Papers by Marco Enia
Estudios del hábitat
The digital revolution has produced and is still creating new lifestyles that are being reflected... more The digital revolution has produced and is still creating new lifestyles that are being reflected in a new urban revolution which sees the overlapping of different environments to enrich the urban experience and respond to emergent necessities. It leads to a dissolution of the strictly defined spaces and uses to create hybrid places that colonize the urban environment. The dualities of public and private, of exterior and interior, of work and leisure, of man and woman, of house and city, are then changing, and with them also the traditional pillars of the modern society. The digital is overlapping the material, changing the urban organizational structure through new relationship between people, city and technology in a new reality recently dubbed the “metaverse”. Most of the spatial needs are then transformed, opening up to a profound rethinking of the structure of places and of the meaning itself of urban environment. The article analyses the current relationship between the materi...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Architecture, Aug 29, 2023
In recent years, architectural interactions have become the center of many important reflections.... more In recent years, architectural interactions have become the center of many important reflections. However, there is little agreement on the subject. Some authors consider architecture to be about its relations with human and nonhuman agents. Others consider that buildings have an autonomous presence, which transcends all their interactions. These approaches are generally seen as incompatible. Although at the heart of the debate is the role of relations in architecture, their nature is not addressed. The discussion could gain clarity by recognizing the differences between them. In this paper, we propose a classification of architectural interactions, which may help to better inform further discussion on the topic. A closer look at architectural relations reveals that autonomy and relationality are not opposing, but complementary, aspects.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
MONU#35, 2022
You open a book. You probably start it from page 1. If you like it enough, you read it all the wa... more You open a book. You probably start it from page 1. If you like it enough, you read it all the way to the end. The author has polished a well-rounded story for you, with a distinct beginning and ending. Once published, this story will most likely remain unchanged. Now imagine a different kind of book, one with no opening or final pages. In this book, each page is simultaneously the start and end of a story; also, pages are constantly being removed or added, their words erased and rewritten. This book would be quite a faithful representation of the city. By their very nature, cities are unfinished organisms. They mirror social and individual life, which is chaotic, unpredictable and in constant motion. Cities are never-ending projects; urbanism a never-ending task. Urban theory often sees this as a problem. But it is not. A good city is not necessarily one designed down to the last detail. Cities can be underdesigned, but also overdesigned. A good city provides a proper balance between people, non-human living beings, and built environment. In this sense, a place may play an important urban role even if it appears to be incomplete, or does not fulfill a specific function.
Some contemporary projects convert the unfinished nature of cities into an instrument of urban regeneration. Through small interventions, they leave the body of the city almost unaltered, but profoundly modify its affective and functional relationship with a community. Projects such as Campo de la Cebada (2010-2017), A lung for Manhattan (Cedric Price, 1999), or CATIA 1100 (Aga Estudio, 2021) intervene with sensitivity, intelligence and open-mindedness. In doing so, they implement a mode of action that could be very beneficial for the present and future of cities.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Housing, Theory and Society, 2020
ABSTRACT The boundaries between domestic and urban environments are increasingly blurred. Until t... more ABSTRACT The boundaries between domestic and urban environments are increasingly blurred. Until the contemporary era, the house acted as aquite autonomous microcosm and the city as its receptacle, but today this distinction is not so sharp. Various changes are transforming both domestic and urban life. Many activities, events and rituals usually associated with domestic space today take place often outside, scattering the home throughout the city. Meanwhile, domestic environment is increasingly accommodating some urban functions, changing its traditional meaning and giving rise to hybrid situations. Domestic and urban environments are merging in asymbiotic way; it is then necessary to rethink their spaces in order to respond to their contemporary and future evolutions. The paper aims at introducing the main facts about the contemporary blurring of the boundaries of domestic and urban space, explaining how this is currently affecting the architecture of both the house and the city.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Estoa, 2018
