The Circle: Geographies of Network vs. Geometries of Disjunction

“In a society of control,” Deleuze wrote, “the corporation has replaced the factory, and the corporation is a spirit, a gas.”1 This statement describes the immaterial nature of the notion of corporation, somehow denying its architectural roots, by depicting it as an entity in perpetual “metastability.”2 But if a corporation is defined by its immaterial flows, it is also described by the territorial basis of its nodes, legible in the headquarters of the corporation itself. Today, more than in the past, the network of intense online connection seems to have its fortified zones: IT campuses, research laboratories, and headquarters of the Internet giants appear as physical nodes for producing digital technologies and fostering global connectivity, but they also materialize as new strongholds of control and power. A kind of militarization makes these centers inaccessible and fortified garrisons, which paradoxically produces a spatial model that separates instead of connecting. Among the multinational technology companies, Apple is the pivotal example of a corporation serving a global marketplace while challenging, in the form of its headquarters, notions of virtual and physical space, connection and separation, centralization and colonization

Contro Vitruvio. La città giapponese e il suo ordine urbano | Against Vitruvius. The Urban Order of the Japanese city

La precisione dell’inquadratura e la preferenza per il dettaglio, che caratterizzano i disegni di Hiroshige Utagawa, rivelano la stessa rinuncia alla visione d’insieme che può essere intercettata nella configurazione planimetrica della città giapponese, caratterizzata da un tessuto urbano privo di ordinatio, dove concetti quali la collocatio e la dispositio risultano quasi retorici. Il Giappone fornisce infatti una particolare declinazione del progetto urbano, inteso come coesistenza sincretica, non sintetica, di pezzi e parti eterogenee

Contro Vitruvio. La città giapponese e il suo ordine urbano

La precisione dell’inquadratura e la preferenza per il dettaglio, che caratterizzano i disegni di Hiroshige Utagawa, rivelano la stessa rinuncia alla visione d’insieme che può essere intercettata nella configurazione planimetrica della città giapponese, caratterizzata da un tessuto urbano privo di ordinatio, dove concetti quali la collocatio e la dispositio risultano quasi retorici. Il Giappone fornisce infatti una particolare declinazione del progetto urbano, inteso come coesistenza sincretica, non sintetica, di pezzi e parti eterogenee

The Apple Case

Focusing on the relationship among architectural form, global market, and digital technologies, this essay investigates the controversial nature of the corporation, between real and virtual, local and global space. The writing contains two intersecting paths of reading. On the one hand, it focuses on the latest building of the Apple enterprise, which is analyzed through a formal as well as metaphorical comparison with some previous architectural experiences, including both the Stanford academic campus and the Royal Saltworks of Chaux. On the other hand, the paper focuses on the strategies used by Apple Computers in the construction of its competitive image, and passing through a reading of primary data, such as early experiences, products, commercials, and buildings, it analyzes the proper company’s style, that we can define as “Apple Architecture”

Lina Malfona, con Andrea Crudeli, Indagine sul Manierismo

In un’epoca caratterizzata dalla trasformazione della figura del progettista in quella di un interprete dello spirito del tempo – non più un autore quanto piuttosto un analista – potrebbe apparire controtendenza parlare di manierismo, un fenomeno artistico dalla forte componente linguistica, formale, dunque autoriale. Ma se il fascino del manierismo storico continua a persistere è perché questa tendenza pre- senta ancora una carica enigmatica, difficile da disinnescare. La sua ambiguità rende il manierismo impenetrabile, quindi ancora oggi intrigante nonostante tutti i suoi limiti, come lo spirito cortigiano, il ripiegamento derivante dalla consapevolezza della sostanziale impotenza dell’artista e la sua definitiva rinuncia a trasformare l’arte in “un’arma di coscienza civile”, come scrive Paolo Portoghesi

