Archives

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  INNOVABILITY | Energy Transition

  Vol. 15 (2024)

  Volume 15 of AGATHÓN follows on from its predecessors on Innovability©® | Digital Transition and Innovability©® | Ecological Transition, aware of its pressing topicality but also of the scope that the proposal of a threefold key of interpretation suggests. We have clarified the meaning of the term ‘innovability’©®, formerly in use in the economic and social sciences, which is attributed to a renewed driving force for a new paradigm of development that expresses one of the most crucial challenges of our time and the need for a ‘solidary’ convergence between the two inescapable instances of ‘innovation’ and ‘sustainability’, as if they were opposites and contrasts: beyond the term used, in a historical moment characterised by environmental, social and economic emergencies, Humanity promotes one of its prerogatives, the use of the ‘things’ that nature makes available to us to do something other than their primary function (innovation), aware that those resources are not inexhaustible (sustainability). In this context, which must always look forward, we must design our best political and systemic actions to promote the need to innovate by using the Planet’s resources well and consciously.

  The goals of climate neutrality by 2050 and the reduction of CO2 emissions by 55% (compared to the 1990 level) by 2030 (European Commission, 2019, 2021) pose the European Union, and even more so the rest of the world, with several complex issues, including a significant increase in ‘clean’ energy production from alternative and renewable sources, the reduction of energy poverty, greater security of energy supply and a drastic decrease in dependence on energy imports; at the same time, the aim is to foster modern economic growth decoupled from the use of non-renewable resources, the creation of new jobs, and to generate environmental and health benefits, objectives with inevitable cultural, political, economic, production, technological and social implications to be addressed both within one’s borders and in foreign policy. The energy transition is, therefore, complex and challenging to implement because it involves ‘everything’ and is needed ‘everywhere’ but also because globally, primary energy consumption has been steadily increasing for at least half a century.

  The theoretical and experimental framework presented in Volume 15 of AGATHÓN demonstrates how energy, ecological and digital transitions can contribute synergistically to achieving the goals of decarbonisation and climate neutrality. The contributions published in the form of essays and research papers appear consistent with the 2022 Strategic Foresight Report (European Commission, 2022) based on the JRC report entitled Towards a Green and Digital Future – Key Requirements for Successful Twin Transitions in the European Union (Muench et alii, 2022) and founded on the fundamental concepts of (a) ‘twin’ transitions, as the key to a sustainable, fair and competitive future; (b) ‘just’ transition, for widespread acceptance of green and digital solutions to mitigate consumption and improve efficiency; (c) ‘integrated approach’ to challenges, to maximise the benefits of synergies and better manage risks. From the published contributions, it emerges the need for a paradigm shift that, on the one hand, is characterised by a ‘sufficiency’ approach (regarding new land occupation and new constructions) and a circular economy (to limit the use of non-renewable resources) capable of exploiting the potential of technologies for the new services made possible by digitisation, and on the other hand, relies on new user awareness of the limits of the Planet, pursuable through ‘soft’ urgent actions that are robust, flexible and easy to implement as they require a lower financial commitment. We assume that community energy renewable energy production from hydrogen and production chains can help mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. In that case, the vast existing real estate heritage is an area in which it is possible to intervene effectively, even where it has a historical and cultural value, using tools such as digital twins or analysis methodologies capable of assessing ex-ante the impacts on the ecosystem and prefigure scenarios for cities, buildings and production processes aimed at sustainable development and compatible with the urgent objectives set for 2030 and 2050. These are some of the strategies, pathways, measures and actions that can take place by exploiting the availability of the substantial financial resources allocated by governments for transitions, stimulating the sensitivity of local administrators and enhancing the skills and transversal competencies of technicians and operators in the sector, but also and above all by raising users’ awareness of the risks posed by climate change, to activate their ‘behavioural’ response to the consumption of energy and non-renewable natural resources.

