Social Architecture

Migration has always been a major driver of urban transformation stimulating opportunities and challenges for cities and encouraging architectural and urban designers for taking a proactive and dynamic role in responding to the crisis. Enhancing these changes, and designing intercultural spaces for local communities, is a complex and urgent spatial challenge, that should be addressed by a multi-scalar approach aiming to integrate urban, architectural and public spaces. This paper illustrates a research-action resulting from a collective work developed on key urban spaces of the Al-bergheria neighbourhood of Palermo, where a design-led research based on a multi-scalar regeneration approach (urban, architectural and public space) can reframe the role of architecture and spatial practices as agents of social, intercultural inclusion and spatial reactivation at different scales.

La migrazione è da sempre una delle forze che orienta la trasformazione urbana stimo-lando opportunità e sfide per le città, che si modificano in base alle persone che ospi-tano, spingendo i progettisti ad assumere un ruolo pro-attivo nella risposta alla crisi. Valorizzare questi cambiamenti e progettare spazi interculturali per le comunità locali attraverso un approccio multi-scalare, che mira a integrare lo spazio urbano, quello ar-chitettonico e lo spazio pubblico, è una sfida spaziale complessa e urgente. Il presente saggio illustra quindi nuove letture e sedimenta significati per l'elaborazione di un lavo-ro collettivo su alcuni spazi urbani del quartiere Albergheria di Palermo, in cui la speri-mentazione del processo e l'innovazione del progetto multi-scalare s'intrecciano a più riprese per ricordarci che è possibile immaginare una città migliore rispettosa del pas-sato e impaziente del suo futuro.

Edited by: Sara Agnoletto, Olivia Sara Carli, Roberto Masiero. Including contributions by: Ilaria Bussoni, Marianna Gelussi, Michela Maguolo, Nicolas Martino, Roberto Masiero, Susanna Pisciella.

And with: Giuseppe Allegri, Marco Assennato, Marco Biraghi, Sergio Bologna, Aldo Bonomi, Roberto Ciccarelli, Laura Curino, Federico Della Puppa, Ernesto L. Francalanci, Alberto Magnaghi, Anna Marson, Chiara Mazzoleni, Enrico Morteo, Michele Pacifico, Emilio Renzi, Renato Ruffini, Alberto Saibene, Silvano Tagliagambe, Gabriele Vacis, Paolo Zanenga, Luca Zevi.

ARH440.Autumn 2018, Architecture Dept., Univ. of Cyprus.

The aim of this seminar is to study the public role of architecture in a contemporary globalized everydayness. To study also, the role of the architect in expanded groups of action in collaboration with visual artists and urbanists. The students become acquainted with forms of negotiation in regards to the transformation of urban limits into thresholds for exchange in the contemporary city. They realize how architecture could operate as agent beyond physical building. The seminars unfold the political dimension of architecture in peripheral, see contested urban/territorial and rural conditions of any scale.

The overall purpose of this research paper is to understand an urban issue which is street as public space and contextualize this issue in the area of study in order to provide recommendations for the municipality of Maamariye, Lebanon.
The adapted methodology:
•Starting with researching about related papers, books chapters, case studies, thesis papers
•Summarizing different sources and finding a common ground (streets problems, solutions and effects)
•Analyzing different stakeholders and understanding their role and categorizing them accordingly (local, private, public, services)
•Contextualizing the urban issue by relating the findings to our group case study (Municipality of Maamariye) and by understanding the transition in 2009 inside Maamariye after the new planning.
•Presenting recommendations for the municipality in order to enhance the street activity and revive the old square.
The overall conclusion (a possible start point):
•Interviewing the people and asking them about their needs, combine these needs with professional skills and coming up with an adequate design.
•In addition to the combination of different types of transportation: buses, taxis, bike lanes, and the most sustainable means of transportation which is ‘walking’

Design Studio Pedagogy: Horizons for the Future, Ashraf M. Salama and Nicholas Wilkinson (Editors), Review by Julia W. Robinson, 2007
___________________

Design Studio Pedagogy: Horizons for the Future fills an important void. As pointed out by the editor/ authors Ashraf M Salama  &  Nicholas Wilkinson, in their introduction, it has been 15 years since a significant book on the subject of  teaching  design  studios  was  published. Divided into 6 sections, an introductory section and then 5 sections called chapters, the book covers theory of studio instruction,  theory  of student learning, thinking and decision-making, community  design  and  digital  technologies. Each  chapter/ section  begins  with  some commentary by the editors and is followed by articles written by a variety of authors, some of whom present a theoretical position on design instruction, but most of whom describe one or more examples of design studio instruction.

