POLITECNICO DI MILANO/ Town Planning Design Workshop /a.y. 2014-15

Isabella Inti, coordinator/ Caterina Padoa Schioppa/ Paola Pellegrini

 POMPEII LABORATORY _ heritage and urbanism 

1. BRIEF

“Alarm in Pompeii, new collapse in the Temple of Venus and in the necropolis of Porta Nocera. On Tuesday the Minister Franceschini convene an urgent meeting”. Corriere della Sera magazine, 2^nd  March 2014

“A plan to save Pompeii. Too many mistakes in the past, now we focus on maintenance”. Corriere della Sera magazine, 11th April 2014

“Bohème and Carmen at the Great Teatro. Already started the hunt for the ticket. Pompeii opens to the opera. Franceschini explains the project”. Corriere del Mezzogiorno magazine, 9th September 2014

Over the dense fabric of Naples and its gulf, the excavations of Pompeii and Herculaneum, the landscapes of the baroque villas and the pulviscular area spread at the foot of Mount Vesuvius, are a city of 700,000 inhabitants. This urbanized and layered landscape is a unique opportunity to reflect on the need to preserve the past and to create a more sustainable and aware present.

Italy has an artistic heritage of 5 thousand museums, monuments and archaeological sites, of which 49 are UNESCO sites. According to MIBAC (Ministry of the Property and Cultural Activities and Tourism) data in 2013, the 202 museums and the over 220 monuments and archaeological sites were visited to approximately 36.4 million people. First the Coliseum in Rome with 5,2 million people, second the Pompeii archeological site with 2,3 million visitors and third the Uffizi gallery in Florence with 1,8 tourists. The total revenues from all the Italian artistic heritage of around 113 million euro, it is almost equal to the income for the visit of the Louvre museum in Paris. Italy as other countries of southern Europe focuses on the artistic heritage conservation policies, while other states such as France, England, Sweden have managed to put the emphasis on more complex strategies of cultural production.

Pompeii (as well as Herculaneum) is the testimony of a city born in relationship with its landscape of Vesuvius and the sea. A landscape and archaeological site later explored since the ancient times and part of the “Grand tour”, the “Voyage of Italy”. The journey in Italy described in the literature by Lassels in 1620, by Goethe in 1817, by painters of the XIX century such as Pompeo Batoni, Canaletto, and Piranesi. An archaeological landscape that has yet to find a balance with urban sprawl born at its edges and which could be enhanced with the tools of an ecological approach to the transformation of urban land.

In the Anglo-Saxon tradition the intertwining of ecology, landscape and urban design is particularly felt and is the basis of a significant tradition of interdisciplinary research. In the last twenty years a theoretical and urban design expression, in this sense, is Landscape urbanism. During the Town Planning Design Workshop will be shown the main projects, strategies and key concepts of landscape urbanism defined by Shane, Corner, Waldheim, Mohsen, Najle such as: process over time, the staging of surfaces, the imaginary, the network systems, collisive site, eco-field, landscape unit, the thickening of the ground…

However, the facts of chronicle and the data provided by the Department to Cultural Heritage also speak to us of another approach to territorial development. Many agree that culture is more and more the business of cities (Zukin 1995), but to what extent do cultural activities become mechanisms for economic development and urban regeneration? What types of cultural activities, urban transformations and programs do municipal governments support? Which are the intended goals and benefits of these interventions? How do cities balance urban, economic, social and educational goals in pursuing cultural strategies?

Starting from the paradigmatic case of Pompeii, an archaeological heritage site, which is currently not boosted and poorly managed, we will investigate several case studies worldwide representing three types of cultural strategies: “entrepreneurial strategies”, “creative class strategies” and “progressive and heritage strategies” that describe the goals, the urban transformation focus, the types of cultural projects and programs, the target audiences.

