Introduction: A photographer's sense of space
Alexandra Tommasini2019, The Journal of Architecture
https://doi.org/10.1080/13602365.2019.1705628visibility
…
description
9 pages
link
1 file
Sign up for access to the world's latest research
checkGet notified about relevant papers
checkSave papers to use in your research
checkJoin the discussion with peers
checkTrack your impact
Abstract
Photographer Gabriele Basilico (1944–2013) first picked up a camera in 1966 while studying for a degree in architecture in his hometown of Milan. He had his sights set on a career as an architect when he enrolled in the city’s Politecnico in 1963, but he was soon seduced by photography. As a student, he taught himself how to take photographs. Basilico’s transition to photography did not, however, eclipse his interest in the discipline of architecture — rather, it defined it. After graduating, he completed commissions for Italian architecture and design magazines, and then turned his camera decisively towards the built environment with his career-launching project on the defunct factory spaces on the outskirts of Milan, Milano. Ritratti di fabbriche [Milan. Portraits of Factories] (1978–80). Over the next thirty years, urban spaces became his primary focus. He pictured spaces in flux, sprawling spaces, historic spaces, non-places. His subjects were buildings, streets, residential districts, factories, and transpor- tation systems. Throughout his working life, Basilico photographed countless cities in Italy, especially Milan, and abroad. In doing so, he was able to build a photographic archive dedicated to exploring the contemporary urban condition. Through the formal acts of working with distance, taking measures and re- arranging space, he could, as he put it, seek out the impossible meanings of a place — those otherwise unreachable, inaccessible, or undiscovered spaces. By seeking familiar elements that connect an array of different places, he estab- lished an intimate bond with the city as a whole: an ever-changing, living organ- ism, a space to be recorded, interpreted, or explored. Despite his successful career and high reputation, Basilico’s work has not yet been given the critical attention it deserves within the Anglo-American aca- demic framework. This special issue of The Journal of Architecture seeks to fill this scholarly gap. Voices of established academics and emerging scholars come together to explore the photographer’s understanding of space, as well as his visual language, myriad influences, photobook practice, and gaze on the city. The five authors, most of whom presented their research at a seminar on Basilico’s work organised by myself and Davide Deriu and hosted by the Department of Architectural History and Theory at the University of West- minster (London) in May 2016, assess Basilico’s work from various perspectives: architecture, photography, art history, and film studies. They offer new, signifi- cant insights into Basilico and his work in response to the general polemics of contemporary discourses on representations of urban space. [...]
Key takeaways
- Basilico's work has often been traced back to this influential exhibition, not least because he openly revealed that the work of many of these photographers had influenced him greatly.
- The relationship between Basilico's photography and film is not arbitrary; rather it finds its roots in the idea that, more than any other medium, including photography, cinema has 'shaped the cityscape, imagined or documented, which, over time, has informed our idea of what the Italian city looks like'.
- As Maggi, Shinkle, and Rabissi explore in distinct ways, Basilico's project Ritratti di fabbriche shows the photographer conferring a stark majesty on Milan's industrial zones that fell victim first to the economic miracle and then to the rapid deindustrialisation that followed in its wake.
- Second, a selection of six images from Basilico's 1991 Beirut project, which he undertook in the aftermath of the civil war, and images from Ritratti di fabbriche, are reimagined by way of bespoke narrative captions by the theatre group Office for a Human Theatre (Filippo Andreatta).
- Photographer Annalisa Sonzogni provides a personal and insightful analysis of Basilico's 'visual alphabet' using a Milanese street scene from the Ritratti di fabbriche series.
