ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to offer certain theoretical reflections on the various themes of the urban project, a project to reconstruct (rehabilitate/regenerate) the European city, starting from some of my own projects developed over time.
These particular projects concern sites that are suburban and on the fringe, in both use and meaning, which are awaiting substantial transformations in a search for new uses and new formal identities. Our task should be to recommend a form for these city sites.
The rehabilitation and transformation of entire urban areas seem like concrete opportunities to respond to questions regarding the quality of the urban space and to expectations hitherto hidden or bypassed by major urban expansions. It therefore behooves us to reflect on those questions of urban form long etched in the very core of the architectural project.
Behind this recovery of an urban concept that becomes a project, capable of “comprehending” the various aspects of a situation – political, economic, technical, historical, and poetic – and channeling these into a constellation of comparable images, lies the humanistic nucleus (in this case, the architect’s profession) of the attempt to relate the rationale and beauty of physical forms.
This humanistic nucleus also includes the relationship with the urban scenic space.