The aim of the course will attempt to answer the following town planning design question: what vision, what tools and strategies we need to adopt for the enhancement of Pompeii landscape and humanity heritage archaeological sites? In the goal of enhancing the area, what can be the design relation between the archaeological remains, clearly defined in its dimension and value, and the developing contemporary city? Should integration or separation of the Pompei heritage site and the contemporary diffused city be expressed in cultural terms (acknowledgement of the exceptional frozen past) or can they become infrastructure, feasible physical connection, open spaces for tourism and scholars? How can the constraints, i.e. the denial to build anything around the remains (zona di rispetto, area di vincolo) become a hint for design? How can heritage become a tool for re-qualification of periphery? What is the proper dimension of intervention for enhancing the heritage and the surrounding metropolitan area? Should interventions be public or private? What is the possible coexistence of informal and formal design tool and solutions dealing with a high expression of formality as the archaeological heritage is? What are the consequences of mass tourism and how can they be controlled or guided with planning and design?

We will also compare and verify if the tools, strategies and vision given by the student project groups deviate from the new Great Pompeii Project 2015, recently drawn up by a pool of experts and adopted by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage.

2. METHOD

The course will be organized as follows:

1_In the first part “Pompei, archeological heritage in my country”,students will start by comparing Pompeii to other protected site and international case studies, and following with a broad investigation and critical reading of Pompeii and its territory. The aim of this first investigation is to grow on specific knowledge and to build a first cultural and strategic reading of the topic. Students will start with an individual exercise and will be divided in 7 groups by the end of October, before the fieldtrip to the archaeological site of Pompeii and its landscape between Naples, Herculaneum, Vesuvius and the sea shore.

2_In the second part students, divided in 7 groups, will progressively develop an operative material with a bottom-up approach, that is by selecting one specific theme – i.e.: landscape and landform of the volcano region; urban tissue and informal settlements; urban structure of the Roman city of Pompeii; agricultural system and drosscapes; the touristic machine; the infrastructural system; borderscapes and administrative constraints – and working at multiple scales simultaneously. The production of this stratified system of knowledge will be interpreted and will drive the design phase. This period will end at the end of November.

3_In the final part students will be asked to develop a site-specific urban planning projects, with a multi-scale and time-based programmatic strategy and a formal proposal. The initial theme will be driving but not limiting the richness and variety of the projects.

We expect from students to react to the ambitious course program with a project that is capable to interpret the multiple contemporary approaches to urban design, that is to build-up a consistent narrative in which lanscape urbanism, open design guidelines, scenarios, cultural and architectural features may clearly emerge. By the beginning of January the class will establish a common date for the final exam in February. 

3. CALENDAR

First week, 9-10 Oct. – presentation of the Laboratory, explanation of the first Assignment

Second week, 16-17 Oct. – review of the first Assignment, lectures

Third week, 23-26 Oct. – introduction to the Laboratory design issues, subdivision in groups

Fourth week, 30 Oct / 2 Nov. – field trip to Pompei

Fifth week, 6-7 Nov. – first impressions, first maps, lectures

Sixth week, 13-14 Nov. – mapping Assignment, first development of design proposals and selection of specific theme

Seventh week, 20-21 Nov. – first formal presentation of groups design proposals

Following weeks: development of design proposals, lectures and reviews

4. EVALUATION MODE

First part | “Pompei in my country” = 10

Second part | Investigation and site visit = 5

Third part | town planning project = 10

Third part | questions on the topics of the lectures and 2 books and 2 articles (of your choice) = 5

5. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books

R. Bentley, “The last days of Pompei”,London 1834

E. Sereni, Storia del paesaggio agrario italiano, Roma-Bari,1961.

V. Gregotti, Il territorio dell’architettura, Milano, 1966.

A. Rossi, L’architettura della città, Padova, 1966.

R. Venturi, D. Scott Brown, S. Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas, Cambridge, 1972

G. De Carlo, Architecture is Too Important to Leave to the Architects , in: O. Bouman and R. van Toorn, The Invisible in Architecture, London 1994, 382-389