Related papers
M. Spunta, ‘‘Dentro la città”: Gabriele Basilico’s Photography and the Embodied “Experience of Place”, Annali d’Italianistica, 37 (2019), Urban Space and the Body, pp. 79-107
2019
Annali d italianistica seeks to promote the study of Italian literature in its cultural context, to foster scholarly excellence, and to select topics of interest to a large number of Italianists. Monographic in nature, the journal is receptive to a variety of topics, critical approaches, and theoretical perspectives. Each year s topic is announced ahead of time, and contributions are welcome. The journal is published in the fall of each year. Manuscripts should be submitted electronically as attachments in Word. Authors should follow the journal s style for articles in English; articles in Italian should also conform to the journal s style sheet for articles in Italian. Visit the journal s website (www.ibiblio. org/annali) for further information on the contributions style. For all communications concerning contributions, address the Editor in Chief of Annali d italianistica at annali@ unc.edu. Notes & Reviews This section occasionally publishes essays and review articles on topics treated in previous volumes of Annali d'Italianistica.
Photography as Criticism: Gabriele Basilico and the Project of a “Small Utopia”
EAHN 7th International Meeting Conference Proceedings, 2023
The camera has been used as a tool of architectural representation since the mid-19th century. But can photography be rightly considered a form of criticism? Affirmative answers are suggested by the works of several architects who have embraced this medium to explore the built environment and reflect upon its material and social conditions. Indeed, the writer and photographer Eric de Maré went as far as pronouncing that the photographer was possibly the best architectural critic. In the late-20th century, a key role was played by Gabriele Basilico, who set out to depict the mutation of urban landscapes under the effects of deindustrialisation. Working for magazines as well as for public institutions, the late Italian photographer developed an analytical method that allowed him to probe the complexity of cities as human habitats. The paper revisits Basilico’s early work and discusses its relevance to architectural criticism. It argues, with reference to a series of photographic journeys that span from the 1970s to the 1990s, that his landscape vision was integral to a wider rethinking of the built environment. Driven by a relentless pursuit of harmony, Basilico sought out an intimate relation with places while eschewing the eulogistic rhetoric that dominated in the architectural press. His contemplative images contain the seeds of what he called a “small utopia”: a personal quest nourished by critical dialogues with writers, journalists and architects.
‘My point of arrival’: Gabriele Basilico's photobooks
The Journal of Architecture, 2019
Photobooks were an integral and generative part of photographer Gabriele Basilico’s practice. Through them he meticulously probed the shifting states of urban environments, like a doctor or scientist detecting the state of health of a patient. In a catalogue accompanying an exhibition held in 2006, he described his photobooks as ‘points of arrival’ — the result of a series of open and wide-reaching explorations of the urban condition. Once readers spend time with his narratives, they begin to think more about the nature of the contemporary urban landscape. Certain questions then arise: What stories do Basilico’s volumes recount about the urban condition? Do Basilico’s urban theses raise questions or chart possibilities? How do his volumes evoke the potential of the city space? In what ways do his photobooks act as archives of disappearing urban environments? Using these guiding questions, this article explores how Basilico’s photographs work in conjunction with the narrative capacity of the book format to advance a position on urban spaces. It looks closely at three volumes: Interrupted City (1999), Cityscapes (2000) and Milano. Ritratti di fabbriche [Milan. Portraits of Factories] (1981; 1983).
The city inhabits me: space, topology, and Gabriele Basilico's Milano. Ritratti di fabbriche
The Journal of Architecture, 2020
The 1975 New Topographics exhibition has been inscribed into the history of photography as a starting point to which nearly all visually cognate practices can be traced back. This held back more subtle and nuanced readings of much English and European work of the same era, particularly in the English-language press. Set in a more extended historical and geographical context, the work exhibited in New Topographics can be understood as part of a wider process of photographic exploration that took place alongside shifting patterns of production and consumption that transformed the global landscape in the decades following the Second World War. The exhibition also set out a specific position regarding the nature of topographic photography itself. Although New Topographics did not take an explicitly critical stance vis-a-vis landscape, one of its most enduring legacies has been the emergence of a ‘new topographics’ aesthetic that is understood as critically engaged by virtue of its distanced, deadpan style. To argue that particular photographers work in the topographic mode is thus to overlook the socio-political and geographical specificities of the places they represent, in favour of formal similarities. This paper examines Gabriele Basilico’s first project, Milano. Ritratti di fabbriche (1978–80) [Milan. Portraits of Factories], through the photographs themselves, the context out of which they emerged, their presentation in book form, and Basilico’s own approach to the environments in which he photographed. I argue that Milano. Ritratti di fabbriche shares less than we might assume with the New Topographics work. Rather, it embodies a way of understanding and representing space as topological: heterogeneous and fluid, composed of multiple and often contradictory objects, processes and agents.
