City on the waters. The form of the Albanian city on lake

The paper presents the partial results of an experimental study on the form of the city on lake having as a case study the three main cities of the Albanian lake, Kukes, Skodher e Pogradec and it is part of the line of research city -nature , that is the study of the relationship between city and nature the author leads within the research group UFG UrbanFormGrammars, in Dicar dipartiment, polytechnic of Bari. In Albania , the water has taken on value not only as a renewable energy resource, production resource, infrastructure, but also as a tourist resource for the inner territory. To enhance this resource is necessary to rebuild the lost identity of lake-cities by identifying renewed grammar of urban form , the result of a synthesis between the form of the city and the forms of physical geography. Recognized the fundamental value of the relationship between natural forms and settlement forms, research has explored the role of the water spaces in the construction of the city form. The working method adopted consists of two phases, one cognitive and descriptive of the forms and relationships that distinguish territory and settlement systems, and the other synthetic design that defines the forms of architecture capable of representing this relation. The description of the constitutive forms of the territory ( the banks, the coastline, inlets, alluvial plains, the terrain, the water levels, the tracks ) refers to the descriptive categories of nature facts of rational matrix ( A. Von Humboldt ) and structuralist ( S.Muratori ) . Given the landscape as an objective, in line with Italian architecture attitude, design is developed through research of typological and paradigmatic " foundation "conducted from time to time on individual designs and settlements forms that characterize the territories of Kukes, Shkoder and Pogradec, to define the character of the architecture in a non- historicist way but through a process of abstraction and analogy. An architecture then, which knows how to disseminate on a land become anonymous, new signs of cities that do not manifest the difference between what was and what will be. The broken form of the city on lake can be reconstituted by building public spaces on the border between the city and the water, able to represent the relationship between city and nature into architectural forms. Identified paradigmatic Urban forms interpret the landform and the sense of boundary between city and nature, where conspicuous and remarkable nature places coincide with founding urban spaces, building what Aldo Rossi called the “permanences” of a city.