[1] From the Urban Vision of Radical Architecture to the Debates around Sustainable Cities and Big Data: Reconciliating the study of the historical city and the Design of radical architecture and urban planning

From: Giusi Ciotoli (ciotoligiusigmail.com)
Date: 24 April 2023
Deadline: 15 May 23

Session 3.16
Chair: Marianna Charitonidou (Athens School of Fine Arts), Giusi Ciotoli (Sapienza University of Rome)
Email: m.charitonidouicloud.com

[segue versione italiana]

The theme of the city has been central to the architectural culture of the 20th century. During the 1960s, the experimentation with new models concerning urban planning reached its peak in the work of architects and groups of architects such as Archigram, Kenzo Tange, Louis Kahn, the so-called Japanese Metabolism, Yona Friedman, Constant Nieuwenhuys, and Takis Zenetos. During the post war years architects and planners sought to rationalize and modernize cities. The great typological experimentation, already initiated by the masters of the Modern Movement and carried on an international scale, was accompanied by a utopian optimism centred on the role of new technologies and the “possible” and “future” ways of life that their generalized use would promote. Let’s think about Friedman’s and Zenetos’s interest in the city and home of the future, or the visions of fantastic and futuristic cities devised by Japanese Metabolism. The session places particular emphasis on the role that the historical city played in the approaches of the radical architects and urban planners during the 1960s and 1970s. Among the issues that are explored is the tension between architects and urban planners that supported a tabula rasa logic in urban plannings and architects and urban planners that were committed to discovering ways of bringing together modern architecture and urban planning methods and history, reconciliating the study of the historical city and the design of radical architecture and urban planning. The session aims to explore how urban planning can respond to the necessity of rethinking the concentration typical of traditional cities and their density. More particularly, it intends to shed light on the reorientation from the optimism characterising urban vision in Radical Architecture to the contemporary debates around sustainable cities and Big Data. The session, through an interdisciplinary approach, welcomes papers that propose a comparison of the new functional cities (entertainment, tourism, manufacturing centres, office places, smart cities, etc.) with respect to the urban utopia of the 1960s. Particular emphasis is placed on the shifts concerning the concept of flexibility, the psychological aspects, and the social implications of urban visions.

If you have any queries or require further information, please contact Marianna Charitonidou m.charitonidouicloud.com or Giusi Ciotoli ciotoligiusigmail.com

Application through form here (Session 3.16): https://aisuinternational.org/en/ferrara-2023-sessioni-macrosessione-3/

According to Conference indications, complete papers will be subject to peer review and published after the discussion within the Conference Sessions. You will find detailed information on how to participate, fees, and possible scholarships for researchers here: https://aisuinternational.org/en/collana-insights/

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Macrosessione 3

Sessione 3.16
“Dalle visioni urbane dell’Architettura radicale al dibattito sulla città sostenibile e sui Big Data: conciliare lo studio della città storica e il progetto di architettura e urbanistica “radicale”

Coordinatori: Marianna Charitonidou (Athens School of Fine Arts), Giusi Ciotoli (Sapienza Università di Roma)
Email: m.charitonidouicloud.com

