Architecture and Visual Narrative

Architecture communication tools have been implemented in recent history by strategies and narrative artifices imported from cinema, comic, photo-journalism and infographic. The architect has integrated the traditional encoded drawing with more extensive narrative artifacts to expand the basin of its interlocutors and to describe underestimated aspects of architecture and design process. Through the illustration of recent significant experiences, this paper intends to highlight the great variety of images that can be attributed today to architecture and the lack of proper attention on this production by Visual Studies

Aesthetics of Resistance

The representations of the tensions induced by forms of resistance can transform solicitations, constraints, oppositions and limitations into occasions of emancipation and opening towards new forms of awareness. Can real aesthetics of resistance be identified? Photography, dance, art and architecture provide examples in this sense and suggest, with different forms but sometimes with similar purposes, different ways to interpret some manifestations of physical and social resistance. Resistance to gravity, considered as a natural condition at the origin of the development of architectural forms, represents a challenge also taken up by other artistic expressions that have always interacted with architecture. The mise-en-scene of the stresses induced by gravitational force can then create spaces for creativity and amplify the perception of the tensions that we unconsciously experience in everyday life. In this sense we speak of "fatal attractions”. Resistance can also be interpreted as a form of political and social opposition. The opposition of the individual or the community can counteract both the inexorable dynamics of urban transformation and the violence of political repression. This type of resistance manifests itself in the form of actions and forms of communication in which the resulting images become social acts. These are images that circulate in different media, images that speak to us from the walls of our streets, images that struggle to become architectural bodies but also ‘disobedient objects’. In some forms of resistance one can also recognize in the opposition the desire for self-determination of the individual and of the peoples. As expressions of the 'positive freedom of man', self-determination manifests itself through actions and artifacts that speak of the aspirations of peoples and their willingness to participate in the transformation of the places they inhabit. Between the plots of the informal city and the constantly adapting housing structures even in the consolidated city, both the artist and the architect can recognize forms of self-determination in which improvisation becomes an aesthetic category and a compositional strategy. In satisfying a condition of necessity, the individual always finds the opportunity to affirm his individuality as well, giving shape and image to his inhabiting. Only an accomplice look can recognize in the forms of resistance, often ‘weak’, all the strength they contain in their most intimate substance

Second-generation fluorous chiral (salen) manganese complexes

Sterically hindered chiral (salen)manganese complexes bearing long perfluoroalkyl substituents are synthesized and successfully employed as catalysts in the enantioselective (ee = 50-87%) epoxidation of alkenes under fluorous biphasic conditions

Hybrid Interfaces Made of Nanotubes and Backbone-Altered Dipeptides Tune Neuronal Network Architecture

Peptides constituted of backbone homologated α-amino acids combined with carbon materials offer interesting possibilities in the modulation of cellular functions. In this work, we have prepared diphenylalanine β- and γ-peptides and conjugated them to carbon nanotubes (CNTs). These hybrids were able to self-assemble into fibrillar dendritic structures enabling the growth of primary hippocampal cells and the modulation of their neuronal functions. In particular, following the deposition of the different nanomaterials on glass substrates, we have evaluated their effects on circuit function and geometry. The geometrical restrictions due to CNT nucleated nodes allowed growth of neuronal networks with control over network geometry, and exploring its functional impact. In diverse applications from basic neuroscience, the presence of CNT nodes may be exploited in brain interfaces able to convey highly localized electrical stimuli

Stratigrafie della memoria visiva

Il saggio introduce al lavoro dell'artista ungherese Istvan Horkay mettendo in evidenza i suoi legami con le avanguardie storiche e con la tradizione del media cinematografico. L'interpretazione del suo lavoro diventa un'analisi della visual culture contemporanea estesa ai diversi media

Cap. 4 - Lineamenti storici; par. 4.3;4.4;4.5;4.6;4.7

I paragrafi compilati trattano della storia del disegno architettonico dall'epoca classica all'Ottocent

Cile. Architettura

Panoramica degli sviluppi dell'architettura contemporanea cilen

Pelli, Cesar

Profilo biografico e opere dell'architetto Cesar Pell

Moderne abduzioni. L'architettura di Hariri & Hariri

Trattando del panorama dell'architettura contemporanea americana il testo introduce la ricerca progettuale di Gisue e Mojgan Hariri. Politica e poter, cultura globale, nuova tecnologia, composizione, costruzione e materialità, realtà 'paradossale', genere e identità, sono tutti temi che hanno influenzato il lavoro di Hariri&Hariri 'giustificando' la loro opera di attualizzazione della modernità