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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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