Out of the block : define a solid void inside the compact city

ABSTRACT

"...it is here proposed that, rather than hoping and waiting for the withering away of the object (while, simultaneously manufacturing versions of it in profusion unparalleled), it might be judicious, in most cases, to allow and encourage the object to become digested in a prevalent texture or matrix. It is further suggested that neither object nor space fixation are, in themselves, any longer representative of valuable attitudes. The one may, indeed, characterize the 'new' city and the other the old; but, if these are situations which must be transcended rather than emulated, the situation to be hoped for should be recognized as one in which both buildings and spaces exist in an equality of sustained debate. A debate in which victory consists in each component emerging undefeated, the imagined condition is a type of solid-void dialectic which might allow for the joint existence of the overtly planned and the genuinely unplanned, of the set-piece and the accident, of the public and the private, of the state and the individual…"

The collage, on the cover, is derived from the analysis of the morphology of two cities: Turin and Amsterdam. The first is an example of how the texture of the streets was and is an essential element for the characteristic of the city and building typologies. The second, however, is the opposite example. The courtyard building, it loses the contact with the road and develops the functions and the activities internally; it shows a contact with the street, in some cases, only through the facade. But then: you can create a union between these two systems? A collage within the city of Rome and in particular the district of San Lorenzo, which guests the positive characteristics of both? To answer this questions, it is reasoned, out of the Block.

The text quoted above, Collage City of Colin Rowe, has been an inspiration and guide to developing this research. It tried to set a method of analysis for the project, that allows creating a solid, composed of the main texture (roads and spaces), which, subsequently, can accommodate, in the voids spaces the object (the building). In this way, the two elements are connected and dependent on each other. The road, as space turn out to be the first guidelines for the design. The design of this solid consists of elements that are defined generally empty: streets, squares, courts ecc. they have been applied from micro to macro scale. The started point was a neighborhood analysis to understand how the texture of the roads already, go to effect the type of the neighborhood. Then the spaces and their importance for the characteristics of the neighborhood. After the analysis, we have moved to the design solid and voids. It started with the design of the streets, the square and then the design of the buildings. In it to have gone to highlight two different types of solid voids: the first, it is the typology of the building, the courtyard building; the second affect the building. This void going inside the building to create a void of light and vertical communication between all floors. In this project the court acquires an important aspect; it becomes an urban room, the strong permeability of the ground floor emphasizes this characteristic. Instead, this solid empty building is represented by a growing size floor patio. The presence of light creates fullness and emptiness games that emphasize the concept. To date today is increasingly clear that the design of new buildings is more and more used for the design of mausoleums, which later will lead to the formation of the small acropolis, to quote again C.Rowe, and that will bring the building to a loss of dialogue with the context. The purpose of this project is not to define a law or a primary between the two elements but to try and stable of rules for a continuous dialogue between both.