Making the brain of the system mad. Or not. Critical encounters between marginal practices and their narrated self.

Practices of architecture, which are by their very ambition marginal to the discipline – such as declaredly transgressive practices and practices that tackle the informal dimension of the built environment – are occasionally (though strategically) appropriated by the grand narrative of mainstream architectural discourse. The effect of this transition is twofold: on the one hand, it produces a consistent increase in the impact of these practices by virtue of their enhanced visibility; on the other, the contradictory side to challenging the discipline from within its boundaries is evident, as the paradox of dissidence is that its success is “secured by the annihilation of itself”. The paper will analyze two such instances of appropriation - the Patio and Pavilion installation at Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1956, and the Torre David/Gran Horizonte at the Venice Biennale in 2012, and unpack its effects both on the practices themselves and on the disciplinary discourse

A New Element, A New Force, A New Input: Antonio Stoppani's Anthropozoic

The Italian geologist Antonio Stoppani is a remarkable but little known figure in the history of science and the theoretical humanities. Recently, following debates about the Anthropocene initiated by the Dutch chemist Paul Crutzen, some scholars have returned to Stoppani’s writing for its eloquent argument regarding the appearance of human activity in the archive of deep time – the earth. The excerpt below, translated from Stoppani’s three volume Corso di Geologia of 1873, is an example of his breadth of knowledge, courageous imagination, and compelling but accessible rhetorical inventiveness. Nearly thirteen decades before Crutzen’s coinage of the Anthropocene, in this text we find an untimely assessment of the human relation to deep time; perhaps, in the wake of these more recent debates, we finally have ears to hear him

Architetti italiani in Cina. Istruzioni per l'uso

Intervista a Massimo Bagnasco di Progetto CMR (Beijing) e vicepresidente della Camera di Commercio in Cina, sul tema della pratica di progetto nel mercato cinese

Incremental open spaces: the case of Dharavi, India

Dharavi, in Mumbai, India, is one of the largest, liveliest—and wealthiest—slums in the world. Working with the urban planning research organization URBZ, the authors have been exploring the ways in which its inhabitants’ informal way of living benefits Dharavi as well as the whole city of Mumbai, and how these benefits would be compromised or destroyed if the city’s current redevelopment plan is carried out, resulting in the razing of the entire district and depriving its inhabitants of basic means of support. The article proposes an alternative design trying to combine formal and informal approaches

Pratiche di ordinaria innovazione. Dalla narrazione alle strategie di legittimazione

La situazione professionale contemporanea degli architetti in Italia è documentata da numerosi studi e statistiche che descrivono, in maniera tendenzialmente unanime, un panorama di crisi e di incertezza. Le ragioni sono spesso ricondotte a incapacità di saper rigenerare una filiera restia all’innovazione; ma come si manifesta l’innovazione nella pratica di architettura? Attraverso una serie di interviste con professionisti del mondo dell’architettura, sono state raccolte 75 storie di innovazione. Evidenziandone gli elementi di similarità e provando a definire delle analogie, sembra possibile raccogliere tali storie in cinque ambiti tematici con cui si presenta l’innovazione nella pratica di progetto. Trasversalmente a queste categorie, però, è possibile osservare una ricorsività della struttura narrativa utilizzata dai professionisti di architettura per parlare dell’innovazione dei loro progetti e di evidenziare una tensione tra due approcci con cui l’innovazione si manifesta in un progetto di architettura

La rete della città di sotto per la promessa urbana cinese. L’abnorme crescita delle megalopoli è legata alla realizzazione delle infrastrutture sotterranee.

Il processo di modernizzazione delle città cinesi ha richiesto rilevanti investimenti nella realizzazione di infrastrutture urbane, dopo che nel periodo socialista la gran parte delle risorse disponibili erano state allocate per il settore produttivo tralasciando quello dei servizi. Rendere economicamente e politicamente vantaggioso lo sviluppo di new towns offre la possibilità di aumentare consistentemente la quantità di patrimonio edilizio infrastrutturato tramite le tecniche più moderne. In questo schema, il progetto del sottosuolo diventa parte integrante del progetto urbano. L’infrastrutturazione del sottosuolo è la piattaforma rigida su cui gli oggetti urbani si innestano: la progettazione delle infrastrutture rappresenta la premessa necessaria per raggiungere un'efficacia di mercato, ma il rapporto fra il progetto di ciò che sta sotto e il progetto di ciò che sta sopra varia notevolmente a seconda delle condizioni specifiche

Platform, container, environment. 2019 Shenzhen Biennale as innovation in practice

In a time of supra-national economic, political and social crises, the architectural profession is acknowledged as necessitating of a fundamental restructuring in order to gain both renewed relevance as a discipline (Awan, Schneider and Till 2009; Till 2014, 9-11) and sustainability as day-to-day practice (Deamer and Bernstein 2010; Deamer 2015; etc.). A tendency to diversify the products of architectural practice - i.e. beyond buildings - is facilitated by a constantly increasing number of curatorial outlets - i.e. Triennales, Biennales - allowing to increase the perceived pace of innovation (Papastergiadis and Martin 2011, 45–62). The paper looks at the curatorial process of the 2019 Shenzhen Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism as a way to access a select sample of internationally mobile contemporary practices whose work is produced at the intersection between profession, academia, and independent research. Drawing on literature pertaining to the concept of communities of practice (Amin and Roberts 2008, 353-369; Faulconbridge 2010, 2842–2858), ethnography of practice (Yaneva 2009) and feminist theory (Frichot and Runting 2015, 397-411), we question the agency of the Biennale and similar curated events as facilitating environments entailing the reconceptualization of design practice (O’Neill & Wilson 2015; Szacka 2019). In order to do so, we look at the practices that populate the exhibition, how they self-represent and how they employ the exhibition to maximize the possibility of producing innovation. Finally, we select a small number of installations that appear the most resilient to contingencies, and analyze their trajectories outside of the Biennale in order to understand the way specific networks are built and effects are achieved, within platforms that are indeed part of day-to-day practice, rather than existing outside of it