Papers by Caterina Padoa Schioppa
OFFICINA #46, 2024
Città-carovana di 80mila persone, il Burning Man Festival nel deserto del Nevada è un progetto di... more Città-carovana di 80mila persone, il Burning Man Festival nel deserto del Nevada è un progetto di comunità della non-appartenenza le cui iniziali buone intenzioni sono state messe in crisi dalla sua stessa popolarità. Rotto l’incantesimo della misura, che consente all’organismo urbano di autosostenersi e autorigenerarsi, la metropoli provvisoria ha mostrato la propria natura parassitaria. Il saggio approfondisce complessità, contraddizioni e opportunità dell’oasi temporanea, forme di habitat umano basate su alleanze specifiche e interspecifiche.
Critic|all IV International Conference on Architectural Design and Criticism, 2023
30 square meters of soil fertilizer: is that our very final destination?
Compost – from the Latin... more 30 square meters of soil fertilizer: is that our very final destination?
Compost – from the Latin com-positus, “to place together” – or decayed organic material, commonly prepared by decomposing plant, food waste, recycling organic materials and manure used as a fertilizer for growing plants – has a weird, both etymological and semiotic, resonance with an inclusive idea of home, which goes far beyond the domestication of Nature. As a metaphor, compost has recently become a broad concept encompassing a revised relationship between humankind and the environment, aiming at overcoming the modern dualistic approach in favor of a hybrid and “ecologized thought”.
According to Donna Haraway, “living is composting”. Biologically, this means that a multi-species living is a dynamic mess of diverse bodies. Cognitively, the notion of compost enhances the “making oddkin” extending familial ties beyond blood relations, ultimately making communities out of compost.
Beside this metaphorical representation, compost is acquiring another odd meaning. As an environment-friendly alternative to burial or cremation, both carrying pretty high environmental costs, especially in dense urban areas, human bodies can be turned into soil after death, similarly to what happened to our ancestors, and their livestock, for tens of thousands of years. This practice, which places a corpse directly into a natural burial ground or in a reusable “vessel” made of biodegradable materials that foster its transformation into nutrient-dense soil in about a month, is the epitome of the circular economy, and the end of the very idea of humans as supernatural beings. The predicted carnage that will affect a large number of human beings in the near future – the chronological end of the boomers generation – poses the question in terms of a paradoxical nemesis. The generation that is most responsible for intensifying man’s negative impact on natural resources could literally repay the damage with the “sacrifice” of its members’ own bodies.
Yet, beyond the ecological foundation of the natural organic reduction of human remains, not universally supported by the scientific community, such “green death” questions the whole approach to death in Western cultures. After all, the time has come to invent not only a new way of living in the “damaged earth”, but perhaps, and primarily, a new way of dying.
In this regard, “terramation” implies a rethinking of the very notion of memory and thus of architecture as construction of memory devices.
This broad concept of compost will lead to a reflection on the consequences that secularization, as well as the presumed and possible desecularization of culture, has on ritual practices and farewell spaces.
The Plan Journal, 2022
Good News. Women in Architecture is an exhibition curated by Pippo Ciorra, Elena Motisi, and Elen... more Good News. Women in Architecture is an exhibition curated by Pippo Ciorra, Elena Motisi, and Elena Tinacci, and designed by Matilde Cassani, which was inaugurated on December 16, 2021, at MAXXI Rome -the museum designed by Zaha Hadid which opened to the public in 2010. The intent of the exhibition (sited in Gallery 2 on the second floor of the museum) is to assess the anthropological and professional changes now happening in the world of architecture with a neutral and omnivorous approach, without stating a specific thesis -if not a tautological onethat there is a "tide" of women architects. Although the exhibition "limits" its scope to the presentation of the results of a massive, two-year-long archival, historiographic, and bibliographic research, displaying this material raises an issue that concerns architecture rather than gender. Architecture is -increasingly -a choral, hybrid, variable practice, in which a supposed single leadership reflects a fallacious narration rather than the truth. Good News -in Italian Buone Nuove -is a feminine, entirely adjectival title, a message of hope that incorporates a certain lexical ambiguity. While the fact that globally women architects have increased in numbers and prestige in recent years is in itself good "news," the presence of women in architectural disciplines is by no means "new.
