Articoli taggati con ‘urban spaces’
Is the architect an artist? Reconsidering the role of architects
Throughout this essay various possible conceptions of art and their relationship with architects’ responsibilities towards the community and their power in the creation of cities, will be considered. And the question on whether an architect is an artist will certainly continue to pose problems.
Why we should look at space, and more closely at cities
The importance of space in the critical study of society is finally being increasingly recognized after centuries of neglect, mainly thanks to the work of geographers who are trying to emphasize it as an advantageous and insightful standpoint to look at all other human sciences.
Eventful Cities: the relationship between city development and cultural events
In recent years slogans such as ‘festival city’ or ‘city of festivals’ have become common elements of the brand image of many cities. But why have events become so popular? What are the benefits of being ‘eventful’? What is the relationship between city development and cultural events? How do cities create, shape, manage and market events, and how can those events in turn shape the city, its spaces and its image? The creation and promotion of events such as festivals, shows, exhibitions, fairs and championships, have become a critical component of urban development strategy across the globe. No city believes it is too small or too complex to enter the market of planning and producing events, which have become central to processes of urban development and revitalisation, as cultural production becomes a major element of the urban economy. By adding an intangible component to the physical culture of the city, events provide a scenario in which human contacts are possible, however superficial, and there is the promise of communitas through the shared experience of ‘being there’.
VOICES: an urban map of sentiment
Talking about cities, from their planning to their living, means activating fields of dialogue with more and more heterogeneous connotations. It means being able to face, handle and argue not only themes with architectural features, concerning infrastructures, services and buildings, rather it presumes to involve human dimensions, somehow ephemeral, barely related to pure spatial and traditional paradigms. It means to interface with a complex system, with emerging qualities, which cannot be reduced to a merely static comprehension. It is the dynamic human grids, the multiplicity of the involved social interactions, information, people and emotions that, in an intense and shimmering exchange or game with the surrounding architecture, draft the tangible urban morphology.
Contemporary Art and Urban Regeneration in the City of Milan
In an enclosed space, such as a district, a city, or an area within the city, creative potential is intimately linked to the degree of knowledge and innovation, let alone the kind of cultural opportunities that space provides. On a global scale, the trend seems to be that of first creating and then promoting creative and cultural circuits in urban spaces in accordance with competitiveness and value production criteria. These strategies have multiple objectives. These range from the more intangible ones, such as finding a role for a city or an area within the knowledge economy, to the more measurable ones, such as those that show immediate economic results. Different criteria and means can be used to evaluate the achievement of the stated objectives. This article examines the current transformation of the city of Milan within the above-described interpretive framework. Such transformations are often directly linked to creative and cultural representations. This article places and examines contemporary art at the centre of these transformations. Art, and contemporary art in particular, could play a most beneficial role in city’s regeneration.
What an effort “to enter out”! Closures and resistances in the cultural sector
“It might be easy for you, but you cannot imagine how difficult is for us to enter outside”. Few years ago, walking in the yards of Santa Maria Della Pietà, psychiatric hospital already closed, Thomas Lovanio, Franco Basaglia’s colleague, got these words from one of the guest of the hospital. He was referring to the difficulty of coming back into the city, a city that years ago had jailed and forgotten him. But now, just because someone have decided to close the psychiatric hospitals, this city has to absorb him again. The articles in this issue reminded me those words. How difficult is for our artistic and cultural system to shape open and innovative relations with the environment and the urban space, and to generate an innovative and transparent management. These difficulties are surely a limit to innovation and an obstacle to the cultural growth of our country. Urban studies have long observed that the most innovative systems are those capable of hybridizing different worlds.
Working with surfaces to create spaces: street art or landscape project?
The presence of urban voids within contemporary cities imposes to consider the importance of new interpretations/actions on the landscape. These actions have to use formal representation devices more related to community needs. Thanks to its expressiveness, art can be used as a landscape regeneration’s tool for degraded environment. Street art and community participation actions can realize surfaces projects able to change the future of indefinable urban spaces.
