The monstrous project of building a 403 meters skyscraper in the centre of St. Petersburg, Russia, has been dismissed by a presidential ukaz. According to Guardian, company in charge of realizing the Okhta Centre, the Scotland-based multinational RMJM, is sailing in troubled waters. read more
Over 40 years after Henry Lefebvre’s Le Droit à la Ville (“The Right to the City”, 1968) was conceived, the notion of a “renewed right to urban life”, or in other words “a right to an equitable usufruct of cities within the principles of sustainability, democracy, equity, and social justice” has hardly ever seemed as out of reach as it does today. read more
“Two books I read in the past month overlap with each other in useful ways. The first, Commonwealth by Toni Negri and Michael Hardt, is the third volume of their epic theoretical work that began with Empire and continued through Multitudes. While I’m not a camp follower per se, I did get a lot out of these efforts and was glad to read Commonwealth as the conclusion. It made some parts of their argument clearer, but left some important areas unresolved and even self-contradictory. I suppose that’s to be expected with such an ambitious effort to unravel this moment in history, the rise of new paradigms of both capitalist self-perpetuation and (potentially) revolutionary subversion.
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by Antonio Caperna In: Handbook of Research on E-Planning: ICTs for Urban Development and Monitoring Carlos Nunes Silva (University of Lisbon, Portugal) Release Date: May, 2010. Copyright © 2010. 546 pages. The Handbook of Research on E-Planning: ICTs for Urban Development and Monitoring provides relevant theoretical perspectives on the use of ICT in urban planning as well as […] read more
by Antonio Caperna Presented at UIA working program “Spiritual Places”, July 6th, 2007 Third International conference “Transmitting outspoken emotions” UIA WP Spiritual Places, Warsaw, Poland Abstract This paper start from two assumption: 1. the illuminist thought has represented a turning point in Western history, but its has “frozen” inside its “rational domain” part of our […] read more
Using the work of Christopher Alexander and Nikos Salingaros, I present a paper that want discuss the philosophical structure that are behind The Pattern Language (PL). Through a simple way I’ll show you the intimate connection existing among the PL and other cultural aspect like painting as well as the fractal geometry. I have referred my philosophical approach especially to the work of Oswald Spengler and his work “Der Untergang des Abendlandes” read more
The idea of a very effective scientific network, based upon “biophilic” architecture principles (peer-to-peer, self-organized, scaled, self-similar, and “small-world”-like network) is offered here. The network should be Russian both in language and scientific tradition, offering a paradigm for a new, hyper-connected vision of world science, based on a multi-centric epistemology. read more
Anti Architecture and deconstruction is a collection of essays on deconstructivist architecture. This book raises questions about how the public can be indoctrinated to accept an architecture that is hostile to human sensibilities, and which often causes physiological and psychological distress. In trying to understand the adoption of an architectural fashion, writers often focus only on aesthetic points, and ignore psychological conditioning and the role of the media. I look at the dark underside of contemporary architecture, and the world that promotes and sustains it.and precedents, while distancing themselves from basic human needs and cultural contexts. read more
Upon the completion of his four-volume work, Christopher Alexander interviewed by Kim A. O’Connell In the 1970s, architect Christopher Alexander, along with his colleagues at the Center for Environmental Structure in Berkeley, California, published a trilogy of books—The Timeless Way of Building, A Pattern Language, and The Oregon Experiment—centered on the theory that people can […] read more
Il 48° Congresso AICA è organizzato con l'Università degli Studi dell'Aquila, città dove il devastante sisma del 6 Aprile 2009 ha colpito duramente gran parte della città e dei centri abitati circostanti come anche gran parte delle infrastrutture di base, acquedotti, rete del gas, rete elettrica. A poco più di 1 anno dal sisma e dall’uscita dalla fase di emergenza, inizia un percorso di ricostruzione in tutti i settori, di cui l'ICT può costituire il volano facilitatore. read more