Flaminio Distretto Culturale di Roma
Memorabilia. Nel paese delle ultime cose, Dec 2015
Perché dunque scegliere di mettere in archivio un archivio?
Perché in esso c’è qualcosa di sorpre... more Perché dunque scegliere di mettere in archivio un archivio?
Perché in esso c’è qualcosa di sorprendentemente attuale. Esso infatti incarna un «metodo» col quale osservare o addirittura decifrare il nostro presente. Per cominciare, ci ricorda che l’antidoto al rigore è il rigore stesso. Come altri linguaggi – la musica e la matematica per esempio – anche l’architettura usa il rigore per approdare alla visione, all’invenzione, all’eccesso. E ci ricorda ugualmente che l’architetto fa teoria attraverso la pratica, ancorché in un regime di finzione, ovvero attraverso la laboriosa ricerca di forme, intese non solo come simboli ma anche come icone di relazioni.
Architecture and Writing , Nov 2014
In ancient societies, as well as in modern ones, sport has been one of the fundamental artifices ... more In ancient societies, as well as in modern ones, sport has been one of the fundamental artifices for establishing a so-called “common ground”. Hence, unsurprisingly, sports activities are crucial in the revitalization processes of disturbed and marginal sites.
By examining the case of Prishtina, the capital of the newborn state of Kosovo, this paper aims to investigate the role of architecture and landscape design as a political and spatial device in the generation of a common ground, namely a physical and ideal space where stories, experiences and knowledge can be shared. A role that may subvert the rhetoric figuration of space – typical of all totalitarian regimes, including the communist ones – without necessarily waiving the symbolic function of public space.
Digging into Martin Heidegger's notion of the “open” as a place of inactive potentialities, where the two essential conditions of man – animalitas and humanitas – can overlap, this paper describes the diagrammatic design approach, developed within a Design Laboratory at the Politecnico di Milano, centering on the Palace of Sports and involving a large territory all around Prishtina.
NIP Network in Progress , Dec 2014
Lo sport, che è uno dei primari artifici per fondare il common ground – nelle società antiche com... more Lo sport, che è uno dei primari artifici per fondare il common ground – nelle società antiche come in quelle moderne – non a caso è funzione essenziale anche per la rivitalizzazione e la sublimazione di siti disturbati, o marginali. Ma gli scenari che la pratica dello sport può delineare sono contrapposti, e le geometrie dello spazio inverse.
Il primo scenario celebra l’evento pubblico attraverso un processo di concentrazione nello spazio, di architetture e di spettatori, e nel fare questo consolida la struttura gerarchica e la geometria classica della città. Nel secondo scenario la conquista del grande vuoto – condizione corporea e psichica – avviene attraverso la deriva, l’antievento per eccellenza, cioè il dispiegamento di un movimento caotico e solitario all’aperto.
Progettato per essere percepito e riconosciuto dalle colline che circondano la città di Pristina, il Palazzo dello Sport non è solo un esempio paradigmatico di architettura del regime comunista, ma è anche il diagramma spaziale di un meccanismo coercitivo, ridondante di messaggi occulti.
NATURE IN THE CITY (OC-OPEN CITY INTERNATIONAL SUMMER SCHOOL), Sep 2014
The idea of evolutionism continues to consider biodiversity, i.e. the specialization growth (lite... more The idea of evolutionism continues to consider biodiversity, i.e. the specialization growth (literally the "fabrication of new species"), as an indisputable value and to combat anarchic, rebel, parasitic forces, tending to the blending of species, the so-called planetary "brassage" mentioned by Gilles Clement.. It is that very idea which justifies the war against Agrostemma Githago, a weed growing on the leftover, or against the colonies of Rattus Norvegicus, mice nesting in cities, or against human unplanned camps, the favelas growing in the metropolis. But those hybrid genres, hyper-resistant, with exceptional self-adaptive and self-organizing ability, are fatally remapping urban regions, seas, and those areas that are not yet untapped or "secondarized" by human activities.
