CITY-NATURE. CONSPICUOUS PLACES IN THE MEDITERRANEAN LANDSCAPE

The content of this essay is the partial result of an original research conducted by the author in the Urbanformgrammars (UFG) research group of the Polytechnic of Bari on the settlement principle of City-nature applied in the areas of Monopoli and Tricase in Southern Salento (Italy). The crisis of the contemporary city represents the occasion to rethinking its form beginning from the assumption of the void of nature as a constituent part of its structure, in which the form of the land is the syntactic root of urban form. Our work try to offer a consideration on the plan of the "form", both from a theoretical point of view, individualizing in the idea of “city-territory” the field of application and experimentation of the research, both from the design point of view, assuming an episteme able to recognize in distinguished way the morphological value of the landscape and that of the urban settlements. The polycentric settlement system of Salento, that includes rural areas and coasts, the coastal system in Terra di Bari and ravin landascape constitutes appropriate citynature models in which is possible to study the condition of the urban spaces on the edge between city and nature. The idea of city-region witness a reverse topological background/figure relation between country and city (Koetter F. and Rowe C., 1977), in which city is placed in nature: nature can be considered as the background in which are placed urban parts of concluded form and nature is one of all the elements of city structure (Ungers O.M., 1977). This settlement model, composed by urban nucleuses linked themselves by the net of the infrastructural system, was introduced by two theoretical models, one based on measured territory triangulations of linear cities in country that connect urban nucleuses (Le Corbusier, 1945), the second on a system of planned urban structure placed in nature and adapted to the site (Hilberseimer L.,1949). The disciplinary aim of the research, developed into two phases, the first analytical and the second synthetic (design), was to identify and try out new sustainable settlement/dwelling models and basing their form on a mindful relationship with the place and its natural "resources". The study cases are represented by Monopoli, a medium coastal city built around a natural harbor and Tricase and its territory, a small-sized town in Southern Salento, directly connected with its small harbour on the Adriatic sea. Project areas are both excellent natural coastal sites both places "of crisis" of the urban form that mark the limits of the city towards nature and measure the morphological unity of the “territorial room”. City-nature model opposes itself to the consumption of territory and offers an harmonious interpretation of the relationship between urban and natural landscapes through settlement/dwelling forms in continuity with nature and evocative of forms belonging to the collective memory.