Open city - International Summer school - Piacenza

[i]International summer school Piacenza[/i] 6th -23rd september 2010 Piacenza From Landscape to exterior design The Issue– Between the City and the River. Architecture of Urban relations The first area of intervention chosen by the International Summer School is the city border between the bundle of the railway tracks and the Po River on the northern side of Piacenza municipal territory, along the border between Aemilia and Lombardy. This is a large, heavily stressed area, where territorial and large architectural scale issues integrate with the main, mainly industrial transformations in progress. The increasing delocalization of some industrial and productive structures and the rationalizations of the railroad areas create a possibility to recover some presently unavailable urban areas. In this logic, the railway station, now a city background, not only can take the role of a local connection node between the city and the river, between the historical and consolidated fabric but also the significanc of an open evocative and identity-defining area related to the Po banks, today totally out of the flow dynamics in the different scales. An integration between the city and the river also means integration between history and its elements, (starting from the traditional mobility axes such as the via Aemilia, the via Francigena and the bridges that today are in the progress of requalification) and modernity, represented by the projects related to the path of the pan-European infrastructural corridors in a hinge-territory in the center of the Po valley. The three parallel sections shall deal with the specific issue in the different territorial and architectural scales, with the goal of developing projects capable of correctly interpreting the needs and potentials of the context and adopting consistent and appropriate intervention strategies. The International Summer School program includes: 1- A workshop applied to specific issues typical of urban and environmental architectural design on different scales, aimed at the quality and sustainability of habitat transformation processes. This workshop will be conducted individually or in groups of no more than two participants, under constant supervision of tutors and lecturers; The program includes three interconnected sections: a- Landscape b- Urban Space c- Architectural Design The three sections shall deal with the different design intervention scales and respectively focus on the preparation of: a- Territorial planning master plans (including one or several specific interventions: strategic frameworks, complex nodes, infrastructural spaces), in a large and medium scale outlook; b- Specific intervention projects (corresponding to individual cases: important public spaces, relational spaces, urban communication and representation areas), appropriately defined in their required spatial characteristics; c- Design of architectural components typical of specific interventions, analyzed in depth in their constituting elements (basic, complementary and ancillary) at a level of detail and construction specificity, capable of implementing the qualities and values of the space. For each of these three sections, each coordinated by a director, a “parallel internship” shall be opened, having specific operational and instrumental features but whose goals are closely related to the general issues proposed according to an integrated, interactive and interscalar architectural-urban-environmental concept. The details of the various stages of the International Summer School include: 2- A series of conferences and round tables held by designers and scholars of international renown, with the presentation of projects and discussions on current design issues in parallel with the basic communications held by in-house lecturers; 3- A series of “parallel evenings” on the relationship between cinema and architecture; 4-Two critical revisions, One intermediate and the other, Final, with the participation of an international commission in the end of the work. The work conducted in the design laboratory shall undergo progress reviews with the attendance of national and international key figures in architectural culture and a final results review conducted by an international committee, which will be the basis for the Faculty of Architecture of the Politecnico di Milano will issue an official certificate of attendance to each participant (equivalent, in the faculties of the Politecnico di Milano, to 8 credits). The projects and study models prepared by participants shall be shown in exhibitions organized in appropriate venues and included in a specific publication.The International Summer School program includes: 1- A workshop applied to specific issues typical of urban and environmental architectural design on different scales, aimed at the quality and sustainability of habitat transformation processes. This workshop will be conducted individually or in groups of no more than two participants, under constant supervision of tutors and lecturers; The program includes three interconnected sections: a- Landscape b- Urban Space c- Architectural Design The three sections shall deal with the different design intervention scales and respectively focus on the preparation of: a- Territorial planning master plans (including one or several specific interventions: strategic frameworks, complex nodes, infrastructural spaces), in a large and medium scale outlook; b- Specific intervention projects (corresponding to individual cases: important public spaces, relational spaces, urban communication and representation areas), appropriately defined in their required spatial characteristics; c- Design of architectural components typical of specific interventions, analyzed in depth in their constituting elements (basic, complementary and ancillary) at a level of detail and construction specificity, capable of implementing the qualities and values of the space. For each of these three sections, each coordinated by a director, a “parallel internship” shall be opened, having specific operational and instrumental features but whose goals are closely related to the general issues proposed according to an integrated, interactive and interscalar architectural-urban-environmental concept. The details of the various stages of the International Summer School include: 2- A series of conferences and round tables held by designers and scholars of international renown, with the presentation of projects and discussions on current design issues in parallel with the basic communications held by in-house lecturers; 3- A series of “parallel evenings” on the relationship between cinema and architecture; 4-Two critical revisions, One intermediate and the other, Final, with the participation of an international commission in the end of the work. The work conducted in the design laboratory shall undergo progress reviews with the attendance of national and international key figures in architectural culture and a final results review conducted by an international committee, which will be the basis for the Faculty of Architecture of the Politecnico di Milano will issue an official certificate of attendance to each participant (equivalent, in the faculties of the Politecnico di Milano, to 8 credits). The projects and study models prepared by participants shall be shown in exhibitions organized in appropriate venues and included in a specific publication. Visit the official site: http://webdiap.diap.polimi.it/intschool/index.html