Architectural composition 4A - Prof. Lorenzo Pignatti

Culture and creativity for the urban project
Pescara and Belgrade

The fourth year's workshop aims to propose a design experience that allows students to understand some basic questions on the theme of urban design. In this perspective, the Laboratory offers a cognitive and planning path that starts from the interpretation of the context and from the critical reflection on the most significant achievements in Italy and elsewhere, to arrive at the elaboration of concrete field experiments, with the aim of pursuing the quality of the condition environmental and settlement, and as far as possible, offer an innovative and experimental character.

The Course will address, at different times, the themes that are quickly presented here, which will form the basis on which to set the projects.
In the current historical and cultural moment, the urban project must be smart, a term that does not only refer to the themes of technological innovation, but implies being coherent with the needs of the moment, aware of the consumption of land, aware of the scarce possibilities of public investments and the risk of private ones, must be sustainable from all points of view (energy, regulatory, financial, etc.), must relate to the community of its users (human capital) and must, however, pursue the concept of urban quality through controlled and coherent spatial and compositional solutions.
At the same time the urban project must above all be a process that is able to follow the rapid economic and social transformations of our time and is therefore not a pure "design" or form, even captivating. The project must be able to adapt to changing situations - resilience - or, at the most, try to guide and direct changes. The project must define a complex and articulated transformation process, it must be participated where, in addition to the designer, citizens will have a say together with a myriad of public and private actors who will determine choices and will define the different implementation phases.
In this sense the urban project is a highly complex process that requires a high degree of competence.

A further theme of reflection of the course will be on the theme of re-use (re-cycle) and therefore of the recovery of those urban sectors that have gone (or are about to go) into abandonment within our cities. The concept of recovering disused spaces is in fact one of the key themes on which the concept of sustainability is based, since spaces that are already anthropized are called into play, the consumption of land is avoided and it is possible to re-use places, materials and objects that would otherwise come abandoned. The theme of recycling must include new cycles (or phases) that can give new life and identity to those places once used for production, industry, infrastructure or simply terraine vagues (I. de Sola Morales). Cycles that are not only related to the urban and physical recovery of places, but that are above all linked to the possibility of activating real urban re-generation processes based on the ability to propose new conditions in a creative way. In the post-industrial economy, in fact, all that matters to be competitive is creativity, where "creativity" has nothing to do with the artistic aspect but aims simply to question established production models and experiment with new solutions that are economically competitive, are aware of environmental quality and are socially inclusive.
To the historical triad of the three "R" of Re-use, Re-duce and Re-cycle, one must then add another composed of three "E", that is Economy - Environment - Equity, where the themes of the necessary economic development are seen consistently with issues related to urban quality and that of human capital.
Contexts
The IV course in Architectural Composition will address the theme of urban design in two very different contexts, the cities of Pescara in Italy and Belgrade in Serbia
The Course will address, at different times, the themes that are quickly presented here, which will form the basis on which to set the projects.
In the current historical and cultural moment, the urban project must be smart, a term that does not only refer to the themes of technological innovation, but implies being coherent with the needs of the moment, aware of the consumption of land, aware of the scarce possibilities of public investments and the risk of private ones, must be sustainable from all points of view (energy, regulatory, financial, etc.), must relate to the community of its users (human capital) and must, however, pursue the concept of urban quality through controlled and coherent spatial and compositional solutions.
At the same time the urban project must above all be a process that is able to follow the rapid economic and social transformations of our time and is therefore not a pure "design" or form, even captivating. The project must be able to adapt to changing situations - resilience - or, at the most, try to guide and direct changes. The project must define a complex and articulated transformation process, it must be participated where, in addition to the designer, citizens will have a say together with a myriad of public and private actors who will determine choices and will define the different implementation phases.
In this sense the urban project is a highly complex process that requires a high degree of competence.