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
INFOLIO. Rivista del dottorato di ricerca in architettura, arti e pianificazione dell'università degli studi di Palermo, Feb 4, 2022
Cholula (Puebla, Mexico), an ancient pre-Hispanic city, since 1971 is home to UDLAP, Universidad ... more Cholula (Puebla, Mexico), an ancient pre-Hispanic city, since 1971 is home to UDLAP, Universidad de las Américas Puebla. Over the years, the presence of UDLAP has deeply affected the fabric of the city, transforming a once rural center into a university town. Students are very important for the economy of Cholula: one example is avenida 14 Oriente, a street entirely devoted to nightlife and student fun. Since the pandemic, most students returned to their hometowns. This had huge consequences on the microeconomy of the city, especially for informal traders. In this paper, we discuss the changes brought about by the pandemic in the socio-economic dynamics of Cholula. To do so, we rely on fieldwork, complementing it with information found in magazines, newspapers and local media.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
This paper discusses a contemporary design strategy to deal with urban spaces. In 21st century ar... more This paper discusses a contemporary design strategy to deal with urban spaces. In 21st century architecture it is possible to recognize the existence of several projects that consist in doing almost nothing, carrying out only minimal modifications to their sites of intervention. In present-day architecture, this approach is considered useful sometimes to respect the surroundings and sometimes to improve them through the smallest and tiniest actions. Doing almost nothing is a strategy that can unfold in many ways. It can mean opting for inaction and thus not modifying a place at all; or designing a temporary project intended to occupy it only for a limited period of time; or also carrying out a particularly small but permanent intervention. Depending on the circumstances, it is an approach that can help architecture protecting a place, reclaiming it or reactivating its latent qualities. This strategy can be implemented both through a single intervention on a specific place, or throug...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Housing, Theory and Society, 2020
The boundaries between domestic and urban environments are increasingly blurred. Until the contem... more The boundaries between domestic and urban environments are increasingly blurred. Until the contemporary era, the house acted as aquite autonomous microcosm and the city as its receptacle, but today this distinction is not so sharp. Various changes are transforming both domestic and urban life. Many activities, events and rituals usually associated with domestic space today take place often outside, scattering the home throughout the city. Meanwhile, domestic environment is increasingly accommodating some urban functions, changing its traditional meaning and giving rise to hybrid situations. Domestic and urban environments are merging in asymbiotic way; it is then necessary to rethink their spaces in order to respond to their contemporary and future evolutions. The paper aims at introducing the main facts about the contemporary blurring of the boundaries of domestic and urban space, explaining how this is currently affecting the architecture of both the house and the city.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Temporánea. Revista de Historia de la Arquitectura, 2020
Elementi dell’architettura lodoliana (1786) es un libro escrito por Andrea Memmo (1729 -1793) par... more Elementi dell’architettura lodoliana (1786) es un libro escrito por Andrea Memmo (1729 -1793) para divulgar las teorías del fraile veneciano Carlo Lodoli (1690-1761) sobre arquitectura. Literato, matemático y educador, Lodoli era conocido en Venecia tanto por la amplitud de su cultura arquitectónica como por su mirada inusual sobre la disciplina: a la autoridad de la historia, incuestionable para sus contemporáneos, Lodoli oponía la autoridad de la razón. En tiempos recientes, sus ideas han sido consideradas precursoras directas del racionalismo arquitectónico moderno. Este artículo se propone resaltar los rasgos más destacados del pensamiento de Lodoli a través de una lectura crítica de Elementi , acompañada de pasajes del texto traducidos al castellano para la ocasión.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Frontiers of architectural research, Jun 11, 2019
This paper discusses a contemporary design strategy to deal with urban spaces. In 21st century ar... more This paper discusses a contemporary design strategy to deal with urban spaces. In 21st century architecture it is possible to recognize the existence of several projects that consist in doing almost nothing, carrying out only minimal modifications to their sites of intervention. In present-day architecture, this approach is considered useful sometimes to respect the surroundings and sometimes to improve them through the smallest and tiniest actions. Doing almost nothing is a strategy that can unfold in many ways. It can mean opting for inaction and thus not modifying a place at all; or designing a temporary project intended to occupy it only for a limited period of time; or also carrying out a particularly small but permanent intervention. Depending on the circumstances, it is an approach that can help architecture protecting a place, reclaiming it or reactivating its latent qualities. This strategy can be implemented both through a single intervention on a specific place, or through a network of coordinated projects in different locations. The purpose of the paper is to present this approach in the context of 21st century urban architecture, through cases studied from the last two decades.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Estoa, Revista de la Facultad de arquitectura y urbanismo de la Universidad de Cuenca, 2018