Essere Andrea Palladio. Il teorema di Peter Eisenman (Being Andrea Palladio. Peter Eisenman’s Theorem), in "Anfione e Zeto", no. 28/2018

Peter Eisenman’s study “Palladio Virtuel” is the result of his extensive analysis of and reflection on the work of Andrea Palladio, which he first gathered together in an exhibition held at the Yale School of Architecture in 2012, and subsequently expounded in a book, published in 2015. Eisenman brings to light an other Palladio, by highlighting contradictions and ambiguities in his work and by glimpsing certain states of tension between ideal and virtual conditions. But in his quest to unfold Palladio’s oeuvre, Eisenman is investigating himself, and that his analysis of this architecture coincides with his search for his own personal architectural strategy – and, subsequently, his demonstration of its exactitude. Thus, in the exhibition at Yale and, in an analogous manner, in the book, Peter Eisenman stages his version of Palladio. But, as always, within the staging hides a truth more profound than any obvious truth – in other words, more true than the truth

Il tracciato urbano. Logiche insediative e implicazioni architettoniche

l libro affronta il tema del significato complessivo e delle espressioni singolari del tracciato urbano, inteso come scrittura. La tesi è che il linguaggio architettonico non è avulso dalla città ma va considerato come l’esito di una dialettica tra logiche urbane e possibilità dell’edificio di autodeterminarsi come forma. La sistematizzazione dei segni costituenti il linguaggio insediativo conduce alla costruzione di cinque tipi di tracciato che descrivono situazioni planimetriche e spaziali esistenti o possibili. All’iper-tracciato, che esaspera la componente geometrico-razionale del tracciato reticolare, è contrapposto il radio-tracciato, caratteristico della moderna città per poli. Il tracciato a zolle, che ha come caso-limite l’anti-tracciato, è antitetico rispetto al tracciato aperto, che descrive oggetti architettonici disposti nel paesaggio seguendo le regole della concatenatio. Infine l’edificio-tracciato configura progetti introversi che comunicano il senso della durata.If the present crisis of the large-scale-project reveals the existence of a need for a strong critique of the theoretical and operational apparatus of the architectural disciplines, then the reassessment probably ought to be started from the notion of plan; at the same time, the role of the urban layout ought to be reassessed as well. Indeed, before identifying the insulae/block as the seed of a city, one ought to think over the persistence of the layouts as evidence of their generative essence. Excessively focusing attention on the architectural object negatively affects the urban vision by leading to neglecting other crucial issues. Among these ones: the reduction to ruins of defunctionalized urban fabric, the lack of relation between the macroscale of the building-containers and the scale of a quarter, by now vampirized by great centralizations; the rate at which the urban sprawl is pursued; last but not least, the wearing out in the formality of the city-as-a-spectacle logics. The question for which an answer is sought is whether it is still possible, having taken in consideration both the multiplicity and the dynamism of contemporary cities, to apply a layout capable of regulating their expansion. Which operative criteria have remained unchanged in the planning process and which changes were introduced? Which generative effects were introduced in the city by the modern infrastructures, by the present configuration of the theme park, which has imposed itself as an urban model, by the new frontiers of the transarchitectures, of the digital communities, of the virtual cities and of the sim-cities? Which innovations were introduced by the new technological dimension and by the urban segregation rules that have determined, for instance, the formation of the gated communities? Which will the future models, strategies and new development programs be? This treatment has been organized in four chapters: in the first chapter the term “urban layout” is redefined, by examining its multiple declensions, in the second one the construction systems and settlement procedures overlooking the formation of the textures are examined. The third chapter moves simultaneously toward two directions; the analytical-taxonomical one, through which some model plans were examined, extrapolating from them some foundational laws, and a more directly operative one, which aims at formulating project proposal. With the firm belief that researching is also planning, the final chapter of the book expounds three planning experiences in which some of the conducted analysis have been applied to reading and re-planning portions of the city, as well as to formulating urban layouts ex novo