81931 - Analysis of the Built Environment

Learning outcomes

This module focuses on the dynamics of urbanization as drivers determining recurrent space-production patterns, infrastructural networks, and digital systems over a territory. The module aims at developing an understanding and scenarios of valorization of the natural, built, and cultural heritage layered into the contemporary landscape continuum. At the end of the course, the student will be able to: understand the dynamics of urbanization; identify the recurrent space-production patterns; map the fundamental networks, systems, and services of the dwelling function.

Course contents

Organization of teaching modules:
The "Laboratorio di Design dei sistemi B C.I." is an integrated course consisting of the sections "Analisi dell’ambiente costruito - modules 1 and 2" (4 CFU) and "Service design per l'innovazione" (6 CFU). The analysis modules offer skills and tools for a reading of contemporary space propaedeutic to the innovative design of service to be offered to the communities that inhabit the diffuse urbanity of the present, between the city, the peri-urban, the countryside, and nature. The laboratory as a whole is aimed at acquiring skills useful for the master's thesis elaboration and integrates the contributions of the urban and landscape design sectors and the service design sector.

Contemporary space:
The recent explosion of human communities is often described as a process of planetary urbanization. The natural platform is altered extensively and profoundly by direct human actions and indirect effects. The existence of margins of pristine nature is debated. Human communities have explored and colonized natural space, extracted mineral and organic resources, infrastructured it, that is, they have modified the morphologies and metabolisms to limit the risks and optimize the advantages of the original habitats. The production of goods and services has proliferated, generating new artificial contexts. Streams of waste have been poured into the geosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere, altering fundamental processes. Semantic wefts have also been plotted over natural geographies, narratives and mythologies in search of a more complete meaning for individual and collective life: an assemblage of intangible heritage (cultural, aesthetic, morphological, geo-historical) that transforms the territory into the complex 'landscape palimpsest'. The wave of digitalization now fuels the exponential expansion of a new virtual space, a fifth dimension parallel to the sphere of material space and time. This network of limited materiality seems to acquire autonomous consciousness, under the denomination of artificial intelligence, and presents itself as a universal governing principle. Natural elements, artificial objects, human societies, hybrid networks, merged in a cybernetic collective, make up the 'contemporary landscape continuum', or more simply 'built environment', crossed by the risk of collapses and projected towards scenarios of intelligent self-regulation.

Analysis of the built environment:
In the course of "Analisi dell'ambiente costruito" we aim to develop skills, methods, and tools for reading, interpreting, and representing the apparatus that we have called 'contemporary landscape continuum'. Through applied exercises, introduced by simple theoretical sessions, we will address the problem of characterizing a contemporary landscape compound proposed by the instructors. The characterization will proceed through the identification of fundamental scales, levels, elements, and systems of the specific compound, the evaluation of these through relevant parameters, and the consequent mapping in informative graphic works. In particular, morphologies and metabolisms of the spheres of nature, society, and meaning will be analyzed and mapped: topographies of active and fossil natural systems, resources, ecosystem services, stocks and flows of matter, energy, information, integrity, biodiversity, resilience; infrastructural and structural networks built by human societies, primary and secondary production, tertiary activity, offers (products and services), consumption, ecological sustainability; sociopolitical regimes and governance systems established upon material systems, rights of the subject, collectives, and non-human entities, regimes of accessibility, protection, and management of common goods, advanced tertiary and quaternary activities, systems of synergy and competition with spatial compounds at a proximity, regional, continental, and global scale; self-perception, cultural awareness, sense of elective belonging, and capacity for inclusion of resident communities in relation to the landscape environment.

Goals:
From the overall analysis, will develop a critical interpretation of the new form of diffuse urbanity, or post-urbanity, identifying the fundamental attributes, prerogatives, and rights of citizenship in the 'contemporary landscape continuum'. The activities are in particular oriented towards forming an interpretation of the system of resources, among these the paramount common goods, and services to which the contemporary condition of diffuse urbanity has access or aspires. This critical interpretation will be preparatory to the development of projective scenarios of innovation in the offer, in the optimization or extension of the latter, and in the form of delivery of goods and services, which will be the focus of other design-oriented sections of the integrated laboratory.