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  MODULE AND MODULARITY | Variations and application scales in contemporary time

  Vol. 14 (2023)

  The Module is a sign, a linear trend, a geometric or free form repeated within a given space while maintaining its proportions. It is exemplary form, norm and rule, number, elementary unit and measure. It is a concept that expresses harmony, proportion, and quality. It is a catalytic element of history, culture and memory that refers, within the different disciplines of urban planning and landscape, architecture and engineering, representation, design and art, as much to man as to its artefacts and conceptualisations. The Module is both a measure of things and, simultaneously, a synthesis of the relationships that these measures activate (connections) or deactivate (separations). The Module is rhythm, interference, structure, relationship, mutation, and standardisation, but it is also a synthesis of the specific human ability to perceive, simplify and represent the environment. To design is both to measure and to relate. ‘Contare e raccontare’ (lit. counting and telling), as titled by Carlo Bernardini e Tullio De Mauro (2003), through the concept of the module that lends itself to being an expression of an act (counting or measuring) and at the same time of a narrative (telling), both actions enriched and nourished, in contemporaneity, by new semantic capital that, in its being material and immaterial, real and digital together, activates new transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary relations involving and contaminating the different scales of the project. The Module, in its capacity as a holistic measure of things, measure and measurability, seems to share, with the new contemporaneity, the idea of a ‘different’ space – at any scale – to be re-measured and re-counted both in the current configuration (the existing one) and with respect to that which it could and/or should be (the new). In this perspective, within the environmental design and transformative approaches, a renewed and contemporary expression of the Module seems to be emerging, dynamically confronting the inescapable demands of interoperability, virtualisation, decentralisation and sustainability.

  A currently relevant theme, that of the Module in the Third Millennium, which relates to the counterpart proposition introduced by Giulio Carlo Argan (1965) in the collection of essays entitled Progetto e Destino (lit. Project and Destiny), in which the historian investigates the evolution of the concept of the Module and its modification throughout history along with the modes of building, synthesis and cultural expression. Based on these premises, volume 14 of AGATHÓN collects essays and research that, while not exhaustive of the innumerable declinations that can be taken on by the module to address, discretise and solve the complexity of the built environment, highlight its multiscalar nature and its conceptual and usage flexibility. With their infinite application scales, ‘from the spoon to the city’ (Rogers, 1952), the ‘module’ and ‘modularity’ resurface strongly in the new Millennium and can become a paradigm in support of the Sustainable Development Goals (UN, 2015) if associated with the themes of reversibility and accessibility, in addition, the varied conceptual and instrumental declinations of ‘module’ and ‘modularity’ can provide support throughout the entire life cycle of a system, optimising its ideational, production/implementation and management phases in Landscape, City, Architecture and Industrial Design, enabling the overcoming of a static and linear view of the built environment through ‘open’, ‘flexible’, ‘adaptive’, ‘multi-scalar’ and ‘sustainable’ systems especially when managed through intelligent digital tools.

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  INNOVABILITY | Ecological Transition

  Vol. 13 (2023)

  AGATHÓN Volume 13 follows its predecessor on Innovability’^©® | Digital Transition and collects essays and research on ‘innovability’^©® | Ecological Transition, aware of its pressing relevance, but also of the scope suggested by the proposed dual key of interpretation. We have clarified the meaning of the term ‘innovability’^©®, formerly used in economic and social sciences, credited today with a renewed driving force for a new paradigm of development that expresses one of the most crucial challenges of our time and the need for a ‘solidary’ convergence between the two inescapable instances of ‘innovation’ and ‘sustainability’: in this context, which must always look to the future, it is necessary to design our best policy and system actions to promote the need to innovate by using the Planet’s resources well and consciously.
  The ecological transition has been discussed at length, but today it is a prioritized and imperative issue, expressing the need to ‘transition’ from production and consumption systems typical of the infinite linear growth paradigm to systems capable of growing economic capital without destroying natural, social and human counterparts. A concept of sustainability that, starting with global changes and biodiversity loss, recalls the ecology of mind of Gregory Bateson (1977), the three ecologies of Guattari (2000), the evolutionary physics of Isabelle Stengers and Ilya Prigogine (1979) but also the planetary thought of Edgar Morin (1973), the concept of exaptation of Stephen J. Gould and Elisabeth Vrba (1982) ecological economics, the concepts of ‘weak ‘sustainability and ‘strong’ sustainability, up to the most pragmatic indicators of sustainability (environmental, social and economic). An inescapable transition even if we only consider the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement, harbingers of radical change not only with respect to the use of non-renewable resources but to our entire economy and way of life. In all areas of the built environment, there will be a need for ‘enlightened direction’ with a systemic and holistic vision based on a multi and interdisciplinary, nonscalar and intersectoral methodological practice capable of simultaneously integrating different and sometimes seemingly unrelated knowledge, professionalism, disciplines and production sectors; it will be necessary to rationalize and optimize, by combining traditional and innovative technologies, on the one hand all aspects that come into play in the transformative intervention and its process, project and product dimensions, and on the other hand the incoming and outgoing material flows for them to be equivalent, namely, so that waste and by-products from one sector can be fully reused in others.