Algunos de los edificios más discutidos y relevantes del siglo XXI se caracterizan por ser sin... more Algunos de los edificios más discutidos y relevantes del siglo XXI se caracterizan por ser singulares, inusuales y llamativos. Hay, en este periodo, un difundido enfoque proyectual que exalta la autonomía del objeto arquitectónico a costa de su capacidad para estrechar relaciones sólidas con el lugar. Sin embargo, a lo largo de los últimos años ha ido cobrando relevancia un paradigma de proyecto opuesto. Al protagonismo del objeto arquitectónico este otro enfoque contrapone su neutralización. Este paradigma propone una arquitectura que hace lo posible para pasar desapercibida, que acepta un cierto grado de previsibilidad y banalidad de la forma, que llega hasta a dudar, en ciertos casos, de la necesidad misma de su construcción. Las estrategias para neutralizar el objeto arquitectónico que más a menudo se utilizan en la arquitectura actual son el camuflaje, el anonimato y la minimización. El objetivo de este artículo es explicar las características de este paradigma y las razones de su relevancia para la arquitectura contemporánea.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Cuaderno de Notas, 2015
Muchos críticos y arquitectos, a lo largo de los años, han encontrado semejanzas y analogías e... more Muchos críticos y arquitectos, a lo largo de los años, han encontrado semejanzas y analogías entre la restauración llevada a cabo por Carlo Scarpa en el museo de Castelvecchio (Verona, Italia, 1957-73) y la de Sverre Fehn en el Hedmarkmuseet (Hamar, Noruega, 1967-1980), a pesar de las claras diferencias que hay entre la manera de hacer arquitectura de Scarpa y la de Fehn. Sin embargo, la postura crítica hacia el tema del pasado es la misma. La premisa teórica es, para ambos, la dignidad del lenguaje contemporáneo de la arquitectura, que puede con legitimidad confrontarse con lo antiguo; el objetivo es llegar a un punto de equilibrio tal que tanto lo nuevo como lo antiguo puedan adquirir algo desde la confrontación.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Chapter of books by Marco Enia
Manifiestos. Visiones de las arquitecturas, 2021
Contrariamente a lo que se suele creer, lo esencial en arquitectura nunca han sido los edificios,... more Contrariamente a lo que se suele creer, lo esencial en arquitectura nunca han sido los edificios, sino las personas que los habitan y las sociedades que los construyen. Lo interesante de la arquitectura siempre ha sido lo lateral: más aún que los edificios, lo que les conforma, y las modificaciones socioculturales que éstos llegan a generar en su contexto. Esto ha sido cierto siempre, pero hoy lo es aún más. La mayoría de las principales problemáticas contemporáneas del territorio habitado conciernen, directa o indirectamente, la arquitectura: el cambio climático, las crisis migratorias, la falta de viviendas asequibles - sólo para citar algunos. La arquitectura puede y debe hacerse con la mirada puesta al lugar y a la sociedad que contribuye a formar: hay que pensar en las consecuencias de la arquitectura, mucho más que en sus objetos.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
The architect and the city. Volume I. EAAE-ARCC 2nd Valencia International Biennial of Research in Architecturei, 2021
Ongoing social, cultural and economic changes in western societies are affecting the way people e... more Ongoing social, cultural and economic changes in western societies are affecting the way people experience both urban and domestic environments. Contemporary technologies, the gender revolution and the evolution of habits are among the factors that are leading to the emergence of new forms of urban life, where the very ideas of home and city blur, and the dualities traditionally used to understand the cultural landscape are dissolving (man/woman, interior/exterior, public/private, work/leisure, sedentary/ nomadic, inside/outside). Domestic and urban life are slowly but inexorably merging. Home is increasingly understood, rather than as a fixed place enclosed within four walls, as a mental territory that extends into the broader context of the city. The domestic environment is opening up to the city, adapting many of its uses and spaces to new forms of nomadic, post-human and digital life; its identity is changing, evolving into a hybrid environment difficult to define. At the same time, the urban environment is being domesticated: many of the activities normally associated with domestic life, such as resting, eating, finding some intimacy, watching movies or talking to relatives, increasingly take place in the spaces of the city. This blurring of boundaries between home and city is radically changing the way of thinking and designing private and public spaces, to make them able to respond to emerging and future lifestyles. The paper aims at introducing the main facts about the contemporary blurring of the boundaries of domestic and urban space, explaining how this is currently affecting the architecture of both the house and the city.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
