Exhibition and Catalogue




			ESPAI P. Bologna Spazio Urbano

			City of Bologna
			Geographical and urban context Bologna is a city of about 500.000 inhabitants, located in the centre of the dense northern region Emilia-Romagna. It is the core of a productive region, Bologna is one centre of the regional centres. Bologna is a dense polycentric organism, at the metropolitan and urban level. It is the centre of the provincial district, based on deep social-economic relation in between the core and the other small municipalities. Even inside the urban organism, the city is composed and supported by different centralities, points of attraction inside and outside the historical city. In the last two years, the municipality has developed a masterplan of mobility, that contains the future vision and reorganisation of the mobility net infrustructure, in order to solve some chronic lack in traffic distribution (two subway lines for north-south connection, tram line on tyre along the east-west direction; double of the external ring). In the last ten years, new urbanistic instruments plan the urban territory following two basic principles: to dense urban spaces instead of consuming vergin territory; to develop urban transformation with public-private partnership. If it's true that on one hand, private areas are transformed, rehabilitated and “offered to the public use”, on the other one, we don’t assist to the rennovation of the pubblic spaces, considering them like the basic infrustructure around which urban life and social integration are possible. Usually, public space is considered like a pure traffic area (car mobility), a residual and interstitial space of private areas. On the contrary, the qualtiy life in a metropollitan city depends on the possibility for each citizen, city user, to use public space in different ways and times. This condition could guarantees a good level in urban safety and control.
			planned city VS practiced city The city is a phisical construction defined by the high density of its buildings and by different communities that live generally unknown among them. The urban is a behaviour, a life style defined by precarious connections and social relations that appears and suddenly desappears, in every kind of city spaces. This instability defines an huge system of interpretation of urban space, that is never completely territorialized, without restricted range or phisical limits. The School of Chicago defines this city as a hetereogentic system, that survives producing and attracting diversities of meaning, in opposition to an hortogenetic system, stricly centralized, hardly bureaucratized, monumental, linked to its traditions, generated by prevedible events. In an hetereogentic system, urban range coincides with temporary uses of city spaces, public one and private one, without distinctions. These are the spaces for human relations, where is possible to recognize all human documents that are able to configure different situations, autonomous conditions of conflict, superpositions, dispersion, agreement or disappointment. This instability could be represented with mobile topography: systems of moving spaces, without links to specified uses or activities. The phisical stucture of the city is descibed with the instruments of an anthropologic space, instead of those that are generally used for a geometric space. In fact, the anthropologic one is more open, available, practiced, claimed by everyone who uses this spaces temporarly. Urban and social space of the city couldn't have phisical limits, it appears and desappears by following situations, generated by human behaviours: those conditions define the urban character of the city. A geometric space is more closed in its limits, unquestionable, exclusive and claimed by a very restricted community, for example, as it happens in residential areas on the suburbs or in isolated business districts. These differences generate a dicotomy between PLANNED CITY and PRACTICED CITY. Planned city is completely defined by uses, monographic urban range, geometric and phisical spaces: an anti-urban attitude that generally configures lack of identity. Practiced city shows the coexistence of different social system without gerarchy, uncertain and changing situations, that give a huge cultural value to ambiguity and transitory. This is the urban laboratory, where a macro organization of minimal social elements, is compatible with extrimely different elements of micro sociality. The macro organization is described as a system of urbanity: people lives with forms of social coexistence and civilization, as "cives" of a democratic society that share devices of actions and dispositions of uses. This city is a society before every political act, the urbanity is a natural condition of human structure, but the goal is to obtain its permanence in daylife social system.
			espai p.Bologna spazio urbano_aims for a practiced city The principal mission of Espai p_Bologna spazio urbano is: to give to every kind of urban space the opportunity to produce and preserve social connections. Urban spaces are the minimal points of aggregations that configure the structure of this vitality: people needs these references as a system of social representation, essential for the construction of a urban identity. Today, an high percentage of these spaces is sacrificed to traffic, caotic mobility and to an unresponsable system of parking, most of all in the center of Bologna. The project of Espai p defines a different attitude that could be able to reconsider social spaces: the city needs high standards of quality life, this priority needs a new idea of city. This idea defines the city, at least, as a urbansocial environment, totally accessible and available by the "cives" of a democratic society. Finally, the idea of urban environment has to be based subverting the main thinking: pedestrians wins against car mobility. In short terms, the project wants to give a vision of a possible city and to be an instrument for municipality to approach the renewal of public spaces, following a complex and organic point of view. The proposal is comprehensive of a sort of silent catalogue for urban elements, which have to be adaptable and essential.