Architecture, city, landscape: a conversation with Gabriele Basilico and Roberta Valtorta
The Journal of Architecture, 2019
This conversation, which took place at Basilico’s studio in Milan in October 2010, has been translated by Alexandra Tommasini. A previous translation was first published in Conversations with Photographers, Ignasi Aballí, José Manuel Ballester, Gabriele Basilico, David Goldblatt, Luis González Palma, Anders Petersen (Madrid: La Fábrica/Fundación Tel- efónica, 2010).
Interpreting Urban Spaces in Italian cultures
Interpreting Urban Spaces in Italian cultures, 2022
This series is looking for interdisciplinary contributions that focus on the historical study of the imagined space, or of spaces and places as sensorial, experiential or intellectual images, from the interior to the landscape, in written, visual or material sources. From (closed) gardens and parks to cabinets, from the odd room to the train compartment, from the façade to the prison cell, from the reliquary to the desk, a variety of spaces in the shape of imageries and images unveils historical attitudes to history, to the object, to the other and the self and presents a subject that experiences, acts, imagines and knows. Spatial imageries and images in this sense constitute a prominent theme in various fields within the Humanities, from museum studies, intellectual history and literature to material culture studies, to name but a few. Spatial Imageries in Historical Perspective therefore addresses a broad audience of scholars that engage in the historical study of space in this sense, from the Early Middle Ages to the Recent Past in literature, art, in material culture, in scholarly and other discourses, from either cultural and contextual or more theoretical angles.
Andjelkovic, K. Visual Spaces of Change Unveiling the Publicness of Urban Space through Photography and Image, Sophia Journal, No.4, Scopio Editions, University of Porto. January 2020 [peer-reviewed article]
If we take for granted the idea of being in the so-called post-photographic era, the genre that can surely suffer its consequences and show its manifestations is that of architectural photography. Architectural photography no longer documents given that the veracity of what is represented is systematically under suspicion. It is assumed that what is photographed is, at best, an interpretation. Urban photography has lost the fascination it had at the time of the optimistic and utopian configuration of the modern city. Definitely overshadowed that enthusiasm, the exploration of the urban slides towards the transitional territories and the places in transit, where neither the city is a city nor the landscape a landscape. The non-places, the generic city or the third landscape, whatever we may name it, is where the scenery portrays a different ecosystem open to new conceptual and visual narratives that allow us to return to the consolidated city in order to discover something new, hidden behind its prejudices, their stereotypes and their history. In the bland is the substance.
Interpreting Urban Space in Italian Culture, by By Andrea Scapolo, Angela Porcarelli, eds. Pp. 272. Amsterdam University Press, 2022
Italian Culture, 2025
Marianna Charitonidou, "The Travelling Architect’s Eye: Photography and the Automobile Vision", IX Aisu Congress of the Associazione Italiana di Storia Urbana “The Global City. The Urban Condition as a Pervasive Phenomenon”, University Bologna, 11-14 September 2019
This paper aims to shed light on the status of travel-photography and is based on the hypothesis that the automobile revolutionized the way architects perceive the city. It focuses on a close examination of the photographs taken by architects John Lautner, Alison and Peter Smithson and Aldo Rossi during their travels, with special emphasis on those taken from the automobile and while encountering places for the first time. The main hypothesis that it explores is that the view from the car changes the architecture of the city, as well as the relationship between architecture and the city. It explores this hypothesis through the investigation of the above-mentioned case studies, contributing to a broader understanding of what is happening in cases of photography taken from the car. Regarding the theoretical framework on which my interpretation is based, I could refer to Rosalind Krauss’s understanding of photography in “Photography's Discursive Spaces: Landscape/View”. Besides from the photos they thematised in their book entitled AS in DS: An Eye on the Road, depicting landscape views of the British countryside, Alison and Peter Smithson also took many photos during their summer vacations. The main interest of these photos lies in the fact that they employed them