The architect and the city. Volume I. EAAE-ARCC 2nd Valencia International Biennial of Research in Architecture, 2021
Architecture has always had an obsession with time. Architects from different places and generati... more Architecture has always had an obsession with time. Architects from different places and generations have struggled to make buildings able to last for decades, or even centuries. Permanence, or the ability to defy time, has traditionally been considered the most desirable architectural quality. Although, throughout history, temporary interventions have constantly played a key role in defining urban spaces, architects have generally regarded them as a minority practice not deserving much attention. Things have changed in recent years. Increasingly, architects understand temporariness as a potential answer to some of the most pressing problems of contemporary cities. Being adaptive and quick to build, temporary interventions can help architecture bring life back to vacant lots; or provide vitality and dynamism to the most distinct urban spots; or restore a sense of home and urbanity in post-disaster camps. In 21st century architecture, temporary buildings have a special place, both for their intrinsic flexibility and for the formal / spatial possibilities, they offer to architects: due to their very characteristics, temporary buildings are often pure space, free from the constraints of function and time-fighting. The paper aims to analyze strategies and objectives of temporary interventions in the context of 21st century urban architecture, through case studies from the last two decades.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Cabrera I. et al. (eds.), Reactive Proactive Architecture, Valencia: Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València, Apr 30, 2019
Over the last twenty years, an approach has become increasingly important, which consists in givi... more Over the last twenty years, an approach has become increasingly important, which consists in giving all the protagonism to the place and, at the same time, in submitting the architectural object to unusual renounces. This could mean designing a camouflaged building not to disrupt a beautiful, yet fragile landscape; or an anonymous one that fits naturally into its context; or even doing almost nothing, if the intervention site does not seem to need great changes or modifications. Camouflage, anonymity and minimization are the strategies that contemporary architecture uses more often when circumstances require for the quietest and most silent intervention; each one of them constitutes a different way to address the needs of a place and to make the architectural object disappear. This paper analyses these strategies through case studies dated to the last two decades.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Martella F. (ed.), Domestic Boundaries. Breslavia: Amazon Fullfillment, Oct 28, 2018
Domestic and urban spaces have always been bound, but in the last decades this interconnection ha... more Domestic and urban spaces have always been bound, but in the last decades this interconnection has become stronger. Socio-economic changes, together with changing customs, have led to a situation of expanded domesticity, where activities normally associated with the house are increasingly carried out in the city. Domestic space, for many contemporary city dwellers, is not so much a physical and stable place, but rather a network of different locations spread all over urban territory: house is the place where to sleep, but the city is the place where to live. All this directly concerns 21st century architecture. Architects are increasingly being asked to provide urban spaces with some of the possibilities usually related to domestic spaces. This can mean, for example, transforming an abandoned lot into an orchard or a small garden; or making ephemeral interventions that transform it into a sort of open-air living room, through a careful design of urban furniture; or also turning it into a place of conviviality, where it is possible to cook and eat together. All these operations, although very different from each other, aim to reactivate a place by giving it a sense of domesticity.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Talks by Marco Enia
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Uploads
Papers by Marco Enia
Some contemporary projects convert the unfinished nature of cities into an instrument of urban regeneration. Through small interventions, they leave the body of the city almost unaltered, but profoundly modify its affective and functional relationship with a community. Projects such as Campo de la Cebada (2010-2017), A lung for Manhattan (Cedric Price, 1999), or CATIA 1100 (Aga Estudio, 2021) intervene with sensitivity, intelligence and open-mindedness. In doing so, they implement a mode of action that could be very beneficial for the present and future of cities.
