RESEARCH THEMES. International Doctorate: ARCHITECTURE and URBAN PHENOMENOLOGY Coordinator: Prof. Armando Sichenze

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1 RESEARCH THEMES The doctorate originates from the need to study the urban phenomenon of the contemporary world, not accepting neither the city as a given fact nor as a physical and cultural reality that are so complex to be indispensable. Architecture possesses the most suitable means to highlight the phenomenal conditions that allow the difficulty of the complexity to be dealt with. It is however important to increase the level of cooperation within research. Architectural knowledge, traditionally capable of studying the future of the city, is articulated in the concepts and tools used in the three disciplines of history, representation and design. However, the possibility to connect them - a rare fact in research depends on the paradigmatic hypothesis of the understanding that assumes the making common within a scientific community that wants to be simultaneously thinking and practical. These hypotheses are based on the sharing of the phenomelogical manner of understanding and discovery of the architectonic sense of the city in the future. A corroborating hypothesis of the insertion of the Italian experience of the second half of the nine hundreds in the European phenomenology culture (from E.N. Rogers, I. Gardella, L. Cosenza to today). Taking this into consideration, the field limits in which the research pendulum swings have to be defined. The following consideration can be the starting point: we are fully aware of the extremes in which it is possible to consider the city. The problem and the difficulty lies in the middle. In the middle of a glare, mentally squinted. There are two galaxies: on the one hand that of the houses, the inside of the houses, in part still habitable, and the sleeping city, but definable, while on the other that is formed, tracing out the path of a century, from the metropolis to the indefinable global urbanity of today even though they propose many partial definitions, triangular between the idea of the mollusc to the mutant future of a city similar to that either represented in Blade Runner or programmatically ephemeral, recently foreseen by Rem Koolhaas or the rhizome. This current condition is obviously appealing, but at the same time worrying. However, we have to start from here in order to understand what is actually wrong. The problems will now be articulated into the themes of the doctorate. Star system, metamorphoses, mutations are the key words that continually unsettle our conceptual ideas. They contribute to a more detailed consideration of the idea of the city, if it can still be defined with this term, assumed as a given object and not as a phenomenon to be studied. In order to deal with these data as phenomena of carriers of architectonic sense, an initial study is required that only the disciplines of history, representation and planning can carry out. Several European universities have decided to collaborate on this doctorate starting from the problem: the media reproduction of the star system- within which there is also highly interesting architecture - provokes a series of destabilising effects that have a chain effect and even reach the provinces. Therefore not only is the extraneousness of the artistic exhibitions of the architectural look-outs, in relation to the contexts of 1

2 civilisation in which they are placed questioned but so are the destructive effects (rather than the de-constructive ) of such performances on the local emulators, who are less talented under every profile. The invasion on various levels of primitive architecture opens various questions, however it also relates to a complex phenomenon of disorientation (prior to mutation ), of peoples, constructors as well as architects that do not seem to be fully aware not only of the coherence that the logical mutants of the hidden objects produced by the stars of architecture but also the still current sense of the millenarian society, of the raison d être still existing of the city and all that invisibly sustains a reality far greater than that of the star system. Therefore, having been expelled from the media area of international architectural culture, the housing and urban problems associated to the masses require a visibility and dignity of study that seem to have completely disappeared even from the syllabuses of the schools of architecture. The phenomenon has to be put into a historical and geographical context through the filter of a critical culture that includes all the possible explanations and reflections that over the last twenty years have been widely given. This is the first area of study of the Doctorate. If we also want to briefly consider what has been written by many architects, currently in the foreground, we are aware that within disorientation there is a culture of destruction. It is more than a simple provocation, with it now obliging us to formulate in a specific way (as architects) the problem that is usually dealt with by philosophy (it is worth taking into consideration the conclusions made by Emanuele Severino). We should therefore ask ourselves, with what aim does a culture of construction (such as architecture) become destructive. Is this the destiny of the technique? Is architectonic culture, in order for it to be revealed, also destined to be perpetually avant-garde? The history of architecture has already formulated, long ago, several hypotheses. The neo-neo avant-garde re-becomes perpetually nothing. In other words, in order to innovate, they are condemned to destroy at a faster rate than reality. Even themselves. The same analysis - that is carried out in order to cut beyond a certain limit, if constructed, inevitably becomes destructive. The debris of the destruction, either analytical or arbitrary, is diffused due to it being liked. Students of composition get hold of several pieces (and only these pieces), they break them down even further, notwithstanding that they are already deformed and distorted from the original, but are original in themselves. They are not so different from their graduated counterparts. Everyone, from the avant-garde to students, seems to want to diffuse debris. The debris is diffused and recollected every now and then by someone. Another issue complicates the start of the search: the sea of rubble not only of material and variously hybrid, re-covers those rare regeneration phenomena of the liveable city that also exist. These phenomena, that do not readily reveal themselves, as data offer themselves to be read. Covered as they are by the architectural-urban non-sense, they require specific and patient analysis procedures (not only historical but also re-planning and composition). 2