Il tema della città ha avuto grande centralità nella cultura architettonica del XX secolo. In particolare, la sperimentazione, avviata negli anni Sessanta, di nuovi modelli di progettazione urbana ha raggiunto il suo apice nelle opere di architetti quali Archigram, Kenzo Tange, Louis Kahn, i giapponesi di Metabolism, Yona Friedman, Constant Nieuwenhuys e Takis Zenetos. Durante il dopoguerra architetti, urbanisti e pianificatori cercarono di razionalizzare e modernizzare le città. La grande sperimentazione tipologica, già avviata dai Maestri del Movimento Moderno e portata avanti a livello internazionale, era stata affiancata da un sincero ottimismo nutrito dalle nuove tecnologie e verso i “possibili” e “futuri” modi di vita che il loro uso generalizzato avrebbe promosso. Si esprime in tal senso l’interesse di Friedman e di Zenetos per la città e la casa del futuro, oppure le visioni di città fantastiche e futuristiche ideate da Metabolism.
La sessione pone enfasi sul ruolo che la città storica ha svolto negli approcci degli architetti e degli urbanisti radicali durante gli anni ’60 e ’70. Tra le questioni che vengono indagate c’è il contrasto tra gli architetti e gli urbanisti che hanno sostenuto una logica della tabula rasa nelle pianificazioni urbane, e coloro i quali si sono impegnati nello scoprire modi per coniugare l’architettura moderna con la storia dell’urbanistica, conciliando lo studio della città storica e il progetto di architettura e urbanistica “radicale”. La sessione si propone di esplorare in che modo la pianificazione urbana possa rispondere alla necessaria riconfigurazione delle città tradizionale e della sua densità abitativa. Nello specifico, si intende porre in evidenza il passaggio dalla visione ottimistica tipica dell’architettura radicale al dibattito contemporaneo sulle città sostenibili e sui Big Data. La sessione, attraverso un approccio interdisciplinare, accoglie contributi che propongono un confronto tra le nuove città funzionali (del divertimento, del turismo, centri produttivi, luoghi per uffici, smart cities, etc) e l’utopia urbana degli anni Sessanta, ponendo particolare enfasi al cambiamento del concetto di flessibilità, agli aspetti psicologi e alle implicazioni sociali di tali visioni urbane.

Info sulla sessione: Marianna Charitonidou m.charitonidouicloud.com Giusi Ciotoli ciotoligiusigmail.com

Modalità di invio:
Si prega di inviare il proprio abstract alla sessione 3.16 all’indirizzo: https://aisuinternational.org/en/ferrara-2023-sessioni-macrosessione-3/

Informazioni dettagliate sulle modalità di partecipazione, sulle quote di partecipazione e sulle eventuali borse di studio per i ricercatori sono disponibili al seguente indirizzo: https://aisuinternational.org/en/ferrara-2023-ferrara/

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[2] Urban fortifications: from the need for defense to the need for landscape

From: Giulia Casolino, Alessandra Marin, Elisabetta Molteni (giulia.casolinophd.units.it)
Date: 26 April 2023
Deadline: 15 May 23

Sessione 7.7 Fortificazioni urbane: dalla necessità di difesa a quella di paesaggio

The space dedicated to the defense of the city has left, as a legacy, important urban signs and traces of history and has marked the urban margins since the earliest times. Spaces not only built (from the simple city walls to the wider articulation of a defensive system built of moats, external forts circuits etc.) but also open, dedicated to the maneuvering of troops and to host the inhabitants of the extra moenia territory, who sheltered in it, to the accumulation of goods and defensive instruments, up to the production of goods necessary for the survival in case of siege by the external enemy troops. In this sense, it is possible to define urban fortifications as a flexible and fundamental city infrastructure, which defined the image and history of the city for many centuries. But fortifications also represented an extraordinary instrument of innovation within the city itself, in its becoming, made of both minute events and big transformations: this by virtue of its longevity and editable nature, linked to the transformations of the military art of the relationship between cities, territory and between the different parts of the city; of its ability to influence economic, social and political-legal aspects of urban processes; also by virtue of its aptitude to generate monumental, symbolic, testimonial, etc., heritage values.

The session aims to gather a plurality of interventions, dedicated on the one hand to the establishment of these urban infrastructures and their relationships with developing cities, urban patterns located within them or growing beyond the border marked by them, reflecting on shapes and roles, main actors and processes, through the lens of the “right to defense” that they intend to set off.

On the other hand, it invites to reflection on a more recent past and the future of fortifications: in the last two centuries, as an essential component, of the transformations of cities (capital or not) that have found in these spaces the possibility of renewing their image, to make up for the needs of open and common spaces and urban services, accessibility on different means, new construction and, more recently, landscape and beauty. "Rights", the latter, extended to an increasing number of subjects, on which the session intends to pay particular attention.