  A return to nature, in its wild and ‘fourth nature’ forms, emulating its biological processes and cycles, less land occupation, green infrastructure and nature-based solutions to mitigate the effects of climate change, but also to produce services and ensure biodiversity, regeneration of the highly vulnerable built environment, energy efficiency, flexibility of use, natural-based, sustainable materials derived from recycling and upcycling, and more generally a circular development model and increased attention and awareness toward non-renewable resources, are the most discussed topics. The paradox is that the field of inquiry is mainly concerned with the urban domain: even though cities are considered among the main causes of climate and environmental change, they are ironically seen as the solution to the current crisis of the entire ecosystem. Such a vision calls for some considerations: first, one must ponder whether at the macroscale it is still possible to think of a ‘limited’ growth model and simultaneously build housing, infrastructure and services albeit with a reduced footprint on land and the environment; secondly with respect to the complexity of the issue, at the intermediate and micro scales, whether and how much nature can heal the Planet by restoring it to a condition of ecosystem balance and health such as to guarantee a future also for the next generations without considering the concept of ecology in the broadest possible sense and renewing the relationship between man, nature and living beings, overcoming the current anthropocentric approach in favour of an allocentric one.
  However, the published papers convey several certainties including the need for a multiscalar nature of interventions, which guarantees effects that are induced to a broader environmental context than the one of reference, and for teams that address critical issues with a holistic and systemic inter- and transdisciplinary collaborative approach, in a sort of speciation of disciplines that modifies their traditional statutes; what emerges then is that the intangible and material tools we can deploy today are numerous also thanks to the possibilities offered by digital technologies in the different design, implementation and management phases of the process. From this perspective, it seems crucial that the primary action to initiate the desired transition is the conscious acquisition of the problem and the absolute will to intervene in a synergistic mode, intellectually and scientifically, for the project to be charged with semiophore valences (Pomian, 1987) and, paraphrasing Timothy Morton (2018), to produce ‘hyperlandscapes’, ‘hypercities’, ‘hyperarchitectures’, and ‘hyperobjects’ that ‘welcome us’, ‘encompass us’, and ‘attach to us’, involving the whole ecosystem.

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  INNOVABILITY | Digital Transition

  Vol. 12 (2022)