A. Geuze, WEST8 Landscape urbanism, 1995

R. Koolhaas, Whatever happened to urbanism?, in R. Koolhaas S,M,L,XL, New York, 1998

J. Corner,Recovering Landscape: Essays in Contemporary Landscape Architecture, ed.Princeton, 1999

S. Boeri/Multiplicity, R. Koolhaas/Harvard project on the city, S. Kwinter, N. Tazi,H.U. Obrist, MUTATIONS, Barcelona, 2001

Multiplicity, USE-Uncertain States of Europe, Milan, 2003

M. Zardini, G. Borasi, I. Inti, L. Molo “ASFALTO. Il carattere della città”, ed. Electa, 2003

AAVV.“The construction of the project, International Competition Porta Nuova Gardens”,Ed. Alinea, 2004

M. Mohsen, C. Najle and Architectural Association, Landscape Urbanism: a Manual for the Machinic Landscape. Architectural Association London,2003

S. Boeri, A. Lanzani, D. Cologna,E. Granata,I. Inti,C. Novak, Esperienze e paesaggi dell’abitare, AIM Abitare Segesta, 2006

P. Pellegrini, P. Viganò, Comment vivre ensemble, prototypes of idiorhytmic conglomerates and shared spaces, Quaderno del dottorato in Urbanistica n.3, Officina Edizioni, Roma 2006

C. Waldheim, The Landscape Urbanism Reader, PrincetonArchitectural Press, New York 2006

A. Aymonino, V. Paolo Mosco, “Contemporary Public Spaces. Un-volumetric Architecture”, es Skira, 2006

B. Secchi, Prima lezione di Urbanistica, Ed. La Terza 2007 

Multiplicity.lab, Milano.Cronache dell’abitare, Ed. Bruno Mondadori, 2007

A. Meroni, Creative communities. People inventing sustainable ways of living, Ed. Poli Press 2007

G. La Varra, M. Peran, F. Poli, F. Zanfi, POST-IT CITY. Ciutadts ocasionals, ed. CCCB Barcelona, 2008

Raumlabor Berlin, Acting in public, ed. Jovis Verlag, Berlin 2008

C. Padoa Schioppa, Transcalarità e adattabilità nel Landscape Urbanism, ed. Aracne, 2010

M. Giberti, A. Valenti” Archeonet. Archeologia, paesaggio, turismo”, ed. 22publishing, 2011

Architecture for Humanity, Design like you give a dam (2), Ed. Abrams, 2012

P. Ciorra, M. Guccione, Re-Cycle. Strategies for Architecture, City and Planet, ed. Electa, 2012

P. Pellegrini, Prossimità. Declinazioni di una questione urbana, Mimesis Editore, Milano 2012

B. Steiner, “Superkilen  a project by BIG, TOPOTEK1, SUPERFLEX”, ed. Arvinius+Orfeus Publishing, Stockholm/Oslo, 2013

I. Inti, P. Tamburelli, V. Pizzigoni, “A Reboot Scenario: the case study of Brindisi SIN area”, ed. Politecnico di Milano, 2013

I. Inti, R. Basha, G. Cantaluppi, G. Mydyti, What happens to the streets of Pristhina? Temporary architecture and elective community devices,  International Summer School University of Prishtina Hasan Pristina,2013

I. Inti, C. Padoa Schioppa, P. Pellegrini, “Common Ground Laboratory: Prishtina”, Politecnico di Milano,2014

I. Inti, G. Cantaluppi, M. Persichino,”Temporiuso. Manuale per il riuso temporaneo di spazi in abbandono, in Italia”, ed. Altreconomia,2014

C. Bianchetti, “Territori della condivisione. Una nuova città?”, ed. Quodlibet, 2014

Magazines

Topos 26 Internationale Bauausstellung Emscher Park / 1999

Lotus Navigator 02 – I nuovi paesaggi / 2001

Lotus Navigator 05 – fare l’ambiente / 2002

Lotus Navigator 07 - The landscape of the freeways / 2003

Lotus 128 Reclaiming Terrain / 2006

Topos 66 Landscape Strategies, T. Capatti, Metrobosco & Co /2009

Topos 71 -Landscape Urbanism. This issue includes contributions from C.Waldheim, J.Corner, M. Mostafavi, A.Geuze, S. Drake, Kongjian Yu, F. Steiner, D. Almy, 2010

