginary of the creative economy. Applying the Cultural Political Economy analytical framework, the article looks at the turning points during the twentieth and twenty-first century in which different but connected discourses over creativity in the economic sphere emerged. Multiple contributions derive from the results. First, the research adds analytical depth to the existing literature, recovering the thought of Patten and the economic and political debate about creativity during the fifties and the sixties. This operation allows the integration of these discourses and more recent ones about the creative city, creative industries, and creative class under a common framework. Overall, a clear pattern emerges, consisting of two phases: a first phase of germination, in which academic and intellectual circles conceptualise the discourses, and a second phase of dissemination, in which political figures appropriate and spread those discourses. Lastly, we argue that the discourses composing the creative economy imaginary, taken together, can be interpreted as the attempt of Western economies to trigger a new successful cycle of economic accumulation, able to replace the Fordist one.</p
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