  The term ‘innovability’^©® has become increasingly popular in the economic and social sciences, a renewed driving force for a new paradigm of development that expresses one of the most crucial challenges of our time and the need for a ‘solidary’ convergence between the two inescapable instances of ‘innovation’ and ‘sustainability’, as if these were opposing and conflicting: regardless of the terminology, even more so in times of a pandemic with its economic and social impact, Humanity promotes one of its prerogatives, i.e., the use of the ‘things’ that nature provides in order to transform them from their primary function (innovation), aware that those resources are not inexhaustible (sustainability). In this forward-looking context, it is necessary to design our best political and system actions to promote the need to innovate through the conscious and effective use of the Planet’s resources. In her inauguration speech as President of the European Commission in 2019, Ursula von der Leyen stated that green and digital transformations are ‘inseparable challenges’. In this sense, the European Green Deal, the Next Generation EU and the New European Bauhaus, as well as other National Plans (e.g. the Italian PNRR), assume strategic importance both in defining, in a clear and univocal way, the future development trajectories of an ecological, digital, cohesive and resilient Europe, as well as in correcting the main imbalances of the old continent, bringing together – despite the heterogeneous conditions of the Member States – the expectations and demands, of a general, common and shared nature, of citizens and businesses. The fil rouge is that of a ‘transition’ that combines themes and debates simultaneously involving science, technology but also philosophy, anthropology, ecology and economics, declined through the many specialized adjectives that define their increasingly delimited fields, yet more open to transdisciplinary logic, a kind of speciation of disciplines and language, recalling names such as Bateson, Commoner, Catton and Dunlap, Carpo, Kelly, Solis, Negroponte, as well as Jonas, Morin, Floridi, Caffo.
  In this scenario, in which digital anthropology identifies with the term ‘anticipation’, and in the ability to interact with the continuous flow of innovation to build a new digital ecosystem (Solis, 2016), anthropocentric innovation finds its ideal location, expands and evolves by targeting the capacity to place humans and their needs at the centre of new value propositions. This new form of ‘sustainable innovation’ is bound to have social and environmental well-being as joint and simultaneous priorities, such as facilitating an ethical and sustainable transition for the benefit of the entire community (WEF, 2022). The anthropogenic transformation of space is an energy-intensive action that increases the level of entropy, still a long way from systematic and widespread approaches such as ‘cradle to cradle’ or approaches that are respectful of non-renewable resources. Therefore, the theme does not concern disciplinary statutes but rather interdisciplinary and transversal aspects aimed at guiding and fostering a resilient, sustainable and inclusive ‘recovery’.
  In light of the premises above, issue 12 of AGATHÓN collects essays, studies, research and projects on the topic of Innovability^©® | Digital Transition to investigate the current widespread transformation that unites dichotomies (analogue and digital), enhances oxymorons (artificial intelligence), creates paradoxes (materiality of the intangible), while indiscriminately involving architecture, humanities and social sciences, anthropology, sociology, ecology, biology, physical-mathematical sciences and neurosciences, with impacts that – while already visible today and accelerated in part by the extraordinary global health emergency – will become even more evident in the medium and long term. A ‘digital’ transformation, which academics such as Floridi (2020) and Galimberti (2020), but also Haraway (2018), Searle (2017) and Chomsky (2011), have placed on a primarily ontological and epistemological level insofar as it involves the essence of ‘things,’ the way we define them, the world around us, and in particular our relationship with the elements that constitute it.

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  GREENERY | Its symbiosis with the built environment

  Vol. 11 (2022)

