Tommaso Pietropolli
Supervisor: Prof. Paola Viganò, Lab-U
Start date: October 2018. Defense date (expected): December 2022
Abstract
This thesis explores a concept, or rather a figure – horizontality – in its relations with the construction of the European city-territory, recognising at first the structuring and constructive value of “figures”: on the one hand, their rhetorical value and, on the other, their capacity to suggest forms, ways of physically organising urban materials in the territory.
A first, working hypothesis, already implicitly presented by Alexander (1965) but also Weber (1971), is that many of the difficulties we face in designing contemporary inhabited spaces and their complex spatial structure are due to the hierarchical/centred paradigm of order we have been using to think about spatial relationships in the territory, ignoring or underestimating the stabilizing capacities of horizontal/acentred systems.
This research proposes to question the figure of horizontality having the genealogical method as a model. By doing that, it aims to break the apparent unity of the compact/disperse opposition, letting new spatial and conceptual paradigms to arise.
The research is divided in two parts. Like any genealogy, it starts with the present, with the emergence of certain phenomena or conditions that have something to do with the object of study. The first part clarify this emergence; it is organized though the analysis of the meanings that the figure assumes in respect to a series of situated reflections. A second part, while looking backward to the history of urbanism, explore some paths following the figure of horizontality. Two concepts (equilibrium and decentralization) are at the centre of deep readings of specific episodes in the history of urbanism, interpreting horizontality in spatial design.
Keywords: Horizontality, Urban design theory, City-Territory, A-centered systems