The  power  of  the  book  comes  from  its compilation of a large  number  of  examples of    studio    teaching,    each    written    with a  clear  explication  of  the  position  toward instruction  taken  by  the  instructor.  Because the pedagogical  intention  of  each  teacher is made explicit  and the methodology clearly laid out and illustrated, one is able to develop a  clear  vision  of  the  variety  of  approaches (design-build, urban design, the use of materials and details at the  architectural scale, design using computer/ virtual representation of the site,  installation  art,  service-based  learning), as  well  as  the  overall  pattern  of  similarity  in studio teaching from the  text (e.g. the use of student teams of individuals working together, and  strong  instructional  framework  given  by the instructor).

______________________________
See more by downloading the full article

Architectural Education, Design Pedagogy, Community Design, Social Architecture, Place Making

"“Repensar Bonpastor – a Competition of ideas for a participative and zero-eviction urban renewal of a popular neighbourhood in Barcelona”, promoted by the International Alliance of Inhabitants and organized by an independent group of technicians from Barcelona, received 45 proposals from all over the world. The
article explains how the local struggles of the neighbours of the “casas baratas de Bon Pastor” succeeded in gathering applied anthropology, international solidarity, oral history, social architecture, political activism, into a shared attempt to find a new way of “making the city”: where inhabitants are the leading actors of the transformations, and technicians (especially anthropologists) guarantee respect towards the meanings and value that the city represents to its inhabitants.

Keywords: urban renewal, public anthropology, social architecture, community
activism."

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.

37th Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand (SAHANZ) 2020 “What if? What Next? Speculations on History’s Futures”
Roundtable ‘Revisiting the History of Participation: Urban Design as Commoning and New Theoretical Frameworks’ chaired by Marianna Charitonidou
----------------------------
MONDAY 23 NOVEMBER 2020
17:00 – 18:30 ZÜRICH TIME/11:00 – 12:30 BOSTON TIME
◦ BRIEF OVERVIEW OF THE ROUNDTABLE
◦ TALK ENTITLED “ATMOSPHERES FOR INTERACTION” BY BELINDA TATO
◦ TALK ENTITLED “SCALES OF COMMONS” BY PELIN TAN
◦ TALK ENTITLED “AGAINST VIOLENCE” BY TATJANA SCHNEIDER
◦ TALK ENTITLED “URBAN COMMONS AS A BRIDGE BETWEEN THE SPATIAL
AND THE SOCIAL”
◦ EXCHANGE AMONG THE SPEAKERS

This paper tries to demonstrate how a plastic and expressive value can be achieved in the construction of Latin America social architecture despite the use of economic materials and, in some cases, the employment of unskilled local labour.
Through the analysis of some South American architectural experiences of modern and contemporary architects, we tried to highlight those fragments of expression that have characterized the buildings: the materiality of the wall surfaces, the formal aspects and aesthetic approach.
The paper highlights the unique character of the building structure through the rough and irregular surfaces of the popular housing designed by architect Lina Bo Bardi, and also the formal and aesthetic approach of architects Richard Neutra and Affonso Eduardo Reidy is presented through collectives buildings, for instance, schools, health centres and theatres.
Then, the schools in Brazil and the memorial sites in Colombia represent some examples of contemporary experiences that demonstrate how, even today, a social formality in architecture can be achieved with the use of local materials and limited resources.
Comparison of local practices in selected developing countries could represent an opportunity of rethinking both the aesthetical and the constructive approach of conceiving the structure of space, in order to provide guidelines for experimental projects in those countries,  particularly for the practitioners involved in these contexts, which would possibly benefit from the outcome of this study.

A brief overview of my professional experience as an architect, describing the projects I have worked on and my philosophy of design. It stresses the issue of social architecture, of community participation and collaboration, and emphasises the need to treat the planet with love - preferencing building re-use over greenfield construction and paying respect to the use of organic, natural systems rather than mechanical systems.

Ragioneremo sulla nozione di ‘prospetto’ in architettura, considerando per tramite della sua etimologia, come mai il digesto giustinianeo dia indicazioni sulla sua composizione. Da una lettura attenta del digesto, emerge la spiegazione del ‘decoro’ del prospetto in architettura, e della ragione per la quale fino ad un certo punto nella storia dell’architettura si è usato decorare il prospetto di un edificio, e di come con la fine della decorazione, sia finito anche lo spazio pubblico.

Alejandro Aravenának, a Velencei Biennálé chilei származású főkurátorának nagy szerep jutott abban, hogy idén mind a Giardini, mind az Arsenale a szokottnál kiegyensúlyozottabb összképet mutatott. A témaválasztás is nagyban hozzájárult ahhoz, hogy a kiállítók igyekeztek feldolgozható információmennyiséget közvetítve, közérthetően kommunikálni az építészetről. A kurátorok többsége felismerte, hogy a szociális építészet tárgya nem összeegyeztethető az előadók és befogadók megkülönböztetésén alapuló, hierarchikusan szervezett téri algoritmusokkal. Az alkotói kinyilatkoztatások helyett idén a közösségi együttműködésé és a civil kezdeményezéseké a terep.