  AGATHÓN issue number 11 is a collection of essays, studies, research and projects on Greenery | Its Symbiosis with the Built Environment. It recalls the role that nature and greenery, in general, can play in the short term to address the current global warming and climate change challenges. They are caused by deforestation and forest fires, urban sprawl, indiscriminate use of non-renewable raw materials and an increase in carbon dioxide emissions. These elements cause a devastating impact on our fragile ecosystem, society and the economy. In 1969, Simon had already guessed the potential of a ‘new ecology’ whose animate and inanimate elements of the built environment characterise a ‘unified’ landscape. Beynus’ studies are a knowledge heritage useful for the informed and responsible regeneration of the built environment. Over the millennia, Nature has perfected strategies and solutions, processes and mechanisms to adapt to different climates and physical conditions through the rationalisation of the use of matter and energy by optimising material and immaterial metabolic exchanges.
  While the Modern Movement has considered landscape, urbanism, architecture and design as separate disciplines, in the new millennium there is a ‘scalar shift’ in which they are considered part of a unified territorial system, in which we are called to overcome anthropocentrism and to design for man and living beings, in a connection made of profound knowledge and understanding of the trajectories and reciprocal needs of human and non-human beings. The relationship between the parts of the system takes on crucial importance when we adopt a broader and more systemic vision, supported by a holistic and participatory approach. Digital technologies can support this ‘double convergence’ in their shift towards a ‘cybernetic ecology’ allowing us to see the natural and artificial world as a unicum.
  The theoretical and experimental framework presented by AGATHÓN issue number 11, although not exhaustive of the potential of nature-based solutions, shows that their cross-disciplinary essence can relevantly help – both with traditional and vernacular approaches/techniques and using IoT and digital technologies – to counteract the effects of climate change by creating a more resilient built environment, less vulnerable to erosive transformation dynamics, and to create healthier environments, enhance biodiversity, provide ecosystem services, improve quality of life, foster new economic and social opportunities and create value chains, while acting on urban regeneration processes with the circularity and multi-scalar tools as pillars. To achieve these goals in the shortest possible time and overcome the greenwashing bad practice in design, it is necessary to start a new paradigm based on the ‘shift from an economics of growth to an economics of belonging’ and on a ‘new ecology’ in which man and nature characterize an unprecedented ‘unified’ landscape in a profound bond made of mutual knowledge and understanding to build a relationship based on symbiosis, inclusion and adaptation at the different scales of the project. For example, by stimulating training initiatives such as those of the Valldaura Labs of the IAAC in Barcelona, which aim to disseminate practices for holistically integrated ecological and technological landscapes.

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  LINKS | Physical, Virtual, Digital

  Vol. 10 (2021)

  AGATHÓN issue number 10 is a collection of essays, studies, research and projects on Links | Physical, Virtual and Digital to investigate the profound and widespread transition that combines dichotomies (analogue and digital), enhances oxymorons (artificial intelligence), overturns axioms (ubiquity), creates paradoxes (intangible materiality) by involving, without distinction, architecture, humanities and social science, anthropology, sociology, ecology, biology, physical-mathematical sciences and neuroscience whose impacts will become even more clear in the medium and long term. Although they are currently visible and accelerated in part by the global health emergency. A certainly ‘digital’ transformation, which scholars such as Floridi (2020), and Galimberti (2020), but also Haraway (2018), Searle (2017) and Chomsky (2011) have placed above all on an ontological and epistemological level as it involves the essence of ‘things’, the way we define them, the world around us and in particular our relationship with the elements that constitute it.
  Physic/material and history of forms today become virtual reality by mixing in the immaterial stream of networks and deterritorialized flows: the digital world ‘opens’ by connecting (delocalizing) and ‘confines’, enclosing (self-sufficient city), but above all, it ‘induces’ new spatial configurations in a constantly evolving relationship between genius loci and shape, function and flexibility of use, between the ‘Vitruvian’ Man, in his physical proportions, and the ‘inforg’ man who lives, works and relates to the contemporaneity of simultaneously physical, virtual and digital places. A space that, as an ontological entity – natural, built, joint, open, secured, connected, residual, interstitial, on a macro, micro or nanoscale and, no matter if we are talking about surfaces, volumes, thresholds, technical-construction/plant components and objects – in any form (from landscape to territory, from infrastructures to cities, from buildings to objects, up to systems, components and materials) clarifies Connections: Physical, in the single material, analogical and tangible object; Virtual in configuring experiences of augmented and immersive reality; Digital in interacting and implementing new creative and communicative processes, and technical at the same time, and to control and monitor the project at various scales, conveying forms and images, functions and performances in a new dimension of ‘bit’ sharing.
  The essays, research and projects published in AGATHÓN on Links | Physical, Virtual and Digital in the different disciplines of the project, highlight how the nature of things and their connection is one of the great issues that we are currently facing. They also introduce innovative approaches and actions to solve both ‘historical’ and new problems (anticipating systems, possible futures, etc.) and new inconveniences (exclusion, digital divide, etc.), arrogating the ‘vitalism’ claimed by the current cultural, social and economic challenges that influence the contents of Agenda 2030 and the principles of sustainability, innovation and social justice issues that underlie them. In fact, we are shifting from a reality made of things to a reality made of relations – connections – within a daily life made of ‘immateriality’. The papers, although not exhaustive of the fields of investigation, show a picture aiming to fuel an open cross-disciplinary and ascalar confrontation, to simultaneously and synergically deal with the subjects characterized by a hybridization and contamination process of the areas of connection that today are prefigurable and possible – between people, between people and things/places and between things/places – inside of an ‘ecosystem’ that is increasingly a synthesis of these three interaction modes.