in their teaching process and reasoning. The way they treated these photos in order to illustrate their arguments in their teaching, their publications and their projects is an aspect that is scrutinized here. Rossi started taking polaroid photographs during his journeys in the late 1970s, nearly a decade after noting his first impressions in his 47 quaderni azzuri (1968-1986), which are strongly reminiscent of travels diaries, both in form and content. His polaroids, which documented journeys and his whereabouts, include images of boats crossing a river in Bangkok, a Shaker village in Massachussets, and the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and constitute a visual diary of the Italian architect and an important source for understanding his use of travel-photography in order to organise his “visual memory”. In John Lautner’s archives, tens of thousands of slides can be found, illustrating trips throughout the United States, Eastern and Western Europe, Scandinavia, Mexico, Brazil, Japan, Thailand, and Egypt. One of my objectives is to show how these photographs of landscapes can inform us on the specific vision that his buildings introduced and vice-versa. Lautner’s travel slides constitute a precious resource since they represent a visual record equivalent to the more usual sketchbook used by many architects to record their study notes. His buildings trigger an ocular-centric vision which cannot but be related to the pre-eminence of landscape views in his conceptual edifice, as emerges not only through his architecture but also through the views captured on his camera when confronted with various landscapes.
M. Charitonidou, “The Travelling Architect;s Eye: Photography and Automobile Vision”, in La città globale. La condizione urbana come fenomeno pervasivo/The Global City. The urban condition as a pervasive phenomenon, eds. M. Pretelli, R. Tamborrino, I. Tolic, (Turin: AISU, 2020), 684-694.
The paper sheds light on the status of travel-photography, focusing on a close examination of the photographs taken by the architects John Lautner, Alison and Peter Smithson, and Aldo Rossi during their travels by car, with special emphasis on those taken from the automobile. It explores the hypothesis that the view from the car has reshaped our conceptions of space, revolutionising the way we perceive the city, and significantly transforming the relationship between architecture and the city.
Apuntes sobre la fotografía de arquitectura en la obra de Paolo Gasparini | Notes on architectural photography in the work of Paolo Gasparini
Click 4, 2020
Estos breves apuntes sobre la fotografía de arquitectura en su obra son reflexiones que provienen de lo que vimos y discutimos en el seminario previamente citado. Se enfocan en su participación en dos libros: Caracas a través de su arquitectura y Panorámica de la arquitectura latino-americana, en los que destacamos dos aspectos íntimamente relacionados: el papel de la fotografía en los discursos de los libros y su percepción a través de los medios gráficos. "La Fundación Foto Colectania acogió el IV Seminario Internacional de Arquitectura y Fotografía en su sede con motivo de la exposición Archivo Paco Gómez. El instante poético y la imagen. Rodeados de una magnífica muestra de Francisco Gómez tuvimos ocasión de disfrutar de la compañía de los invitados en esta edición: Paolo Gasparini, Helio Piñón y Horacio Fernández. El seminario se desarrolló en tres jornadas: 13, 14 y 15 de julio de 2018. Para la tercera Xavier Basiana nos abrió las puertas de la Nau Bostik para un pase de audiovisuales. Los fotógrafos protagonistas de esta edición: Paco Gómez (Pamplona 1918 - Madrid, 1998) y Paolo Gasparini (Gorizia 1933) ejemplifican dos aproximaciones poco convencionales a la arquitectura y a la ciudad: ambos descubren motivos en la vida urbana menos planificada que, en el caso de Paolo, va acompañado además de un firme compromiso social." UPCommons, Click 4 https://upcommons.upc.edu/handle/2117/330706 These brief notes on his architectural photography are reflections that come from what we saw and discussed in the previously mentioned seminar. They focus on his participation in two books: Caracas a través de su arquitectura [Caracas through its architecture] and The changing shape of Latin American architecture, in which we highlight two closely related aspects: the role of photography in the discourses of the books and its perception through graphic media. "After welcoming the second day of the seminar and the presentation of the books of the photographer Paolo Gasparini by Horacio Fernández, two audiovisuals titled: "Karakarakas" and "Brasilia two in one" were viewed. These gave rise to the subsequent conversation between the photographer, the historian