The so-called involutive trend of nature undermines the polar pattern – in a biological, but also philosophical, political, aesthetic term – with which we continue to "measure" the legitimacy and sustainability of human ambitions and actions on the territory.
What if we change our perspective? What if we embrace a completely different idea of evolution and create an alliance with the becoming of the world?
Gilles Deleuze’s and Félix Guattari’s approaches, which have been deeply influencing architecture ever since the late '60s, might be the answer to that question.
ERASMUS EFFECT. Architetti italiani all'estero / Italian Architects Abroad, Nov 2013
"Nato nel 1919 da una famiglia torinese piccolo borghese e antifascista, Soleri a ventisei anni h... more "Nato nel 1919 da una famiglia torinese piccolo borghese e antifascista, Soleri a ventisei anni ha una laurea in architettura al Politecnico di Torino, un grande talento artistico, e un temperamento febbrile e sperimentale che l’Italia impoverita dal fascismo non sembra poter nutrire.
Trasferitosi in Arizona, Soleri, come un tumbleweed – l’arbusto che per chilometri rotola in quei deserti – passa la sua esistenza in un perenne “movimento seminativo” nel corso del quale prende forma una concezione filosofico-architettonica coerente, dove pratica architettonica e filosofia di vita non sono più distinguibili, dove l’impegno politico e le scelte formali diventano la stessa cosa. La scelta del deserto, dunque, non è casuale. “La sfida di un arido altopiano è la premessa coerente per il fiorire di vita multiforme”e Soleri lo adotta come laboratorio di sperimentazione, usando le avversità per elaborare creativamente forme di adattamento materiale, organizzativo e professionale.
Se è vero che “non c’è eredità senza erranza”, Soleri è, a suo modo, un autentico erede del pensiero novecentesco europeo e americano. "
systems. connecting matter, life, culture and technology | volume 1 | issue 1 , Jul 2013
The exponential growth of built environment in the last half century presents traits typical of c... more The exponential growth of built environment in the last half century presents traits typical of complex systems. At the edge of the planned city, in the so-called “transitional zones” frictions take place and trigger spontaneous self-organization processes. In order to capture those urban emergent behaviors, in the past 20 years, new design methods, based on the recognition of digital generative potentialities, have fine-tuned the development of diagrams, namely responsive systems of description and representation merging cognitive and creative steps. This approach is grounded on the observation that complex systems theory has not only changed our understanding of territorial dynamics (in both physical and non-physical senses) but has also provided operative mediums capable to fill the gap between strategic ideation and formal fabrication of ideas, therewith framing the design process in a new temporal adaptable contingency. Interestingly, such contingency respects the evolutionary becoming of urban matter, but does not constrain the architectural disciplines’ role to figure long term scenarios. In the delicate interplay of rules and randomness, diagrams are far more than technical devices and organizational optimizers. They are potential agents of radical anthropological changes.
LANDSCAPE IN SEQUENCE. DWELLING THE WALL (OC-OPEN CITY INTERNATIONAL SUMMER SCHOOL), 2013
The Wall as Metaphor / The Wall as Transitional Knowledge / The Wall as Profanation / The Wall as... more The Wall as Metaphor / The Wall as Transitional Knowledge / The Wall as Profanation / The Wall as Remembrance. Around these concepts the essay traces the history of wall and the stories of Walls, embracing urban, psychoanalytic, philosophical, and political theories. Walls are metaphors of a conceptual confrontation, they segment physical and mental space in two parts, they produce infinite couples of opposites: inclusion / exclusion, safety / fear, beginning / end, memory / oblivion, public / private.
Building a wall is the founding act of a geometric space. The “space of rules” vs. the boundless land. Its trace marks differences and gives identity
When an architect wishes to tell a story – particularly a story which cannot be told with words –, he/she makes a basic, violent gesture: a cut, a fissure creating space. A space between two walls.
