Atlas des visions. Une mnemosyne pour la ville
MANIFESTO
The research’s object is the relationship between architecture and the city.
The research uses the city of Rome as a starting point, acknowledging it as a model, treating it in a universalistic vision, appealing to its uniqueness.
The research does not deal with this relationship in historical or evolutionistic sense: it follows a more abstract reasoning of figures, establishing patterns, suggesting a projection of the XXI century.
The research deals with visions of the city, in the double meaning of this word: vision as seen, vision as project.
The research’s starting point is the acknowledgement that architecture today lacks the appropriate tools to include the whole context.
The first one of these tools remains the analytical, cognitive, comparative sketch, that is said to be outdated by computer graphics and by the interactive and parametric tools.
The research offers to use, as a second tool, the point of view on the city of some contemporary photographers, because photography is one of the arts that better succeeds at containing the project and its realization: a proper tool to understand the reality.
To understand the reality and being able to interpret it through the project is fundamental both for the architecture and for the city.
The research’s structure follows two units that are treated in parallel.
The first unit concerns the architectural and urban figures in Rome. The research looks for a way to question them again, showing conflict between the heterogeneous materials of the history of the city used in the sketch, because the city of Rome is a universal paradigm.
The second unit focuses on a series of images of contemporary photographers.
The research intends then to investigate the practice of collaboration between architects and photographers and the way architects today exploit the “planning look” of photographers in particular.
The research establishes a dialogue between the two units, through the construction of a graphic instrument.
A series of methodological (procedures) references – both past and present – to the world of architecture and art are required to introduce the aforesaid instrument.
The references do not anticipate the sketches of architecture that will come later, neither the photographers' images. They underline the way the sketches and the images influence each other.
The graphic instrument – a creative job that required a proper scientific rigor – becomes the specific representation of the research, its practical application.
The practical application leads to a comparison between the analytical sketches of Rome and the interpretations of the images of the contemporary photographers, trying to patterns and relationships imagining new representations.
The practical application becomes a sort of collaboration between architecture and contemporary photography: the sketches (the plants, the axonometries, the perspectives) will be placed side by side, will be put in relationship or in opposition to the images of city (as it already happens in some exhibitions such as the Biennale exhibition and in some publications).
The presentation of the research follows its process, starting with the description of preliminary studies of the possibilities of operation and the core borings, that are essential to establish the rules of rewriting necessary to accomplish the instrument. The studies and core borings become a full part of the research.
The research selects some contributions, it identifies various points of view, extrapolating them from the native context, and connects them.
The volume, that is a further practical application, has a structure that mirrors that of the research.
The volume further sets relationships: putting the images side by side with the following pages, it identifies resemblances, underlines differences and sets contrasts.
The treatment is separated in two units: in the pages to the left: Rome, urban figures; in the pages to the right: images of city (the read can chose to start whether from the pages to the left or from the pages to the right).
To facilitate reading, Rome’s text is always in "bold", the contemporary photographers’ text is always in "light".
The relationships between the two parts are explained in the chapter of the practical application that deal with the architectural and urban figures of Rome and the contemporary photographers, where the texts and the images dialogue.
The practical application is constituted for the most part from extracts of texts, introductions to essays, lectures, magazines, catalogs, newspapers, letters and personal diaries, transcripts of film. The images are scans or photo of original historical sketches, reproductions of magazines and catalogs, images "stolen" (P. Parreno) online.
Some are used without modifications, others are cut, isolated, combined, faded and desaturated, from time in time, in order to serve a different purpose.
Each of the two parts is organized in a way to guarantee an increasing importance of the images.
Beginning from this manifesto, that is made only of words, the figures are progressively inserted and become the main characters in the chapter of the practical application. None of the used images are original material.
The research exploits informed works (N. Bourriaud) in order to express a new thought.
The research has been conducted through the analysis of hundreds of images of projects of city.
The selection, the approach, the overlap, the juxtaposition, the grouping of all these images have conducted to the individualization of eight themes that turn out to be the principal matters of interest of some contemporary photographers and that they are inherent to the projects of the past taken as reference.
The volume is not an instrument that has been filled with images. The images through the instrument created the volume.
Equally the research has operated with the "practical application/writings." The texts were written from the analogies or to the contrasts that showed.
Sometimes the images rearranged the texts. Sometimes the texts influenced the images.
The research never changed the method of "assemblage" chosen initially, as the latter was used as a guiding thread.
The research never tried to force relationships in one way or another.
Since the beginning, the images expected a necessary position, in opposition or in correspondence to the sketches for Rome. But the relationships were not visible. Hence the need for the instrument.
Atlas of Vision. A Mnemosyne for the city
ROME, URBAN FIGURES
Villa Adriana, Iconografia del Campo Marzio, Centro Mondiale della Comunicazione, E42, Proposta per Roma Est
IMAGES OF CITIES
Bas Princen, Thomas Demand, Gabriele Basilico, Thomas Struth, Francesco Jodice
PhD in Architecture and Urbanism - Avril 2015
School of Architecture in Italy: Università G. D’Annunzio Chieti – Pescara, prof. Francesco Garofalo
School of Architecture in France: Ecole Nationale Superioure Paris – Belleville, prof. Beatrice Jullien
PhD Student Roberta Scocco