and the architect María Fernanda Jaua. The text that follows is a transcription, adapted to text, of the dialogue held between the three. "The Foto Colectania Foundation hosted the IV International Seminar of Architecture and Photography coinciding with the exhibition Archivo Paco Gómez. The poetic instant and the image. Surrounded by a magnificent show by Francisco Gómez we were able to enjoy the company of this edition’s guests: Paolo Gasparini, Helio Piñón and Horacio Fernández. The seminar was held over three days: 13, 14 and 15 July 2018. Xavier Basiana joined us the last day with a pass of audio-visuals by Paolo Gasparini in the Nau Bostik. The work of Paco Gómez (Pamplona 1918 - Madrid 1998) and Paolo Gasparini (Gorizia 1933) was the focus of this edition. They exemplify two rather unconventional approaches to architecture and the city: both discover motifs in ordinary urban life, which in the case of Paolo means a personal social commitment." UPCommons, Click 4 https://upcommons.upc.edu/handle/2117/330706
Sophia Journal: On the Surface: Photography on Architecture | Visual Spaces of Change: unveiling the publicness of urban space
Sophia Journal: On the Surface: Photography on Architecture | Visual Spaces of Change: unveiling the publicness of urban space, 2019
The 5th International Conference ON THE SURFACE: Photography on Architecture - Visual Spaces of Change: Unveiling the Publicness of Urban Space through Photography and Image, which took place on the 31st of May 2019 on occasion of MAAT’s Fiction and Fabrication exhibition offered a forum for an interdisciplinary debate on photography and architecture, with a strong editorial component devoted to the publication of original works and ideas at the intersection of these two fields. Aiming to promote the awareness and reflection upon Architecture and Art, namely documentary photography in regard to its conception as an instrument to question the universes of Architecture, City and Territory, the theme chosen for this edition of On the Surface focused on the contemporary transformations of the public space: “Visual Spaces of Change: unveiling the publicness of urban space”. Proposing to debate and explore the potential of Image and Photography as resourceful tools to research and to reflect upon and render visible the emergence of new collective experiences in the social space, the focus was on Documentary and Artistic Photography for addressing crosscutting issues that are shaping contemporary changes in cosmopolitan territories. is conference wanted in this way to contribute for greater social interaction among artistic and cultural institutions and academia, extending the action of museums, universities and art venues beyond their traditionally circumscribed spaces of action, stimulating the agents and institutions involved to be more active and open to debate in their approaches to public space. The intention was to render visible aspects of urban change, as well as how architectures, places and spaces are used and lived, crossing and shifting traditional boundaries for expanding the capacity of institutions to participate in the public domain. In this sense, we aim to contribute for critically thinking architecture as an integrative field of knowledge with historical, cultural, social, economic and political dimensions, and explore photography as a dynamic process of discovery, documentation and reflection that incorporates interpretive, artistic and even fictional aspects of these multiple dimensions. On the Surface 2019 challenged authors and researchers from the fields of photography and architecture to discuss and use image and photography to better understand the city as a living organism, a rich multifaceted space characterized by a variety of experiences and programs, which are a reflection of the knowledge, beliefs, values and customs that characterize different societies. us, a central objective of the conference was to discuss in what way image and photography can be used to unveil how architecture expresses the cultural values and identity of our cities, being these critical research instruments for understanding and perceiving architecture in meaningful ways, as well as for understanding the past in order to better grasp the transformations that are increasingly influencing our social practices and place experiences, affecting the modes of citizen participation and cultural interaction. By overlapping and crisscrossing the disciplinary boundaries of Image, Art and Architecture, the borders of these disciplinary fields are challenged for critically thinking through contemporary changes occurring in between physical and virtual dimensions of everyday life. Through the realization of these debates, it was intended