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  THE SECOND LIFE OF THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT

  Vol. 9 (2021)

  AGATHÓN issue number 9 is a collection of essays, studies, researches and projects on ‘The Second life of the Built Environment’, an interesting topic for Universities, businesses and industry. Climate changes, excessive use of soil, renewable resources, ever-increasing production of waste, the current pandemic emergency and the global socio-economic crisis have in fact entered our daily life. Even if these are tragic issues, they can be, somehow, seized as an opportunity to rethink the way we live and our world. In this ‘revolutionary’ (Floridi, 2020) and ‘polycrisis’ (Losasso, 2020) context, specifically referring to the building industry, the Academy, the Research and Industry worlds are called to give answers – based on sustainability and the principles of the Green Deal but also and mostly of the new Bauhaus – that can encourage reconsiderations and re-orientations of processes and products, new projects on places, buildings, objects and materials, able to positively affect the governance of the global change that our planet and humanity need, able to give a ‘new life’ to the built and/or transformed environment, at any scale.
  Different and numerous thoughts and research, examined in the different disciplines of the project, for a new life of the built environment are published in AGATHÓN issue number 9. The papers, although they do not deal with every field of investigation, show how it is possible to face climatic and environmental challenges already in the short term if there is the will to use a new paradigm, a radical change that brings together different areas, from social to economy, from technology to sciences, interpreting the current emergency as an opportunity to rethink our lifestyles and the world in which we live through the three founding instances proposed by Lauria and Azzalin: Change (of the way of thinking), Responsibility (ethics of care and conservation of the planet), Humanism (solidarity, without leaving anyone behind).

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  POSSIBLE AND PREFERABLE SCENARIOS OF A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE | TOWARDS 2030 AND BEYOND

  Vol. 8 (2020)

  AGATHÓN issue number 8 is a collection of essays, studies, researches, and projects on the subject ‘Possible and Preferable Scenarios of a Sustainable Future – Towards 2030 and Beyond’. The investigation of the future is a subject of sustained interest for the Academy and the craft and industry worlds. We have entered the third decade of the new millennium, and we must certainly reflect on the objectives we had set for 2020, on the results we have achieved and mostly on the ones we have not achieved. We must be aware that already by 2030 the world will be profoundly different. The main intellectual and scientific contributions of our time underline agree the four factors – technology, the globalized market, the environmental issue and health – that affect the most our planet are pressing at the same time, with inevitable consequences. The 17 2030 Sustainable Development Goals presented by the United Nations. By now it is clear that the future of our planet, its landscapes, cities, architectures and man-made products will mostly depend on the decisions we make today, on our level of ‘competence’, ‘vision’, and ‘forethinking’, on how we will deal with the subjects of sustainability, mitigation, adaptation (in their broadest meanings) with respect to the goals set. Going beyond 2030 and imagining 2050, we will certainly have to deal with a population growth that will reach ten billion people, 75% concentrated in cities and urban areas (United Nations, 2019). Therefore, the cities of the future, and their scenarios will become crucial elements for the environmental, social and economic sustainability of the whole planet.
  Some of the several questions raised by the Call were answered in the published contributions. In the ‘Focus’ section, the introduction essays report the personal contribution of the scholars we have invited as experts on the subject: Carlo Ratti (Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and Daniele Belleri (Design Editor at CRA – Carlo Ratti Associati), Lavinia and Thomas Herzog (Professor Emeritus of Excellence at the Technische Universität di Monaco di Baviera), Dario Russo (Professor of the University of Palermo) and Massimo Moretti (Founder of WASP), Patrick Thépot (Professor at the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture of Grenoble), Françoise Blanc (Professor at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture of Toulouse).
  In the light of published contributions, we can affirm that a vision of the sustainable future of living, by looking at the two time horizons of 2030 and 2050, will be played on increasingly synergical work aimed at providing answers to the ten main macro-questions: 1) ecological transition and increase in environmental quality; 2) transition to the green economy and effectiveness and circularity in the use of resources; 3) mitigation and adaptation to climate change, towards total carbon neutrality; 4) bioclimatic, energy efficiency and renewable sources, towards the model of positive energy cities; 5) progressive reduction of land use, towards the ‘zero land use’ model; 6) dialectic between globalization and glocalization; 7) digital transition, enabling technologies and opportunities linked to Data Science systems and to Industry 4.0; 8) interaction of the most advanced and diversified expertizes with increasingly smart communities, to share and include; 9) ‘polychrysis’ challenges originating from the pandemic and the threat of future pandemic forms; 10) innovation of ways and spaces of living, working, studying, producing, consuming and socializing, in a synergic and transversal interface ‘with’ and ‘between’ all the previous macro-issues. These issues, approaches and visions, therefore, are to be considered as active parts, not separate, of a strategic project constantly evolving and updating, considering them co-participating in the definition of scenarios. The transformation processes of our society are guided, nourished, characterized by them, to continue to imagine and build a more desirable future for our cities.