Readings/Bibliography

The course bibliography will be composed of short excerpts from the sources below, weekly assigned by the instructors.

The built environment as a contemporary landscape continuum:

• Christian Schmid, Monika Streule, eds. (2023) Vocabularies for an Urbanising Planet: Theory Building through Comparison, Birkhäuser [Open Access]

• Neil Brenner, Nikos Katsikis (2020) 'Operational Landscapes: Hinterlands of the Capitalocene', Architectural Design, 90(1): 22-31 [Open Access]

Mapping/tracing to read the built environment:

• Carola Hein, Yvonne van Mil, Lucija Azman-Momirski (2023) Port City Altlas. Mapping European Port City Territories: From Understanding to Design, nai010 publishers
• Jill Desimini, Charles Waldheim (2016) Cartographic Grounds: Projecting the Landscape Imaginary, Princeton Architectural Press

Diffuse peri-urban and dense urban landscapes in the built environment:

• Martin Basdevant, ed. (2021) Transforming Landscapes: Michel Desvignes Paysagiste, Birkhäuser [B. Interdip. Ingegneria e Architettura, Bologna]
• Pablo Sendra, Richard Sennett (2020) Designing Disorder: Experiments and Disruptions in the City, Verso [B. Interdip. Ingegneria e Architettura, Bologna]

Ecosystem analysis of the built environment:

• Richard T.T. Formann (2019) Towns, Ecology, and the Land, Cambridge University Press [SBA online access / B. Alberti, Campus Cesena]
• Richard T.T. Formann (1981) 'Interaction Among Landscape Elements', in Proc. Int. Congr. Neth. Soc. Landscape Ecol. , Pudoc Wageningen [Open Access]

Elements of GIS and Open Data:

• Ramdani, Fatwa (2023) Exploring the Earth with QGIS. A Guide to Using Satellite Imagery at Its Full Potential, Springer
• QGIS Workshop and video tutorial, Harvard University [Open Access, https://gis.harvard.edu/qgis-workshop-and-video-tutorials-0]
  

Experiences in Radical Cartographies:

• Lorenza Pignatti (2023) Cartografie radicali. Attivismo, esplorazioni artistiche, geofiction, Meltemi
• Kollektiv Orangotango+ (2018) This is not an Atlas. A Global Collection of Counter-Cartographies, Transcript [Open Access]

Attraversamenti e derive nell’Ambiente Costruito:

• Rebecca Solnit (2018) Storia del Camminare, Ponte alle Grazie
• Francesco Careri (2006) Walkscapes. Camminare come pratica estetica, Einaudi

Photography and the Contemporary Landscape:

• Robert Adams et al. (2009) New topographics, Steidl
• Luigi Ghirri, Gianni Leone, Enzo Velati, eds. (2024) Viaggio in Italia, Quodlibet

Teaching methods

The course will develop through lectures and practical activities aimed at analyzing the built environment, the contemporary landscape continuum crossing the consolidated and diffuse city up to the systems of naturalistic relevance. The applied exercises will be integrated with theoretical contributions to support the design activity.

Assessment methods

Seminars including presentation and discussion of the results of the applied activities, during class sessions and at final exam.
The final exam of the courses of "Analisi dell’ambiente costruito" (4 CFU) and "Service design per l'innovazione" (6 CFU) will be taken jointly and the evaluation will be pondered.
The final exam will combine the evaluation of the design exercises developed within the individual teaching modules and an oral discussion on the contents of the activities carried out during the course.

Teaching tools

Lectures with slide projection; practical exercises on the topics of the course; analysis and representation of phenomena of space production in the contemporary landscape continuum.

Students with a form of different ability or specific learning disabilities (DSA) who are requesting academic adjustments or compensatory tools are invited to contact the teaching staff in order to coordinate on appropriate measures with the competent bodies.

Office hours

See the website of Roberto Pasini

See the website of Amir Djalali