3 Adequate concepts are therefore needed that take the phenomena (both negative and positive) into the open and reveal the necessary connections with architecture as well as with the sustainability problems of development, also in relation to the critical points of the Kyoto protocol. However, the mediatic culture of the star system, also known as Google, in order to use another interesting key word are not only negative phenomena. The areas of representation and history help in replacing the phenomenon within an area of undeniable change of taste, where a culture filtering takes place, entrusted to the triangular relationship between the mass media, mediatic architects and companies. Within this area, the problem is confronted in well defined terms of a design that, by placing architecture within show-business and haute couture, is a powerful means of communication and promotion of taste that the area of the aesthetic history of architecture can not neglect. This however is not enough. It is evident that we are contracting a debt with the stars of architecture. How can we not notice the perceptive value, and above all the synthetic one, of a design that quickly moves in a trajectory with pleasure over the surface, rather than reflecting with great effort in depth, capable of curling around long sequences of things as well as extensive lateral communications that broaden the experience and sense of space in a way that was initially inconceivable? It therefore seems that the Italian tradition (maybe even the European one) of the area of design and representation has given proof of having a particular ability to pass over the phenomena of becoming, through the patient search, used as a critical interpretation tool of the process that constitutes and constructs architectonic form as well as through the use of the quick sketch that gathers the sense of the experience, in connective syntheses and long sequences of things far away. However, in order not to become lost within an intel-lective art with only its own ends, the passing trajectories (and inter-lective) of the experience of the city have to be defined. These trajectories have been traced out, place by place, by the numerous pendulums that swing between the defined city and the aforementioned indefinable city. The expected result of considering the city in these terms should lead to on the one hand a redefinition while on the other to an attempt to collocate, define etc, etc, the indefinable. In order to define the themes of the urban experiences in which both the search of the sense of the experience on the design s part as well as the genealogical search of the historians on the thread of the contributory causes, a limited number of phenomena should be privileged, proven, or in other words that have given proof of the functioning of the raison d etre of what we define as either city or metropolis, or mollusc. The doctorate could therefore create a rich conceptual tool, for a relevance treatment, already applied to about 200 cases of city around the world, in reference to (applicable) the urbanity of the city, or in other words to the resolving of general problems associated to the existence and functioning of the city as an architectural phenomenon. These general conditions include the normal problems of sustainability of the masses, avoiding, if only for a brief moment, the distractions of 3

4 the star system, in order to critically refer to what is happening elsewhere, for example in China. Even though briefly described, the issues dealt with are linked, with the doctorate that we propose having noteworthy ambitions. The universities and subject areas involved should therefore not hide the ambition to want to create the first nucleus of a scientific and technical community. Perhaps there is the desire to propose something more than the usual mono-thematic doctorate by a single university. In our case, it deals with wanting to create a thinking, operative and planning community. The risks include having a large number of varied aggregates as well as losing direction. It is important to keep the common goal in sight, at least, the problem we originally started with (disorientation), in order to then subsequently collect specific information at the end of our reasoning that we will now precisely define. It is now worth making an important point about the issue of disorientation: it is not a subject that can be dealt with by psychoanalysis, but it is a purely architectural and urban condition (I hope to have another chance to explain it) that deals with the relations of proximity distance (between human beings as well as human beings and things) to be re-discovered through a limited number and sample of case studies. However even these, in relation to the city and architecture, require appropriate methods and investigation tools, through which to study the discomposition and re-composition of emblematic conditions and models. It deals with proposing a common core to our disciplines, that is part of a critical method, subsequently finding in the single subject areas, it own instrumental articulations. It is this context, as strange as it may seem, the theme of distance, associated to phenomenology that it is a novelty, a presumed developmental point of the research. The doctorate will initially discuss the historical conditions of disorientation, followed by selecting corrective examples, capable of allowing the concatenations of sense to emerge that proceeded by houses, today inhabited, until reaching the various forms of city, leading to re-discovering the urban phenomenon. From this point, the relationship that a significant part of the Italian architectural culture (E.N.Rogers, I.Gardella, Gregotti etc) has established with phenomenology (Paci, Husserl, Merlau Ponty as well as Heidegger, Vattimo etc.today several anthropologists) should be continued (or taken up again?). A phenomenology is required that produces sense in a different way, through faster, quick steps that link, on the surface, longer sequences. In relation to what has previously been said (and in particular to the relationship of proximity-distance), a stronger, closer connection is required between architectural and urban composition (Icar/14) and the disciplines of representation (Icar/17) in order to obtain a study of planning (traditional) that confronts itself with the new methods of surveying, vision (informatic) and synthesis (phenomenological-graphic). The connection with historical research (Icar/18) is more than evident. In this context, reference can be made to the methods of architectural genealogy, for both architecture as well as the narrative threads with the surface of specific urban realities. The city of Matera will be used to verify all these studies, due to the traditional debate 4

