Una lettura urbana su Balestrate. Realtà intermedia e nuove possibili centralità

This work was developed at the “R-Lab” project, a workshop that was experimentally promoted by the University of Palermo (teachers, students and researchers) during the academic years 2010-11 and 2011-12. Workshop participants collected and elaborated analysis and proposals in an interdisciplinary and multi-level way (PhD, degree thesis, co-financed research) with lessons, seminars and applied research. Prof. F. Maggio coordinated the section that was titled “Analysis of the smaller towns in Sicily”, and we worked with him within an agreement that was signed with the local administration of Balestrate, a small coastal town in the northwestern Sicily. Our work focuses on some issues of the town. We made an analytical urban survey that systematically highlights problems and resources and tries to suggest some solutions for a possible alternative (economic, touristic, cultural) development of the country

A 3D reworking of the urban transformations of Palermo in recent history for a hypothesis of a "City Museum" based on digital visualizations

The objective that drives this research is given by a multitude of information which, in addition to the contribution of technology, allows us to study, analyze, verify and remodel the sites, monuments and evolutions of the city through graphic processes of perspective restitution that start from the analysis of historical photos. The drawing methods, the digital graphic rendering and through the aid of geometric techniques, contribute to the reconstruction of projects and architectures that are now lost, this is possible thanks to the methods of perspective, axonometry and three-dimensional restitution. This remarkable photographic heritage belonging to Palermo, but also to any other city in the world that is sometimes not even considered in the least or that is even forgotten in archives today finds new life thanks to the perspective restitution. Shooting and photographic images following particular studies, allow us to precisely establish the observation points and the dimensions of architectures that have now disappeared, giving them new life through the transposition and reconstruction of the same within a "memory archive three-dimensional ". In order to describe the transformations of the city, both urban and architectural, we have taken as a case study an architecture that has now been lost in the city of Palermo: villa Rutelli. It was a neo-Gothic villa, built in the first twenty years of the twentieth century on the axis of Via Libertà and demolished in the 1960s along with other buildings of the Palermitan Liberty during the years of the infamous "sack of Palermo". Through the iconographic and archival research at the CRICD and the Bronzetti fund (photographer) and with the aid of research and cataloging studies, illustrative material emerged which was useful for reworking the particularities of the model through the perspective restitution

Dal quadro al modello virtuale: una ricostruzione tridimensionale interattiva dell'Albergheria di Palermo nel 1749

This study suggests a virtual three-dimensional reconstruction of a large urban portion of Palermo Historical Centre modelled on an isometrical view of the 17th century entitled Descrizzione del distretto parrocchiale dell’Albergheria fatta l’anno 1749. It is a painting on canvas that has been kept inside the parish of S.Nicolò all’Albergheria, and which in latter days has been taken by the Museum of Palermo Diocese where it is presently exposed to the public. The work presents different levels of interest for the reading of urban ancient morphology which now has disappeared and for the right information of road textures, blocks and monuments represented there. The digital elaboration that has been made has been overlayed to a second three-dimensional model that has been got from the present maps of Palermo Historical Centre which describe the present configuration of the quarter: thus the model which derives from the 17th century representation has been referred to the real quotes of the ground and to the elevations of the existing buildings which are illustrated and described in the picture. Then all the proposed material has been used to make a new reading of the work and to propose its transformation in a “visual hypertext”. All the elements of the picture have been “translated” as file folders, links about the town history and of its monuments, either disappeared or still existing

Modulare

English language translates the Italian verb ‘modulare’ with two verbs: ‘modularize’ and ‘mod-ulate’. Effectively, the Italian modulare has two different meanings that properly correspond to the English verbs: the first meaning, that we can relate to ‘modularize’, refers to the action of “proportioning the plan of a building, the shapes and dimensions of certain members, etc., according to a measure taken as a module” [Treccani]; the second group of meanings, referring to the verb ‘modulate’, can be described with examples taken from music, as the action that “makes the voice or sounds pass from one tonality to another”, or with examples taken from physics, as “the variation or regulation of the values of a physical quantity, or of the intensity of a process” [Treccani]. ‘Modulate’ then refers to the concept of passage, of continuous transition, where discontinuities are missing or irrelevant

Le cave di tufo di Favignana: sfruttamento, tutela, risorse di una rete di "paesaggi" antropizzati.

Following the idea of tourist development Favignana island is nowaday subject to great housing transformations consisting in new hotels, residences, restoring projects of the ancient dockyards and tunny-fishing grounds in order to their re-use; there is also the widening project of the harbour for pleasure crafts that should settle in the shore actually aimed as seaside between Lido Mineo and Punta Faraglione. Our work wants, instead, to focus the attention on the widespread being of the abandoned stone-quarries considering that is possible to reconvert them as remarkable places for lodging or opencast museums without the requirement of plentiful cementations over the ground level. The analysis moves from an annotated map with a whole classification, then shows the surveys of some sample events in order to set the rules and the chances of the re-use of the different quarries. It is possibile in fact distinguish residential, touristic or civic uses according to dimension, location or kind of the quarry. It needs to recognize urban and architectural values not only in the city monuments or in the wealth of the new buildings, but especially in the evidence of a culture able to convey its own identity image in times; and also to produce, with an apparently intensive land exploitation, new landscapes and a high quality island heritage based on the resources of local materials

Un'architettura mai realizzata. La chiesa di S.Gaetano a Vicenza di Guarino Guarini

Lo studio delle architetture non realizzate di Guarino Guarini ha offerto la possibilità di sperimentare rappresentazioni coadiuvate da elaboratori CAD, modellatori solidi e programmi di simulazione fotorealistica. Le tavole presentate alla mostra costituiscono la sintesi di una ricerca più articolata effettuata durante uno stage del XII ciclo del Dottorato di Ricerca in Rilievo e Rappresentazione del Costruito e dell’Ambiente coordinato dalla prof. Rosa Penta della II Università di Napoli. L’intenzione e gli obiettivi dell’esperienza condotta miravano a ricostruire la spazialità dei progetti illustrati nelle tavole dell’Architettura Civile del Guarini e quindi procedere a una interpretazione critica effettuata in funzione dei risultati ottenuti : l’operazione voleva porsi entro parametri di rigore ricostruttivo, offrendo un contributo nuovo alla conoscenza della spazialità sei-settecentesca, colta nel suo stadio di idea progettuale ma qui definita e compiuta in tutte le sue parti, spazio già significativo anche se non ancora reale. Nel caso delle idee e degli spazi guariniani il ruolo del progetto – e del disegno progettuale – assume un valore di notevole importanza, trattandosi di uno snodo fondamentale tra concezione barocca e tardobarocca dello spazio, tra la Roma berniniana/borrominiana e la diffusione europea di un linguaggio sistematizzato e internazionalizzato ; c’è da dire che per molti di questi progetti la realizzazione materiale costituiva semplicemente l’ultimo stadio di un processo che nel disegno – pubblicato e diffuso attraverso i trattati – aveva già i connotati di spazio ideato, concreto, aperto al dibattito culturale e interpretato in successive realizzazioni che in vece loro ebbero la fortuna di poter essere edificate