Domus 962, Min to Max, The quick sand of Common Ground/ 2012

Lotus 150 Landscape Urbanism / 2012

Lotus 153 Commons / 2014

Articles and essays

I. Inti,“I giardini autorganizzati di una città partecipativa”and “Il Metrobosco”, in Il verde a Milano, edited by A. Castellano, G. Crespi, L. Toeschi, collana AIM, Ed. Abitare Segesta Cataloghi, 2007

I. Inti,Temporary use.A call for possible public policies, in“Abitare il futuro…dopo Copenhagen”, UNI Federico II, Napoli, 2010

I. Inti, What is temporary reuse?, Territorio 56, 2011.

I. Inti, Made in Mage: the challenge of temporary reuse practice to enable micro-economies, in Industrial Patrimony 26, Ed. TICCIH, 2011

I. Inti, “RE-USE: The construction of a Common Good trough the temporary Reuse of leftover urban setting”, in ZAWIA#00. CHANGE. Sept. 2012

P. Pellegrini, Visualizing Density, J. Campoli, A. S. MacLean Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2007, book review in Planum, on-line European Journal of Planning, 2007

P. Pellegrini, The re-definition of collective image. Between representation and politics in a northern Italian middle size city, in My Ideal City. Scenarios for the European City of the 3rd Millennium, a cura di S. Marini, Università IUAV di Venezia, Venezia 2011

P. Pellegrini, Recycling planning: 2 different positions, in Recycling city. Lifecycles, embodied energy, inclusion, edited by L. Fabian, E. Giannotti, P. Viganò, Giavedoni editore, Pordenone, 2012

P. Pellegrini, C. Conti, The enhancement of dismissed military barracks, a method for brownfield recovery, in TECHNE - Journal of Technology for Architecture and Environment, North America, 3, Apr.2012, Firenze University Press

C. Padoa Schioppa , Elsewhere City Mapping and Diagrams as generative tools in urban design in R.M. Bicher, S. Blachefellner, W. Hofkirchner (ed.) “European Meetings on Cybernetics and Systems Research” Vienna, Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science 2012

C. Padoa Schioppa, Predicting the evolutive city in “Systems.Connecting matter,life, culture and technology”, M. Füllsack (ed), Institute of Systems Sciences, Innovation and Sustainability Research, 2013

C. Padoa Schioppa, “Geometry for Sentimental Learning. Topological Thinking in Form Creation (2013) in “Knowing (by) Designing”. Brussels, LUCA Saint-Lucas School of Architecture Ghent / Brussels

P. Pellegrini, Spatial planning for agriculture with archaeology. The preservation of Aquileia heritage, in Atti della XVII Conferenza nazionale della Società Italiana Urbanisti, Milano, 2014 

Film

M. Caserini and E. Rodolfi, “Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei”| time 72’ min, 1913

M.C. Cooper and E. B. Schoedsack. “The Last Days of Pompeii” | time 96’ min,1935

R. Rossellini “Voyage to Italy” | I. Bergman, G. Sanders| time 97’ min, 1954

JL. Godard “Le mépris” (Pompei) | B. Bardot, M. Piccoli| time 105’ min, 1963

Websites:

http://www.abitare.it/

http://www.domusweb.it/it/home.html

http://www.fieldoperations.net/

http://www.filipporomano.net/

http://www.ilmetrobosco.it 

http://www.landscapeandurbanism.com/

http://www.editorialelotus.it/  

http://www.multiplicity.it

http://primaveraromana.wordpress.com/

http://www.temporiuso.org/

http://territoridellacondivisione.wordpress.com/

http://www.toposmagazine.com/

http://www.topotek1.de/

http://www.west8.nl/

http://whc.unesco.org/fr/list/829/video

4. EVALUATION MODE

First part | “Pompei in my country” = 10

Second part | Investigation and site visit = 5

Third part | town planning project = 10

Third part | questions on the topics of the lectures and 2 books and 2 articles (of your choice) = 5