NETWORK IN PROGRESS, Sep 2013
Gli edifici della cultura sono divenuti generi ibridi, infrastrutture preparatorie che accolgono,... more Gli edifici della cultura sono divenuti generi ibridi, infrastrutture preparatorie che accolgono, anzi invocano perturbazioni continue al proprio interno, e - almeno nelle intenzioni - dall’esterno. Al MAXXI lo spazio minerale è tecnicamente non infrastrutturato - è una struttura minima che accoglie avvenimenti artistici e culturali, ordinari ed eccezionali – che, giudicato secondo i nostri standard urbanistici, non può essere considerato un “giardino”. Eppure si comporta come un giardino. Giardino di pietra o giardino secco, dove il prato è letteralmente un evento stagionale – arriva in bucce preconfezionate a giugno e viene rimosso con l’arrivo dell’autunno - che rievoca il principio taoista del wu-wei, la non-azione, il non-intervento. L’esperienza del vuoto e del bello è di per sé un accadimento. Per questo, oltre che luogo di spettacolarizzazione e di eccessi, il MAXXI è anche paesaggio allegorico, onirico, che incoraggia la ricerca di “senso”, fisico e figurato.
KNOWING (by) DESIGNING. Proceedings of the Conference "Knowing (by) Designing" at Luca, May 22, 2013
Since the Bauhaus, the notion of destratification – the transfer into abstract, anexact geometrie... more Since the Bauhaus, the notion of destratification – the transfer into abstract, anexact geometries - has become crucial in artistic pedagogical methods. It enhances labor-intensive self- learning processes, rather than engaging with specific linguistic expressions. In the past thirty years, digital technologies have allowed to transfer topological thinking in creative disciplines. Vice versa, they have extended, across disciplines, approaches based on visualization. Topological thinking affects the way we consider the creative process itself as a deformation field, where virtually the control and the ability of the right hand is integrating and interacting with the innocence, the clumsiness and the inclination towards errors of the left one. Form- makers explore the infinite potentials of forms and through a combination of manual ability and “structural intuitions” still come to crystallize the essential.
CITTA' PUBBLICA / PAESAGGI COMUNI. MATERIALI PER IL PROGETTO DEGLI SPAZI APERTI DEI QUARTIERI ERP, 2013
For Venice Biennale 2014 Rem Koolhaas will look at Fundamentals, basic unavoidable architectural ... more For Venice Biennale 2014 Rem Koolhaas will look at Fundamentals, basic unavoidable architectural categories structuring any living space. It sounds as a warning to re-establish a straight relationship to tectonic components in design and building processes. MAPPA, which stands for Sidewalks+Trees+Parking+Ground Floors+Civic Areas - five Fundamentals in urban design - is a research project exploring both theoretically and experimentally a notion of “urban ecology” based on smart recycling of material and cultural resources coming from the self-organised city. MAPPA defines an extensive, multiscalar program of public space regeneration for the city of Rome, grasping from local emergent and informal behaviors in order to assign new identities. It combines a sensibilization campaign, aiming at temporary mutation on space perception and urban congestion, together with a progressive yet radical program of ecological corridors generating a highly interconnected metropolitan network.
NIP Network in Progress, Jan 2013
Addomesticare lo spazio pubblico oggi significa ricercare nelle periferie, nei territori marginal... more Addomesticare lo spazio pubblico oggi significa ricercare nelle periferie, nei territori marginali ed esitanti quel materiale emergente, quei meccanismi virtuosi, auto-sostenibili e proliferativi capaci meglio di altri di interpretare e di veicolare i cambiamenti della società. Questo materiale a ben vedere suggerisce non solo pratiche d’uso ma anche organizzazioni dello spazio. HiStreet propone su scala territoriale un paesaggio pubblico-ecologico, non solo per “rimediare”, ma anche e soprattutto per ripristinare o attribuire una leggibilità al disegno urbano e rafforzare le identità locali. Contrariamente a quanto si pensa tale leggibilità non è affidata alla convergenza del linguaggio, ma alla geometria della visione che permette di ristabilire le relazioni tra lo spazio della strada e le sue architetture.
