Landscape Architecture and the Green Deal Dare: Five Successful Experiences in Urban Open Spaces

The present work focuses on European cities’ environments and open spaces, aiming to demonstrate how, through landscape architecture, it is possible to respond effectively to many of the ecological and social hardships that the Green Deal aspires to alleviate. It was signed in 2019 by all of the member countries of the Union, seeks to reverse the climate change trend by establishing a series of goals for improving environmental and economic quality for 2030 and 2050 and also aims to enact social justice in rural areas and in the urban environment. Landscape architecture, which is the art of combining the physical and immaterial elements in cities’ open spaces, is taken in this work as the method of interpreting the existing environment. The description, together with the narrative analysis of five selected site-specific urban renovations projects carried out in the last 15 years by some of the main contemporary landscape architects, such as Micheal Desvigne, Peter Latz and Gilles Clément, demonstrates, by means of their empirical experiences, the benefits of the landscape design. It is able to match both the ecological need expressed in the Deal and to respond to the ambition of an open and rightful city, as called for by the theories of Sennet and Balmori. In order to reach the just transition and to leave no one behind, and to meet and to implement the Green Deal objectives, the new, positive and long-lasting explained transformations require the consideration of landscape design, in all its material and immaterial components, as a theoretical synthesis capable of obtaining a practical application in fighting climate change, and it should be considered and included in city management policies and in the Deal, too

Climax Change! How Architecture Must Transform in the Age of Ecological Emergency

The opening phrases in Pedro Gadanho’s Climax Change! are, in his words, a “shock proposal” (p. 14). He tells us that we have to stop making new buildings. We need this, says the author, to save us from climate change. This idea is quite provocative and interesting at the same time; it could be click-bait to convince the reader to go on with the book to learn how to make it rea

Forme d’acqua e codici dell’abitare. Il ruolo dell’acqua nella costruzione dei comportamenti di riscatto sociale ed ambientale degli abitanti di Palermo

Water in Palermo holds the city in check; it is its main front to the East being the sea. It closes its expansion towards the West with the rivers, streams and springs that flow from the Panormitani mountains. The wind keeps it free of fog, but it cannot dampen the dense and incessant presence of water in the air in the form of humidity. Over the centuries, those who have inhabited the city have had to come to terms with this natural element, which has been a source of joy in shaping the Conca d’Oro. It is as incredibly fertile today as it was then, and a source of despair at the flood- ing of the Kemonia and the marshy stagnation in the Mondello area. The continuous negotiation (which shows no sign of dying out) with water has determined ways of inhabiting the city and induced behaviours within the open spaces that are decisive for the quality of life in Palermo. They are much more resilient than the illicit and erroneous management of these forms of water that has taken place over the last 70 years. The cases of the districts of Danisinni and Villagrazia represent some examples from which it is possible to draw strategies and useful elements for the design of urban scenarios in which water has many different forms, from the most evident to the most hidden

Paesaggio Europa.Linee guida per l'attuazione della Convenzione europea del paesaggio

Traduzione italiana e commento critico delle linee guida per lʼattuazione della Convenzione Europea del Paesaggio, Cm/Rec (2008) 3 Iniziativa promossa a cura della Società Scientifica Italiana di Architettura del Paesaggio (IASLA): gruppo di lavoro 2020-2021: Daniela Colafranceschi e Gabriele Paolinelli (coordinamento), Fabio Di Carlo, Ludovica Marinaro, Maria Livia Olivetti, Emma Salizzoni

The Importance of Participation in Regeneration of Peripheral Urban Spaces: the Experience of “Serpentone Reload”

