FRAGILE Landscapes.
The 2019 edition of the OC OPEN CITY International Summer School has as its goal a design discussion about a key theme of our contemporaneity: the fragility of the landscapes. Piacenza city and territory present themselves as exemplary case studies: medium urban town but with strong relations with the Milano conurbation in the north and the Emilian one in the south-east, territories with pressures and processes of instability and fragility that require a continuous redefinition of physical and spatial - but also social, political and economic - structures. The aim of the workshop is oriented to develop "... a new horizon of reflection against the backdrop of the dialectic that has always supported change and that still today presents itself behind the changes of a future, all oriented towards innovation, and a past capable of inducing us easily towards a Retrotopia which is guarantor of certainties and stability that had once been lost. A change in the look ... Within which any narrative left suspended, every writing stopped, every open configuration must be viewed with different eyes, capable of ... not proceeding for "demonstrative" and "exemplary" projects, but to construct, intertwining the signs of the past with an increasingly unforeseeable future, a conscious modification of the existing, always looking for a "present" to be transformed and shared in a more attentive way, aware of its own uncertainty and fragility”. (Guya Bertelli, Paesaggi Fragili, Aracne, 2018, translation)
The students called to carry out an intense planning reflection on Piacenza areas are 100. The selection takes place through curriculum and portfolio evaluation by the direction. The work will be assisted by a team of 40 among teachers and tutors.
CRITICAL BACKGROUND
The critical background is represented by a common horizon, which sees fragility as an important resource for contemporary territories. It could be said that many events happened in recent times, although their tragic outcomes, have turned out to be important opportunities not only to reflect on the issue of vulnerability and imperfection of our territories, but also to confront in non-elusive terms with real conditions, checking its consistency facing urgent and unexpected questions. In this sense, the landscape seems to test itself in this topical role, exactly starting from its own fragility and its own uncertainty. A fragile landscape is a weak, porous, always unfinished landscape, and for this reason it’s ready to live its own challenge by making itself available to change; it is the landscape of the new introverted suburbs, of the emergency, of the abandonment and of the sharing ... They are themes that open up new opportunities and new reflections for the project, exploring innovative directions and even experimental solutions.
TOPICS
The 2019 edition, in continuity with themes discussed in the previous editions, focuses attention on the multiple and complementary forms of integration between project, landscape and society, in a historical phase that requires a continuous redefinition of its own paradigms as a result of the fragility that seems to govern our environments. In particular the projects will be the occasion for a wide-ranging reflection on the solicited questions. On this background, the direction and coordination of the workshop identify some paradigmatic places in the enlarged territory of Piacenza, taking the city and the territory as an exemplary case-study of contemporary conditions. The places and environments that are proposed to students as a basis for discussion and interdisciplinary comparison - and as an object of design experimentation - spring from a thematic matrix capable of reinterpreting the relationship architecture-city-landscape in the contemporary world. In this perspective a wide repertoire of case studies will be activated and made available, considering them potential factors in terms of regeneration, reuse and recovery of an urban quality of living.
Part of the intensive design experience will be the activation of one or more areas in order to build a common and shared vision, also capable of involving new inhabitants. The project will be communicated, during mid-term and final presentations, with the traditional instruments of design discipline (drawings and above all models, in line with the formative approach of Piacenza Campus of the Politecnico di Milano) but also through a form of story-telling (on all, videos) up to a final installation capable of being contaminated with the methods of scenography. The complementary landscapes towards which the Summer School will direct the gaze coincide then on the one hand with the architectural fact itself, rooted in the local context, on the other they are strongly integrated with the urban and territorial dynamics (“the city is the landscape and the landscape is the city").
KEY-WORDS
Design
Fragile landscapes
Centre/Periphery
Emergency/Risk
Production/Sharing
The first edition of the International Summer School OC / OPEN CITY was held in 2010. Since then the initiative has established itself as a topical event becoming - both from the quantitative point of view (by number of students, over 1200, and teachers involved, more than 300) and qualitative (some of the most important figures of European and world architectural culture attended it) - one of the most interesting workshops at international level, able to focus on the most discussed among contemporary topics.
Titles and themes developed during the first 9 editions:
2010 Between the city and the river. Architecture of urban relations.
2011 Living the street. Landscape and public space in the places of metropolitan infrastructure.
2012 Landscape in sequence. Dwelling the wall.
2013 Nature in the city. From ecological landscape to architectural design.
2014 Architecture for a creative city. Piacenza towards Expo.
2015 Feeding (the) Landscape. A new green-active museum for agriculture.
2016 Lanscape in Motion. Innovative design for the Po riverside.
2017 New Next Nature. Scenarios for Piacenza 2050.
2018 Landscape 4.0. Sharing spaces for the future cities.