to contribute to the creation of a space of exploration, discussion and reflection towards new ideas and research paths about the use of photography as an instrument of visual research and communication, as well as about architecture and the public space, with a focus on emerging dynamics of urban transformation. Lastly it is important to refer the significant connection of this conference to the project Visual Spaces of Change that the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto (FAUP) is coordinating, which integrates a significant component of Contemporary Photography in its research, together with the participation of other national and international academic bodies and research institutions that are involved. In fact, by bringing some of the themes of the VSC research project to this 5th edition of ON THE SURFACE: Photography on Architecture, we aim to contribute for opening academia to society, fostering collaboration among a wide range of cultural and artistic institutions towards common interests and goals. Intertwining the research group CCRE-CEAU-FAUP and Cityscopio Cultural Association, scopio Editions will be again the official publisher of this conference. Thus this 4th number of Sophia, Visual Spaces of Change: Unveiling the Publicness of Urban Space through Photography and Image is dedicated to this International Conference ON THE SURFACE: Photography and Architecture - Visual Spaces of Change: Unveiling the Publicness of Urban Space, publishing the papers based on the works that were presented at the conference. These papers constitute a significant example of investigation on how contemporary photography can be explored as a meaningful instrument of research about contemporary processes of urban change, producing visual synthesis about how architectures, places and spaces are used and lived, rendering visible aspects which are difficult to perceive without the purposeful use of image and photography. This means, besides other things, to inquire and study the possibilities offered by photography in various dimensions, oscillating between reality, poetry and utopia, creatively introducing new links between realistic representations, fictional worlds and symbolic meanings, articulated in conceptual discourses and visual narratives that are communicated through the specific grammar and syntax of photographic image. The conference was organized by the Center of Communication and Spatial Representation (CCRE), integrated in R&D Center of the Architecture School of the University of Porto (FAUP), in partnership with the Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology (MAAT) and scopio Editions. ON THE SURFACE: Photography on Architecture Visual Spaces of Change: unveiling the publicness of urban space SCOPIO EDITIONS SOPHIA COLLECTION Porto, 2020 Publisher Cityscopio – Associação Cultural Rua da Cidreira 291, 4465-076 Porto (Matosinhos), Portugal [email protected] www.cityscopio.com Editorial and Advisory Board Research group CCRE integrated in R&D of the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto (FAUP) called Centro de Estudos de Arquitectura e Urbanismo (CEAU) Via Panorâmica S/N, 4150-755 Porto, Portugal [email protected] tel: +351 226057100 | fax: +351 226057199 Scientific and Editorial Commission (CEAU-FAUP) Fátima Pombo (UA / DECA / ID+) Iñaki Bergera (Arquitectura / Unizar) José Miguel Rodrigues (FAUP) Marco Iuliano (LSA/CAVA) Pedro Leão Neto (FAUP) Susana Ventura (FAUP) Wilfried Wang (UTSoA) Editorial Coordinator Pedro Leão Neto Editors Pedro Leão Neto Iñaki Bergera - Invited Editor Editorial Collaborators Eduardo Silva Maria Neto ISBN 978-989-54318-8-5 ISSN 2183-8976 Dep. Legal No 465440/19 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted in any form or by any means or stored in any information storage or retrieval system without the editor’s written permission. All photographs featured in Sophia are © of the photographers. Reviewers of Sophia 4th Number Álvaro Domingues (FAUP / CEAU) Ana Francisca de Azevedo (DeGeoUM/Lab2PT) David Viana (CEAU / VSC) Fátima Pombo (UA / DECA / ID+) Francisco Ferreira (EAUM - Lab2PT) Isa Clara Neves (CES) Jorge Marum (UB I/ CCRE) José Barbedo (FAUP / CEAU) Margarida Medeiros (FCSH) Olívia da Silva (IPP – ESMAD) Pedro Leão Neto (FAUP / CEAU) Susana Ventura (FAUP / CEAU) Teresa Ferreira (FAUP/ CEAU) Authors Panel #1 Pedro Leão Neto Beate Gütschow Katarina Andjelkovic Klauss Borges Panel #2 Iñaki Bergera Bas Princen Ana Miriam Sebastiano Raimondo Apostolos Kyriazis Cristina Gastón Guirao Panel #3 Pedro Gadanho Ana Amado & Andrés Patiño Mariana Von Hartenthal Haode Sun Creative Director Né Santelmo Design Collaborator Edu Silva Impresssão / Printing Printy Apoio / Support UP, FAUP, FCT December, 2019