Chapter of books by Marco Enia
Talks by Marco Enia
Some contemporary projects convert the unfinished nature of cities into an instrument of urban regeneration. Through small interventions, they leave the body of the city almost unaltered, but profoundly modify its affective and functional relationship with a community. Projects such as Campo de la Cebada (2010-2017), A lung for Manhattan (Cedric Price, 1999), or CATIA 1100 (Aga Estudio, 2021) intervene with sensitivity, intelligence and open-mindedness. In doing so, they implement a mode of action that could be very beneficial for the present and future of cities.
increasingly blurred. Until the contemporary era, the house acted
as aquite autonomous microcosm and the city as its receptacle, but
today this distinction is not so sharp. Various changes are transforming both domestic and urban life. Many activities, events and
rituals usually associated with domestic space today take place
often outside, scattering the home throughout the city.
Meanwhile, domestic environment is increasingly accommodating
some urban functions, changing its traditional meaning and giving
rise to hybrid situations. Domestic and urban environments are
merging in asymbiotic way; it is then necessary to rethink their
spaces in order to respond to their contemporary and future evolutions. The paper aims at introducing the main facts about the
contemporary blurring of the boundaries of domestic and urban
space, explaining how this is currently affecting the architecture of
both the house and the city
changes in western societies are affecting
the way people experience both urban and
domestic environments. Contemporary
technologies, the gender revolution and the
evolution of habits are among the factors that
are leading to the emergence of new forms
of urban life, where the very ideas of home
and city blur, and the dualities traditionally
used to understand the cultural landscape
are dissolving (man/woman, interior/exterior,
public/private, work/leisure, sedentary/
nomadic, inside/outside). Domestic and
urban life are slowly but inexorably merging.
Home is increasingly understood, rather than
as a fixed place enclosed within four walls, as
a mental territory that extends into the broader
context of the city. The domestic environment
is opening up to the city, adapting many of its
uses and spaces to new forms of nomadic,
post-human and digital life; its identity is
changing, evolving into a hybrid environment
difficult to define. At the same time, the urban
environment is being domesticated: many
of the activities normally associated with
domestic life, such as resting, eating, finding
some intimacy, watching movies or talking
to relatives, increasingly take place in the
spaces of the city. This blurring of boundaries
between home and city is radically changing
the way of thinking and designing private and
public spaces, to make them able to respond
to emerging and future lifestyles. The paper
aims at introducing the main facts about the
contemporary blurring of the boundaries of
domestic and urban space, explaining how
this is currently affecting the architecture of
both the house and the city.
increasingly blurred. Until the contemporary era, the house acted
as aquite autonomous microcosm and the city as its receptacle, but
today this distinction is not so sharp. Various changes are transforming both domestic and urban life. Many activities, events and
rituals usually associated with domestic space today take place
often outside, scattering the home throughout the city.
Meanwhile, domestic environment is increasingly accommodating
some urban functions, changing its traditional meaning and giving
rise to hybrid situations. Domestic and urban environments are
merging in asymbiotic way; it is then necessary to rethink their
spaces in order to respond to their contemporary and future evolutions. The paper aims at introducing the main facts about the
contemporary blurring of the boundaries of domestic and urban
space, explaining how this is currently affecting the architecture of
both the house and the city