De Sola Morales / De cosas urbanas
Kevin Lynch / What time is this place?
“The most difficul wastelands to convert are those that are occupied and used, attachments interests and activities are intimate part of the conditions of the site. Coming to terms with those conditions and allowing the users to join the process of waste removal and rebuilding… stimulate residents and property owners to express personal intentions and hopes.”
“The preservation of older structures would otherwise be encouraged only where they had clear present value: characteristics of space, economy, durability, comfort or esthetic. The exposure of successive eras of history and the insertion of new material that enhanced the past by allusion and contrast would be ecnouraged, the aim being to produce a setting more and more densely packed with references to the stream of time rather than a setting that never changed. “
“i have suggested the c reatino of areas retarded in technology – where new devices are prohibited until after long waiting periods fave passed and even then admitted only if there is an explicit decision to accept them – where life goes at a slower pace and there are many features remembered from chidhood. These areas would make intriguing vacations for some and a welcome refuge from the anxieties and discontinuities of the world for others.”
References:
Kevin Lynch, What time is this place?, 1966, p. 232-238
Aldo Rossi / The architecture of the city
“Areas of reference with little perceptive content but useful as organized concepts and distinguished between introverted neighborhoods, facing themselves with little reference to the surrounding city and isolated neighborhoods that are independent of their area.”
“[..] but it could lead to linguistic research that testifies to deeper layers of the structure of the real and therefore of the urban reality [..]”
"Convenient for elementary classifications, merely made instrumental without claiming to derive from this same rationale the explanation of the most complex facts."
"If we consider the function as a principal, we must understand the type as the organizational model of this function."
"If the facts urban areas are a mere organizational problem, they can not show continuity in their individuality, monuments and architecture have no reason to be, they say nothing to us. "
"We simply do not argue that there are no different scales of study, but it is inconceivable to think that urban facts are somehow offended because of their size [..]"
"An urban fact determined by a function is simply not usable beyond the explanation of that function. in fact we continue to enjoy elements whose function has been lost over time; the value of these facts lies solely in their form. Their form is entirely part of the general form of the city [..]"
References:
Aldo Rossi, The architecture of the city, 1966, p. 39 - 41 & 60 - 78
Strategical Bibliography
In this part we try to find some bibliographical referencies for the significance of the urban space and in order to find out some ideas on how to manage it. By studing post modern architects and architecture theorists we summarize some important passages of their masterpieces. The analysis is not focused on particular project but on the strategies they intraprended to define the morphology and characteristics of the urban realities. Here we present some quotes from their books to take inspiration.
“I firmly believe that the ideal role of the architect in the city is not necessarily to invent ways or solve problems, but to create meanings, add relationships, clarify what is dark and enrich what is convoluted.”
“The scale of the project is not in the dimension of the work, but in the relationships that it is capable of exploding. The scale, we repeat again, is a relative measure, a proportion between the transformations that we propose for its incidence in the general urban structure, in the mental comprehension of all the constructed space. ”
"The strength of the place is, in the periphery, the absence of place in the classical sense, that is, the absence of determinations marked by the history of the locus." "In the cities of europe, the symbolic and conventional strength of the centers Traditional has reduced, in recent years, the ability to imagine other urban fabrics."
"[..] periphery is everything that has no continuity, or ripeness, or system. But projecting the periphery does not necessarily mean putting it in order, or helping to complete or redeem it. Because the vindication of order against disorder, as social demand of the peripheries, is only half true. The relations between the urban order and the social form have often proved their independence."