5 and richness of converging propositions on the notions of the Nature-City, the centre of attention considering what is currently happening in the cities of the Mediterranean, in order of the themes of new planning and the recuperation of the city, even from a tourist perspective. FORMATIVE OBJECTIVES This Doctorate proposes architecture, paradoxically, as a novelty when confronted to the generalised disorientation caused by the solitude of the further studies of single teachings. The Doctorate proposes the study of the theories of architectural and urban phenomenology, as well as the dis-composition and ri-composition procedures, visual modelling, graphic communication and the historical-genealogical methods as points of synthesis of the relationship between construction, context and historical figures of architecture and the city. The programme of constituting a European advance research training network aimed initially at valorising the experience of scientific and didactic cooperation that up until has been carried out within themes identified by design and recalls to the synthesis of positive outcomes reached through research, in over 100 European cities, either already carried out or currently underway, the result of collaborations between the professors of the entire scientific community of the Doctorate. The most important aim is to contribute to the definition of new high level research professionals to be inserted within an international scientific context. The research formation will allow for innovative scientific competencies to be obtained that can be subsequently integrated within the university system, research centres as well as public and private institutions working in the sector. These will include highly specialised professionals as required by research agencies, not universities but also public administrations, the monuments and fine arts services as well as various cultural sectors (from the media to public information). The final aim deals with the research planning and innovation on the themes of architecture and urban phenomenology, as well as widening the network to other universities both European and non, extending it also to extra-university research institutes and agencies. The specific aims deal with the formation (advanced didactic and seminar activity), planning of interuniversity research and scientific adjournment through t direct comparisons as well as the exchanging of study experiences with the mobility of doctorate students, researchers and professors. The setting up of the single competencies and specific doctoral formation producing a dynamic intersection, a point a synthesis that deals with the ways of thinking about the city in its various forms of meaning and communication. This will lead to an interuniversity network to create an interactive syllabus based on three curricula: 5 Architecture and Planning Science Architectural planning, in the time of the society of technique and nichilism, as

6 discovery (critical) of the very aims of human interaction and the necessary associations between things (as transcending their isolation). Architectural composition as thought of relations and critical construction of understanding from architecture to planning. Architectural composition as research of the limits and measures within the inevitable stability of things placed in comparison with the contorted dynamism of the natural, urban and multimedia environment. Architectural composition as the phenomenological practice of discovery of the sense and the functions of re-generation of the Nature-City, of the values of transcending the mere construction within the European culture of sustainability. Science of Representation and Surveying of Architecture and the Landscape Design as the language of knowledge and communication through history as well as the methods and forms of design. The representation of architecture starting from the surveying and understanding of the landscape through history as well as the methods and use of innovative tools (e.g. laser scanner). The science of design and geometries. The following prevailing themes can be proposed: Design as a tool for architectural research. Surveying as a privileged method for the understanding and analysis of architectonic, urban and landscape phenomena. Surveying as an orientated paradigm for the understanding and restoration of the multidimensional components of both the natural and constructed environment. The design of architecture as a strategy of analysis beyond the visible. Freehand design (technical and varied scales) of the idea of current projects of recent architecture. The design of architecture in order to elaborate and formalise the idea of the project: from the sketch to the definitive computer design. 6 History of Architecture The discovery of the relationship between constructing and living, according to the idea that constructing is an expression of a way to live in the world, therefore a source of thought for historical research, placed in front of the condition of disorientation of contemporary architectural culture. It deals with returning through a genealogical research of a certain practice of contemporary architecture, even more reduced for a mediatic consumption, in a conceptual crisis in which living starts with modernity itself. It also deals with retracing, through an open research of the phenomenology of the historical forms of the human settlements and the associations with particular construction procedures, part of a more complex system of living as well as the relationship between man and the world, between human societies, environments and natural resources.