OPEN PAPERS - SCRITTI SUL PAESAGGIO , 2012
É alla ricerca della ridefinizione e risignificazione dei confini, nei territori di frontiera, ne... more É alla ricerca della ridefinizione e risignificazione dei confini, nei territori di frontiera, negli spazi interstiziali lasciati all’inattività, che nasce alla fine degli anni Ottanta il Landscape Urbanism (LU) come pratica prima ancora che come disciplina istituzionalizzata. Fin dalle sue origini, il LU ha palesato due identità distinte, ma non incompatibili, legate alla provenienza culturale dei suoi maggiori esponenti teorici, nelle quali si sono radicalizzate le differenze tra i paesaggisti di formazione e gli architetti di formazione.
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Papers by Caterina Padoa Schioppa
Compost – from the Latin com-positus, “to place together” – or decayed organic material, commonly prepared by decomposing plant, food waste, recycling organic materials and manure used as a fertilizer for growing plants – has a weird, both etymological and semiotic, resonance with an inclusive idea of home, which goes far beyond the domestication of Nature. As a metaphor, compost has recently become a broad concept encompassing a revised relationship between humankind and the environment, aiming at overcoming the modern dualistic approach in favor of a hybrid and “ecologized thought”.
According to Donna Haraway, “living is composting”. Biologically, this means that a multi-species living is a dynamic mess of diverse bodies. Cognitively, the notion of compost enhances the “making oddkin” extending familial ties beyond blood relations, ultimately making communities out of compost.
Beside this metaphorical representation, compost is acquiring another odd meaning. As an environment-friendly alternative to burial or cremation, both carrying pretty high environmental costs, especially in dense urban areas, human bodies can be turned into soil after death, similarly to what happened to our ancestors, and their livestock, for tens of thousands of years. This practice, which places a corpse directly into a natural burial ground or in a reusable “vessel” made of biodegradable materials that foster its transformation into nutrient-dense soil in about a month, is the epitome of the circular economy, and the end of the very idea of humans as supernatural beings. The predicted carnage that will affect a large number of human beings in the near future – the chronological end of the boomers generation – poses the question in terms of a paradoxical nemesis. The generation that is most responsible for intensifying man’s negative impact on natural resources could literally repay the damage with the “sacrifice” of its members’ own bodies.
Yet, beyond the ecological foundation of the natural organic reduction of human remains, not universally supported by the scientific community, such “green death” questions the whole approach to death in Western cultures. After all, the time has come to invent not only a new way of living in the “damaged earth”, but perhaps, and primarily, a new way of dying.
In this regard, “terramation” implies a rethinking of the very notion of memory and thus of architecture as construction of memory devices.
This broad concept of compost will lead to a reflection on the consequences that secularization, as well as the presumed and possible desecularization of culture, has on ritual practices and farewell spaces.
Perché in esso c’è qualcosa di sorprendentemente attuale. Esso infatti incarna un «metodo» col quale osservare o addirittura decifrare il nostro presente. Per cominciare, ci ricorda che l’antidoto al rigore è il rigore stesso. Come altri linguaggi – la musica e la matematica per esempio – anche l’architettura usa il rigore per approdare alla visione, all’invenzione, all’eccesso. E ci ricorda ugualmente che l’architetto fa teoria attraverso la pratica, ancorché in un regime di finzione, ovvero attraverso la laboriosa ricerca di forme, intese non solo come simboli ma anche come icone di relazioni.
By examining the case of Prishtina, the capital of the newborn state of Kosovo, this paper aims to investigate the role of architecture and landscape design as a political and spatial device in the generation of a common ground, namely a physical and ideal space where stories, experiences and knowledge can be shared. A role that may subvert the rhetoric figuration of space – typical of all totalitarian regimes, including the communist ones – without necessarily waiving the symbolic function of public space.
