La ricerca sulla forma della città contemporanea.Esperienze di progettazione urbana presso la Facoltà di Architettura di Bari

The Architectonic Design Workshop of the fourth year has, for some time now, constituted for the Faculty of Architecture in Bari the scientific environment where theoretical and applied research is carried out into the contemporary city and the relative compositional and planning techniques. The historical/cultural context of reference is that of the Mediterranean city in general and of the “stone cities” of the Puglia region of southern Italy, with their particular characteristics and problems. The general objective of the research is to identify and try out new settlement models, defined through a process of reading and understanding traditional architecture founded on a mindful relationship with the place, its characteristics, and its "resources". In this sense, the morphological, typological and construction aspects (of the single structure and the whole) are compared and resolved by introjecting, at all stages of the project, the problem of sustainability. The decisive moments of this planning process are: 1.identification of the architectural themes of the project, i.e. recognizing the general value expressed by the functional themes (the dwelling, the collective building, the communal space, …) as well as the natural characteristics of the site; 2.definition of the settlement principle through an architectonic interpretation of the relationship between place and building type, i.e. via the identification of an idea of relation between Nature, the public space of the city and the private space of the home; 3.research into the forms of dwelling corresponding to the settlement principle found; 4.selection of appropriate construction systems and materials. The relationship with tradition, instigated through an identification of the models and their deployment, constitutes one of the ways through which the project seeks to root itself in the place, to establish a relationship of continuity with its construction experience and, above all, give it some sense. These models generally hark back to settlement/dwelling types that represent a particular formal and construction interpretation linked to a determined historical moment and a specific function. They present themselves as a possible alternative to the current way of thinking about and making cities, the outcome of standardizing and globalizing processes that are indifferent to places, their history and their characteristics.