Suburbs are often very contradictory places. Despite great part of urban population live there, these parts of cities are mostly considered as degradation places. The topic of suburbs regeneration is relevant today. Nevertheless, often expensive interventions implemented by local authorities fail to regenerate their public spaces, increasing the degradation condition. This paper presents the experience of “Serpentone reload”, a workshop based on participatory reactivation of abandoned or underused spaces and buildings in "Cocuzzo/Serpentone" neighbourhood in Potenza (Basilicata, Italy). The workshop particularly focused on the reuse of the "Ship", an underground building with a park coverage completed in 2010 and designed by the firm Archea. The "Ship" has been forgotten and not used for long time, not only by the neighbourhood, but by the whole citizenship, because it has been perceived as an extraneous element and the result of an imposition from the top, definitely not the outcome of shared choices. During the workshop, the "Ship" (“Nave” in Italian language) has become an art centre called N.Av.E. (New Expressive Adventures – Nuove Avventure Espressive in Italian), a place capable to host temporary events (expositions, lectures, theatre and dance performance, movies projection, etc.). Such a choice has allowed the neighbourhood and the city to take back that “object” so hated as ignored. The experience is particularly significant, because it shows how low cost interventions, realized with citizens involvement and participation, could contribute to the regeneration of peripheral urban areas more than expensive and complex imposed interventions, which often do not take into account dwellers real needs and expectations

Reshaping the city ground-scape with vegetation

Innovative Design Experiences based on soil shaping on urban space

La Kalsa è un giardino. Resistenza e partecipazione alla vita urbana del centro storico di Palermo, dei ruderi di guerra e della vegetazione spontanea.

Palermo è molti paesaggi; è una geografia di luoghi esagerati in grado di generare una condizione di costante stupore in chi la attraversi. Le molte anime di popoli diversi che l’hanno abitata e di quelli che ancora la abitano costituiscono un mosaico fatto di relazioni strettissime e inedite tra piante, animali, uomini, mare e luce. Il presente contributo intende restituire una lettura (certamente non esaustiva in quanto sarebbe impossibile farlo), di alcune condizioni di convivenza che sono state osservate all’interno degli spazi aperti della città (in particolare nel suo quartiere Kalsa). Queste sono interessanti perché ci mostrano come legami spontanei tra specie viventi e oggetti diversi (perlopiù ruderi della seconda guerra mondiale) costituiscano luoghi di inedita bellezza e coesione sociale, funzionanti in tessuti urbani complessi. Difronte a tale evidenza emerge la necessità di stabilire nuove categorie interpretative dell’esistente. Ciò al fine di generare una tassonomia che identifichi i possibili ruoli attivi che le relazioni e le coesistenze già in atto possono avere all’interno del progetto della città (trasformandole ad esempio in giardini) e quali invece debbano essere disinnescate perché nocive per gli abitanti e per la natura.Palermo is a lot of landscapes. It is a geography of exaggerated places able to generate a condition of constant wonder in those who cross it. The many souls of different peoples who have inhabited it and who still inhabit it constitute a mosaic made of very close and uncovered relationships between plants, animals, men, sea and light. This contribution aims to explore - not in an exhaustive way - some conditions of coexistence that have been observed within the open spaces of the city (in particular of its Kalsa district). They are interesting because show us how spontaneous links between different species and objects (mostly ruins of the Second World War) constitute places of unprecedented beauty and social cohesion functioning in complex urban tissues. In front of this evidence there is the need to establish new interpretative categories of the existing, in order to generate a taxonomy. It could identify the possible active roles that the relationships and coexistences already acting can have within the project of the city (turning them into gardens, for example) and which ones should be defused because they are harmful to the inhabitants and to nature

Una basilica per il commercio

Il Migors center di Lucerna è stato realizzato tra il 1998 e il 2000, in seguito ad un concorso vinto nel 1995 dallo studio Diener & Diener. Il progetto, da una parte, riprende la forma e la dimensione degli edifici della città vecchia che lo circondano, dall\u92altra, consente di mantenere intatte le parti più antiche e più belle dell\u92Hotel Schweizerhof.La sagoma dell\u92edificio ricorda quella di una basilica e il volume si presenta come un blocco indipendente, pur essendo perfettamente inserito nell\u92ambiente circostante. La struttura del complesso è formata da uno scheletro di acciaio rinforzato che permette di disporre liberamente i diversi edifici ai vari piani. L\u92involucro è costituito da una serie di lastre di rame ossidato

Prinzessinengärten. Un orto-giardino sociale collettivo

Il contributo analizza l'esperienza e le implicazioni sociali ed ambientali del progetto di un orto sociale collettivo a Berlin

L'importanza del paesaggio residuale e del verde nella ridefinizione dello spazio Pubblico dell'abitare

Il contributo analizza l'importanza dei paesaggi di margine urbana per la riqualificazione di quartieri pubblic