Digging into Martin Heidegger's notion of the “open” as a place of inactive potentialities, where the two essential conditions of man – animalitas and humanitas – can overlap, this paper describes the diagrammatic design approach, developed within a Design Laboratory at the Politecnico di Milano, centering on the Palace of Sports and involving a large territory all around Prishtina.
Il primo scenario celebra l’evento pubblico attraverso un processo di concentrazione nello spazio, di architetture e di spettatori, e nel fare questo consolida la struttura gerarchica e la geometria classica della città. Nel secondo scenario la conquista del grande vuoto – condizione corporea e psichica – avviene attraverso la deriva, l’antievento per eccellenza, cioè il dispiegamento di un movimento caotico e solitario all’aperto.
Progettato per essere percepito e riconosciuto dalle colline che circondano la città di Pristina, il Palazzo dello Sport non è solo un esempio paradigmatico di architettura del regime comunista, ma è anche il diagramma spaziale di un meccanismo coercitivo, ridondante di messaggi occulti.
The so-called involutive trend of nature undermines the polar pattern – in a biological, but also philosophical, political, aesthetic term – with which we continue to "measure" the legitimacy and sustainability of human ambitions and actions on the territory.
What if we change our perspective? What if we embrace a completely different idea of evolution and create an alliance with the becoming of the world?
Gilles Deleuze’s and Félix Guattari’s approaches, which have been deeply influencing architecture ever since the late '60s, might be the answer to that question.
Trasferitosi in Arizona, Soleri, come un tumbleweed – l’arbusto che per chilometri rotola in quei deserti – passa la sua esistenza in un perenne “movimento seminativo” nel corso del quale prende forma una concezione filosofico-architettonica coerente, dove pratica architettonica e filosofia di vita non sono più distinguibili, dove l’impegno politico e le scelte formali diventano la stessa cosa. La scelta del deserto, dunque, non è casuale. “La sfida di un arido altopiano è la premessa coerente per il fiorire di vita multiforme”e Soleri lo adotta come laboratorio di sperimentazione, usando le avversità per elaborare creativamente forme di adattamento materiale, organizzativo e professionale.
Se è vero che “non c’è eredità senza erranza”, Soleri è, a suo modo, un autentico erede del pensiero novecentesco europeo e americano. "
Building a wall is the founding act of a geometric space. The “space of rules” vs. the boundless land. Its trace marks differences and gives identity
When an architect wishes to tell a story – particularly a story which cannot be told with words –, he/she makes a basic, violent gesture: a cut, a fissure creating space. A space between two walls.
Compost – from the Latin com-positus, “to place together” – or decayed organic material, commonly prepared by decomposing plant, food waste, recycling organic materials and manure used as a fertilizer for growing plants – has a weird, both etymological and semiotic, resonance with an inclusive idea of home, which goes far beyond the domestication of Nature. As a metaphor, compost has recently become a broad concept encompassing a revised relationship between humankind and the environment, aiming at overcoming the modern dualistic approach in favor of a hybrid and “ecologized thought”.
According to Donna Haraway, “living is composting”. Biologically, this means that a multi-species living is a dynamic mess of diverse bodies. Cognitively, the notion of compost enhances the “making oddkin” extending familial ties beyond blood relations, ultimately making communities out of compost.
Beside this metaphorical representation, compost is acquiring another odd meaning. As an environment-friendly alternative to burial or cremation, both carrying pretty high environmental costs, especially in dense urban areas, human bodies can be turned into soil after death, similarly to what happened to our ancestors, and their livestock, for tens of thousands of years. This practice, which places a corpse directly into a natural burial ground or in a reusable “vessel” made of biodegradable materials that foster its transformation into nutrient-dense soil in about a month, is the epitome of the circular economy, and the end of the very idea of humans as supernatural beings. The predicted carnage that will affect a large number of human beings in the near future – the chronological end of the boomers generation – poses the question in terms of a paradoxical nemesis. The generation that is most responsible for intensifying man’s negative impact on natural resources could literally repay the damage with the “sacrifice” of its members’ own bodies.