Architecture and Photography in the Modern Era. The Italian Setting between the Two Wars (1920-1945),
2024
La difusión de la nueva fotografía de arquitectura (vinculada a una forma inédita de concebir el espacio y al desarrollo de la arquitectura moderna) en los años veinte del siglo XX acercó también en Italia a los arquitectos al aparato fotográfico. Este artículo pretende examinar cómo estos arquitectos utilizaron la fotografía entre la primera y segunda guerra mundial, un periodo en el que, como en otros países, siguió representando no sólo un instrumento fundamental para su formación, sino también un potente canal de difusión y propaganda de la arquitectura moderna. The dissemination of the new architectural photography (linked to an unprecedented way of conceiving space and the development of modern architecture) in the 1920’s also brought architects in Italy closer to the use of the camera. This article has the objective of examining in what way these architects used photography during the years between the two world wars, in which, as in other countries, photography continued to represent not only a fundamental tool for their formation, but also as a powerful channel for the dissemination and propaganda of modern architecture.
Space of Architecture: From the Canvas to the City
Architecture as a media, covers the plurality of languages. Being architectural is not only ‘relating to the art or practice of designing and constructing buildings’ but also relating to constructing the textu(r)al, graphic, photo-graphic and urban space; from the canvas to the city, as an architectural object. The analysis and discussion on how the evolutions affected the perception, position and historical understanding of ‘architectural’ object, will be based on the resolution above. The relationship between media and architectural object that I defined as various ‘spaces’ are almost overlapped as thinking is ‘architectural’. Due to cultural and temporal changes, ‘space’ of text, texture, graphic and photograph has been defined, transformed, fragmented, pluralized, destructed, reproduced. Throughout the essay, spatial transformation of each language/media will be discussed through some examples in historical evolution of media and position of artist and architect, in an accumulative approach.
The “Urban Photogénie” of Architainment
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 2011
Scattolini E., Santus K., Sartorio S., Scaioli A. (2021) Hanging spaces: a dialogue between domestic and urban space, pp. 213-222 in M. Milocco Borlini, A. Califano, Urban Corporis X - Unexpected, Anteferma: Conegliano (TV), Italy
Urban Corporis X - Unexpected, 2021
Anteferma Edizioni, Conegliano, Italy ISBN: 978-88-32050-97-4 (printed version) ISBN: 978-88-32050-96-7 (digital version) www.anteferma.it Abstract The contemporary urban model, globally spread and characterized by a high housing density, from different perspectives is considered more “sustainable”, and therefore to be pursued, compared to an extensive development connected to low-density urban development ideologies. Indeed, phenomena such as urban sprawl become degenerations of an urban model that cannot be controlled and defined as a whole. High density avoids excessive soil consumption, minimizing the use of the car for travelling, and, consequently, the reduction in the emission of polluting substances. However, the health emergency caused by the Covid-19 pandemic highlighted the shortcomings of a high-density settlement morphology. Since social distancing has become part of everyday life, following the health emergency, the most detectable effects are social. On the one hand, if the traditional urban convivial spaces are deserted (going towards an almost total cancellation of physical social relationships) on the other hand we are witnessing a multiplication and explosion of types of urban sociality, developed through new forms of expression and use of spaces. Therefore, this contingent situation offers the possibility to reflect on the role and importance of all those often forgotten spaces. Indeed, they have returned taking a key role within our quarantined lives: balconies, terraces, roofs, landings. Hanging spaces have become elements of sociality, bringing into dialogue a living microcosm with an external macrocosm, currently extraneous and detached. The paper intends to survey projects of the international architectural panorama that have been able to interpret these spaces with a new social vision. This vision does not lead to the oblivion of these relationships’ physical and spatial dimension but compares them with the new instances, and even emergencies, of the city of the future.
Loading Preview
Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.