			Espai p.Bologna spazio urbano _ the project Espai p.Bologna is a proposal applied to all the extension of the city and of its public space, a sort of method of research. The historical city is a radial city contained by the circle of the old walls (nowadays first ring for car mobility). Linear streets, identified in urban corridors, run from the peripherical ring to the centre. Along these corridors and connected by them, there are piazze, aggregation points of the urban organism, The proposal of Espai p. considers the city like a compless organism, made of phisical aspects but more than this of social, economic and antropological elements. All of these are naturally and necessarly interrelated the ones with the others and are not separable. To investigate the public spaces of a city, means to understand and to focus the attention on the eterogeneity of these aspects and their mutual relationships. The basic idea is that the city can not be planned ex ante, and like every live organism, it is always moving and transforming, evolving itself in predicted but also unexpected directions. To act on the city, trying to figure out how could be in the future, means to paint a global vision the urban environment through datas and practiced elements. Espai p. is based on a specific method of investigating, the so-called ERA (Environment Risque Analysis), composed of three steps: scoping, screening and specific investigation. scoping generically, working on public spaces could means envolving the all net of streets and squares. The proposals combines dates from different actual planning instruments: Piano Generale Traffico Urbano, Piano Urbano Parcheggi and Programma di Riqualificazione delle Piazze. The result is a scoping field composed of: seven urban corridors, choosen like different model of urban connection, homogeneous and heterogeneous streets, and 30 piazze, point of connection of the urban tissue, inside and outside the historical city. The choice of these parts of city is in a way a preliminary point of view, because is based on the practice and experience of the city in everyday life. Still the scoping field is a subjective elements, like the city is built around real bahaviours and subjective situations. This analysis step values the mobility levels and fluxes, the urban quality and the social structure. The result is to figure out which are the critical points of the urban environment In between the seven corridors, the next step of screening has choosen to investigate only three of them (the ones in bold). Each corridor has been sintetically reassumed for a specific characteristic of predominant use: via guerrazzi > piazza VIII agosto night and student corridor piazza porta s.donato> piazza porta ravegnana university corridor via rizzoli > via oberdan > piazza VIII agosto pubblic aggregation corridor piazza dei tribunali > piazza s.stefano fashion-bourgeois corridor piazza porta saragozza > via collegio di spagna noble corridor s.croce > via del pratello > piazza maggiore administrative and official corridor via della grada > via riva di reno > via indipendenza pedestrian rambla-linear flooded park As far as the squares is concerned, from the initial thirty ones, only 13 have been selected to be investigated. The choice has been based on basic typological model: historical piazza p. verdi district piazza p. porta saragozza peripherical piazza p. bernardi intradistrict piazza via torreggiani cross piazza p. volta intramodal piazza p. galilei – p. roosvelt parking piazza p. trento trieste underground parking piazza largo finelli park piazza p. lennon garden piazza via musolesi woonerf piazza via della grada market piazza p. porta san mamolo church piazza p. san martino screening the corridors and squares investigated have been choosen because of their hidden attitude and vocational uses, because we recognize in them an urban value of integration and complexity. The principles of investigation intend to develop and discover the bars code of public spaces: uses at ground floors users < nomad users (pedestrians) and permanent users (residents and workers) mobility fluxes (distinguished in the different mode: car, cycles, public transport, motocycle) use of the soil < real (how that space is used) and hypothetical (how that space is subdivided on paper) materials and surfaces influence area (how the uses and the users can transform the space) incoherences (related with superposition and imposition of different uses) antropograpghy (groups of correlation in between urban situation, distingueshed in: correlation, superpostion, movement, stop, integration, dispersion, concentration) external influences (elements or events that deeply transform the “normal” urban process) partecipated public spaces < this last principle represents the conditio sine qua non to operate on public spaces. Every proposal has to be supported by the real interests and movements of the various stakeholders. Partecipation has to be intended as an instrument to build a program based on reality, it is necessary to determine the electric motor of a situation. The process that supports the project has to involve citizens, using instruments like interviews and partecipated meeting. This last point has only be enounced, but should be integrated in every transforming process of public spaces. specific investigation To apply this method to different spaces means to discover their specificity, which can be read as feedback element, that inform the proposal. The last step of the screening is a sort of focus in deep on the critical points of corridors; that means find out minimal aggregation units in which is possible to value the quality of urban environment. Finally, the idea of urban environment has to be based subverting the main thinking: pedestrians wins against car mobility.
			Vision of future configuration - operative principles It is necessary to distinguish two model of intervention on urban environment: heavy_substantial this case refers to solve some structural problem, related with: parking problems for residents which should be contained in underground parkings, the concept of public space integrated and multifunctional, the intelligent use of public soil in order to calm (if it’s not possible to solve it) the problem of urban safety. light_essential each public space has to be organised following a basic urban unity, made of: shadow-tree, stop-communication-bench, flooring, safety-night use-artificial lighting Moreover, requalify public spaces means to give them a new identity related with the genius loci of the specific space. In other words means to give new centrality to spaces usually considered as interstitial and latent.