Yet, beyond the ecological foundation of the natural organic reduction of human remains, not universally supported by the scientific community, such “green death” questions the whole approach to death in Western cultures. After all, the time has come to invent not only a new way of living in the “damaged earth”, but perhaps, and primarily, a new way of dying.
In this regard, “terramation” implies a rethinking of the very notion of memory and thus of architecture as construction of memory devices.
This broad concept of compost will lead to a reflection on the consequences that secularization, as well as the presumed and possible desecularization of culture, has on ritual practices and farewell spaces.
Perché in esso c’è qualcosa di sorprendentemente attuale. Esso infatti incarna un «metodo» col quale osservare o addirittura decifrare il nostro presente. Per cominciare, ci ricorda che l’antidoto al rigore è il rigore stesso. Come altri linguaggi – la musica e la matematica per esempio – anche l’architettura usa il rigore per approdare alla visione, all’invenzione, all’eccesso. E ci ricorda ugualmente che l’architetto fa teoria attraverso la pratica, ancorché in un regime di finzione, ovvero attraverso la laboriosa ricerca di forme, intese non solo come simboli ma anche come icone di relazioni.
By examining the case of Prishtina, the capital of the newborn state of Kosovo, this paper aims to investigate the role of architecture and landscape design as a political and spatial device in the generation of a common ground, namely a physical and ideal space where stories, experiences and knowledge can be shared. A role that may subvert the rhetoric figuration of space – typical of all totalitarian regimes, including the communist ones – without necessarily waiving the symbolic function of public space.
Digging into Martin Heidegger's notion of the “open” as a place of inactive potentialities, where the two essential conditions of man – animalitas and humanitas – can overlap, this paper describes the diagrammatic design approach, developed within a Design Laboratory at the Politecnico di Milano, centering on the Palace of Sports and involving a large territory all around Prishtina.
Il primo scenario celebra l’evento pubblico attraverso un processo di concentrazione nello spazio, di architetture e di spettatori, e nel fare questo consolida la struttura gerarchica e la geometria classica della città. Nel secondo scenario la conquista del grande vuoto – condizione corporea e psichica – avviene attraverso la deriva, l’antievento per eccellenza, cioè il dispiegamento di un movimento caotico e solitario all’aperto.
Progettato per essere percepito e riconosciuto dalle colline che circondano la città di Pristina, il Palazzo dello Sport non è solo un esempio paradigmatico di architettura del regime comunista, ma è anche il diagramma spaziale di un meccanismo coercitivo, ridondante di messaggi occulti.
The so-called involutive trend of nature undermines the polar pattern – in a biological, but also philosophical, political, aesthetic term – with which we continue to "measure" the legitimacy and sustainability of human ambitions and actions on the territory.
What if we change our perspective? What if we embrace a completely different idea of evolution and create an alliance with the becoming of the world?
Gilles Deleuze’s and Félix Guattari’s approaches, which have been deeply influencing architecture ever since the late '60s, might be the answer to that question.
Trasferitosi in Arizona, Soleri, come un tumbleweed – l’arbusto che per chilometri rotola in quei deserti – passa la sua esistenza in un perenne “movimento seminativo” nel corso del quale prende forma una concezione filosofico-architettonica coerente, dove pratica architettonica e filosofia di vita non sono più distinguibili, dove l’impegno politico e le scelte formali diventano la stessa cosa. La scelta del deserto, dunque, non è casuale. “La sfida di un arido altopiano è la premessa coerente per il fiorire di vita multiforme”e Soleri lo adotta come laboratorio di sperimentazione, usando le avversità per elaborare creativamente forme di adattamento materiale, organizzativo e professionale.
Se è vero che “non c’è eredità senza erranza”, Soleri è, a suo modo, un autentico erede del pensiero novecentesco europeo e americano. "
Building a wall is the founding act of a geometric space. The “space of rules” vs. the boundless land. Its trace marks differences and gives identity
When an architect wishes to tell a story – particularly a story which cannot be told with words –, he/she makes a basic, violent gesture: a cut, a fissure creating space. A space between two walls.