Disjunction and the city. Displaced programs in a conservative town

The work that is going to be shown in my thesis project is focused on the possibility to get an unexpected point of view of our human environment through a better understanding of the human factor involved in the definition of its peculiarity. The project starts with the explanation of an innovative strategy of analysis to be applied to cities and territories: this strategy takes its moves from the definition of wayfinding and layering, practices that have had a deep influence on our perception. The strategy will actually add to this tool the chance to have a deeper and unexpected view on the mental aspect of living a territory: the attention is shifted from the physical qualities to the human attitude towards a territory. The goal is to understand how people’s behavior and feelings deeply affect the way in which the environment is inhabited and how this definition also affect the design approach. The analysis strategy is then applied to a real case study in the city of Bergamo, located in northern Italy. This reality gives the possibility to really understand how the strategy can help to rediscover resources that lies under our eyes but are actually invisible and neglected. It will be shown how Bergamo makes a perfect case under this point of view, since it is an historical city where resources are used in a selective and negative way, without understanding at all contemporary needs and denying the possibility of a full enhancement of its many resources. The work will then identify layers to be mapped in order to be recombined in an unexpected way, finding a point of encounter between the a physical aspect, an event and the human factor involved. This will give the possibility to show how resources can be rediscovered through some provocative design working on the theme of disjunction and unexpected connections. The final aim is to identify the possibility to obtain much more in terms of daily life quality and people’s involvement from historical heritage that are too often confined into museums. The chance to regain and enhance their patrimony is a radical theme in this work, combined with the chance to rediscover values through an innovative strategy for planning and imagining our urban environment, abandoning the conservationism that lays behind most contemporary choices in term of designing for historical city.

Il lavoro di tesi ha come oggetto l'elaborazione di una strategia innovativa per la valorizzazione delle risorse di un territorio, prendendo le mosse da una valutazione critica delle strategie connesse al wayfinding. In particolare, si sottolinea la necessità di prendere in considerazione, in un'analisi basata sull'utilizzo di vari livelli di comprensione dell'ambiente urbano, il fattore umano legato alla percezione del territorio stesso. La strategia viene quindi applicata al caso pratico della città di Bergamo: qui vengono individuate alcune risorse da valorizzare, tramite inaspettate combinazioni tra layer selezionati. Da questo processo scaturiscono una serie di proposte progettuali provocatorie e inaspettate che lavorano sul tema della disgiunzione.