RICERCA ITALIANA     

Research program

Mediterranean Spaces and Cultures. Measurement, Analysis, Comprehension, Evaluation and History for the Knowledge and Monitoring of Transformative Processes in the Mediterranean Area.

University Co-ordinator

Università degli Studi "Mediterranea" di REGGIO CALABRIA - ARCHITETTURA E ANALISI DELLA CITTA' MEDITERRANEA - REGGIO CALABRIA(RC)

Research Unit Leader

Massimo GIOVANNINI

Description

General Features
The research should study architectures and places in some of the relevant Mediterranean areas (Maghreb, Sicily, Calabria and minor islands) to point out:
- specific settlements;
- architectural emergencies
- territorial systems
The research is based on
- theoretical approaches to architecture;
- historical backgrounds
- remarks on urban and territorial development dynamics – related to cultural references able to desine common matrices and local peculiarities-.
Research tools include:
- record sources
- architecture and urban survey
- architectural, territorial and environmental representation of the places under examination
- a graphic analysis to know, verify and criticise the given case studies for a multicriteria and metaprojectual evaluation
Some of the sample studies- nomadic and rural architecture, troglodyte settlements, places of worship, marketplaces, living units at court, enclosures, architectural and urban structures seen as dynamic and cultural contexts in the territories they belong to- identify research areas.
Architecture and surroundings come from the multiplicity of relations that produced a place as time passed.
Morphology, technology, economy, climate, history and all of the so-called "cultural" factors build the identity of a place.
A representation of the various settlements in the given areas can become an instrument to analyse the changes in both an architecture and a town.
The purpose of this research, concerning a wide geographic area is to produce a reading method for the urban setting so to reflect on the elementary signs coming from the conceptual and metric instruments of survey design.
Disciplinary Features
The disciplinary area of this research must be pointed out to mark its boundaries and to indicate its time requirement. All the members of the team have experimented for ten years a well-tested approaching system to know and analyse places. Moreover, at first the team produced relevant studies on architectures and settlements in Sicily and Calabria; later on Mediterranean islands and countries have been studied too. Urban and architecture survey is the research method and is based on both traditional and computerized topographic instruments. Survey is a large-scale research tool made up including 1. definition of objects; 2. of principles, 3 . of criteria; 4. of ideas it is based on.
1. Definition of objects
The primary aims of survey are a critic and scientific knowledge (that is oriented, evaluative, verifiable and transmissible) together with an ordered documentation of the quantitative and qualitative validity (that is physical, spatial, metric, historical, referred to the state of repair…) of the architectural, archaeological and local patrimony.
2. Definition of principles
The results of survey are a) the building up of "models" that could be defined thematic under a disciplinary point of view (critic and scientific representations of physical reality with its metric, historical and aesthetic aspects); b) the building up of an "archive" as a place where knowledge (see previous point) can be filed, ordered and produced It is also conceived as a databank being elaborated as such. Its main point is to favour the relationship between document and monument -defined by the French school of historical writing that also referred to survey itself- (see Le Goff, Jacques "Document/Monument", Enciclopedia Einaudi, vol III, Turin, 1978).
3. Criteria
Like any other discipline, survey revolves around some fundamental critic ideas and the concept of "model" sums them up. Mimesis and measurement are the most important of them. They are concepts inherited from Classical and Renaissance culture. Analogy, homology and criticism (selection and judgement) are closely connected to the model.
The concept of mimesis is linked to that of truth (disclosure, aletheia); the concept of measure is linked to that of technique (perfect operating method; tekné). The idea of geometric (and semantic) coding implied and required by the "forms of representation" is central too.
4 Fundamental concepts
Besides being aimed at the knowledge and documentation necessary to build up the archive, the process and content of survey must be thematized ( that is, they have to be related to themes able to put them in context and also providing a planning and formal characterization ). Unlike aim (external) that concerns practical activity, theme is a precise (internal) cultural choice of the surveyor. The survey planning is directed by the chosen theme. Without exaggeration it's possible to say that aim is to function as theme is to typological, stylistic or formal choices of architecture.
Organizational Structure
After having pointed out the theme and research method, a three-step plan will be carried out.
Step One: finding basic material
Collecting maps, survey designs, an appropriate bibliography from specialized libraries ( study centres on North African architectures and cities).
A selection of the most relevant research areas ;a research path scheme; a logistic plan for study visits.
Step Two: Approaching areas; architecture and urban survey
Areas must be approached through appropriate investigations to evaluate the dimensional, geometrical and formal aspects of architectures and to put them in the right historical and environmental context.
Survey – as a way of reading architecture, a philological search for the architectural truth- reveals the reason for existence of a given architecture in a given place. It also proves the formal permanence of that architecture and sets principles to transform it as the plan develops.
The first contact will remark all the formal and local qualities of the built- up areas, also necessary to direct the surveyor towards the most suitable technique and practice; it will be used to set a work plan- , type and number of equipment, time required, type and number of graphs to draw-.
Survey methods ( direct and instrumental) will be chosen according to the specificity of the architectural system taken into consideration; in any case, methods should be combined to give excellent results.
After a selection of the samples surveyed through traditional and topographic instruments ( sketches, life drawings, manual survey), a survey representation will be carried out in reference to various reading scales and to the building up of 3D computer models.
The research unit also wants to produce graphic models of the most relevant areas, putting in evidence the combination of architecture and surroundings and giving life to traditional tridimensional models (through DTM, level curves or algorithmic reconstruction of surfaces).
Step Three: ontological deconstruction of the parts and value judgement
Survey and a deep knowledge of the places and architectures taken into consideration must lead to the finding of architectural paradigms able to give examples, formal models, constants and variables. As a result, Comparative Abacuses will be produced to know and select the topics to investigate. This step will be aimed at finding archetypes that, though historically endowed with a formal pattern and precise images, imply references to an " archaeology"( according to Michel Foucault's definition)and to theoretical and structural forms defining them as a type and a principle ( chronological, structural and genetic)able to give life to various forms of production. The archetype to recover can be seen as design material giving a formal and structural reason to all of the architectural elements so to favour a sustainable development of the plan.
Apart from the dimensional scale , the architectural organism can be referred either to an architectural element ( an inside from outside partition wall/system , an access gate/system to public/private areas, the paving of an horizontal surface …) or to something more complicated such as a house, a public building, a street, a fence, a marketplace, a district, a town.
The resulting picture of territory, surroundings and settlements can consciously influence the sustainable development of these areas. The principle of settlement analysed is turned into compositional principle. It's a question of combining the idea of history and memory to that of physical context. Sustainability can be traced back to the culture of the historical settlements ; atmospheric, climatic and local conditions, are all referred to space and time implications and made concrete by constant change. The latter is also able to sediment superimposed traces and to make them understandable according to the style and language of architecture.
Through various survey campaigns, following the researches of the Mediterranean City Final Synthesis Laboratory, architectural elements and organisms have been selected to do research.
Having the opportunity of studying and analysing settlements and architecture in Jabal Al Gharbi, experimented results could be applied to Libya and could widen a net programme still in progress in cooperation with some of the Maghrebi countries.