Unexpected made natural. Turning the project into a tactical tool

All crises produce shocks, changing people’s perception of life, habits, and rights. In systems theory terms, we could state that, during a crisis, people start marking a distinction between the past and the future, noticing transformations previously ignored. Two attitudes emerge: a nostalgic one, pretending to go back to normal as soon as possible, avoiding any changing; and a revolutionary one, claiming that nothing will be the same as before and asking for stronger changings. But things do not stay unvaried, nor do they overturn: the future happens together with the evolution of people. There is a continuous shifting we are not even aware of, and which becomes noticeable only at a critical distance. This is especially true about space and its perception. But not all transformations are good: some of them appear to be forced and artificial, and end up being rejected by people, while others appear to happen in a natural way. This highlights the weakness of traditional design, which uses projects as prescriptive models for the future. Again using systems theory, we could say that projects, by marking a distinction between what is designed and everything else, also originate the possibilities of unexpected, which is nothing more than an (unavoidable) flaw of design. In a crisis, the above-mentioned attitudes push the predictive approach to its limits and, by proposing either old or new models, they prophetically raise expectations toward an ontologically false future. Quite the opposite, also with the aid of case-studies showing how unexpected normality can be, the paper investigates architectural design as the artfulness of evolving spaces by exploiting the so-called potential, changing unexpected into the founding element of design. The project then becomes a tactical tool for implementing subtle, yet effective actions, so as to influence spaces toward an ontologically unexpected, yet natural future

Impact of climate induced glacial melting on coastal marine systems in the Western Antarctic Peninsula region

IMCOAST is an international research program that features a multidisciplinary approach involving geo and biological sciences, field investigations, remote sensing and modeling and knowledge into the hydrographical and biological history of the marine coastal ecosystems of the Western Antarctic Peninsula region

Bad Strategy and Dark Matter. Reframing Italian Architectural Debate on the Post-Pandemic

The paper investigates into the inability of Italian architectural debate to produce sensible effects on the society – architects have not been involved in any task forces, nor their proposals have been taken in account for the norms for the post-pandemic. Our hypothesis is that the suggestions emerging from the debate are much vision-oriented, but are so weak from a strategic point of view that they could even be seen as an example of bad strategy – as defined by Richard Rumelt.In the first part, through an extensive survey on various sources (e.g., interviews and video-messages on leading newspapers, social media and TV broadcasts; debates on architectural journals and web forums; official proposals and manifestoes by professional associations), the article analyses and reframes the Italian architectural debate, for highlighting and defining its strategic weakness. The second part explains the main reasons for this weakness, showing that such inefficacy comes from the inability to deal with what Dan Hill called dark matter, i.e. the network of organisations, culture, bureaucracy and norms. The final part hints at a different perspective on architectural design for better dealing with the dark matter, thus giving the possibility of changing the generic proposals into strategic ones

Radical Contingency. Strategy and Tactics in Architectural Design

1While narratives tend to show architectures as coherent results of a plot in which the abilities of involved people are far more relevant than the fate, actual projects are more like the conjuncture of various trajectories: involving actors, factors, aims, preferences, good (and bad) intentions, most of which will remain unknown. Tracing all these elements is indeed impossible but, for the architect, sailing through them all along the process is mandatory. The paper investigates how architectural design can exploit the so-called potential intrinsic to the radical contingency of all processes, instead of suffering their (apparent) haphazardness. By changing architectural design into a floating sequence of strategies and tactics, it is possible to overcome the facticity of the process, thus successfully promoting the project as an aim. Such an attitude may be enhanced in projects of all scales and in any moment of the process, for architects to gain a creative and purposeful role.openopenCarlo DeregibusDeregibus, Carl

Nitrogen Fertilization in \u3ci\u3ePaspalum dilatatum\u3c/i\u3e, Poir: Herbage Production, Nutritive Value and Structural Characteristics

It was studied the effect of nitrogen application on structural changes and quantity and quality characteristics of a Paspalum dilatatum Poir sward, under field conditions during two growing seasons. The nitrogen (N) rates were 0 and 440 kg ha-1 applied during the first year in split applications. The nitrogen fertilization increased leaf, stem and cumulative total dry matter yield, plant height, tiller density, cover ground and leaf crude protein yield