Landscape – Great Idea! X-LArch III - Department für Raum ...
Landscape – Great Idea! X-LArch III - Department für Raum ...
Landscape – Great Idea! X-LArch III - Department für Raum ...
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163<br />
only because they embody mobility as a basic condition,<br />
but also because the rest of development depend<br />
strongly on it. By starting to consider our landscapes in a<br />
wider perspective beginning from the road facilities, it will<br />
become inevitable to think also of its aesthetics, as well<br />
as of all the repercussions that the model of Infrastructural<br />
architecture could have if applied on the territory.<br />
Conceived as design strategy, the Infrastructural Architecture<br />
aims to create relationships, by putting a focus<br />
on limits, boundaries, margins, areas of tension, interstices,<br />
areas of pause, rather than to concentrate on the<br />
design of objects. Within the hypothesis the road project<br />
contains two dimensions:<br />
a) The dimension of the road, where the intelligent<br />
use of asphalt pavement conveys a new spatial<br />
order when strived through playful design. It can<br />
host temporary surfaces of commerce (Stop and Go<br />
Vending by Smaq architects, Fig 3.) or even become<br />
a collector of heat (Erasmus bridge experiment, Ben<br />
Van Berkel).<br />
b) The dimension of the tangent zone that becomes<br />
the road interface that filters the passage from the<br />
infrastructure to the urban and natural environment.<br />
These areas are considered fertile ground for expression<br />
of new public that can be marked through<br />
the use of shiny panels, dynamic surfaces, intelligent<br />
interfaces, colours and textures, becoming in this<br />
way space of mediation, communication, leisure,<br />
amusement and commerce. This treatment would<br />
transform the border zone into linear parks (Bernard<br />
Lassus, Fig 2) or plazas; the modelling of the ground<br />
that could create sound barriers (Noise Scape,<br />
MVRDV and Dean); the barriers could be used as<br />
fourth façades in apartment or office buildings; and<br />
their bending for the creation of leisure facilities<br />
(Sport Cities, Ian +, Fig 1).<br />
Endnotes<br />
[1] Seen as a mean of progress, the EU is investing large founds<br />
in the construction of TEN-T, Eastern Europe countries in PAN,<br />
China in its Expressways. Different studies are published on theme<br />
of Mobility, like ‘The car and the city’, by A. Arbour 1991; ‘Mobility:<br />
a room with a view’ by F. Houben and L. Calabrese, 2003; ‘Driving<br />
forces: the automobile, its enemies, and the politics of mobility’ by<br />
J. A. Dunn, 1998; and many other<br />
[2] From the spoon to the city’ the slogan created by E. N. Rogers<br />
in 1952 in the Carta of Athens. He explained the typical approach<br />
of a Milanese architect designing a spoon, a chair, and a lamp and<br />
in the same day a skyscraper.<br />
[3] Continuita’ - Continuity was a subtitle that E. N. Rogers added in<br />
1953 to the Italian architectural magazine Casabella. This complex<br />
sum of theories was one of the most important topics of discussion<br />
in the post war international architectural scene. Continuità was<br />
one of the fundamental themes discussed among Rogers, De Carlo<br />
and Gregotti.<br />
[4] In Lynch’s words “the vacant lots, back alleys, dumps, and<br />
abandoned rights-of-way, the province of the young and derelict.”<br />
Pg 416<br />
References<br />
Aymonino, A. & Mosco, P.V. (2006): Contemporary public space.<br />
Un Volumetric Architecture, Milan: Skira Editore S.p.A.: 18<br />
Banerjee, T. & Southworth, M. (eds) (1995): City sense and city<br />
design. Writings and projects of Kevin Lynch, Massachusetts: MIT<br />
Press, 1995: 400, 408<br />
Gregotti V. (1977): Il territorio dell‘architettura, Milan: Feltrinelli<br />
Economica: 83, 90<br />
Rossi, A. (1966): L’architettura della città, Padua: Marsilio Editori<br />
Strauss, L. (1964): Il pensiero selvaggio, Milan: Net<br />
Venturi, R., Scott-Brown, D., Izenour, S. (1977): Learning form Las<br />
Vegas, Massechusetts: MIT: 13<br />
In order to invert the present phenomenon of devastating<br />
consumption of the teritory, we can first start seeing differently<br />
the infrastructures and then render the legislation<br />
more elastic in order to permit various forms of ‚contamination‘.<br />
The reflections on the form of the open spaces,<br />
the role of the road within the territory, the potential of<br />
its tangent zones (which are presently unused) demonstrate<br />
how these can be controled, used and in the end<br />
functional.<br />
The outcome of this operation would be the restored<br />
street continuity that characterised per centuries these<br />
‘backbones’ of the cities.<br />
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