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  FROM MEGA TO NANO | THE COMPLEXITY OF A MULTSCALAR PROJECT

  Vol. 7 (2020)

  AGATHÓN issue number 7 is a collection of essays, studies, research and projects on the subject entitled ‘From Mega to Nano: the Complexity of a Multiscalar Project’, inextricably linked to the ever-increasing request of trans and multidisciplinarity of the project. The ability of ‘change of scales’, work on more different scales – multiscalarity – create new ones or change the meaning of the scales commonly accepted, it is common practice in the approach to the project and has always concerned architects, engineers, designers and artists for the multiple symbolic and real meanings of the size of a territory, a city, an architecture and an object. The concepts of scale and size are fundamental to link, in a systemic point of view, the detail with the big picture, the detail with the group, to interpret and represent, to discretize and recompose elements and parts that stand in a hierarchy or interconnection relation, to investigate the physical and social, to outline critical issues and potential, but especially to establish the importance of relational aspects between the group and its component as a way to understand their identity, their nature and organization, their regulation rules and the role played in different contexts, namely the fundamental elements to identify the form and structure of a territory, a city, an architecture and an object.
  The concept of scale in Architecture regulates the size of the anthropic space, always keeping human dimension as reference. The choice of the scale inevitably becomes a conceptual selection of what the project actually wants to represent. When using multiscalar representation, we try to show the complexity of reality, by using as many regulation criteria and specific evaluations as we can, not only by describing its size and geometric aspects but most of all by significantly highlighting its qualitative aspects and those related to identity, culture and history. This means that there is not just one scale to represent a territory, a city, architecture, an object or a detail; however, in terms of a necessary multiscalarity, the project chooses the most fitting scale to develop practices, on a case-by-case basis. Therefore, logically the scale influences the project: thanks to the progress of technology in the field of design at all levels, it is probably the component of the project on which the designer works the most, simultaneously coordinating real and virtual relations; these relations do not end when the form is created, but continue over time and modify the management of the object’s complexity.
  The essays and research published show that if measuring, using the scale as a tool, means understanding the things in the world by establishing some differences, therefore ‘off-size’ can be the basis for new theoretical assumptions in which both the infinitely large (mega) and the infinitely small (nano) contribute to defining crucial topics, such as environmental, social and economic sustainability, resilience, territory government, the idea of space, aesthetics, use, development of new products, services and materials, etc. Therefore, the multiscalar approach can be considered as an important design working tool that, in a systemic point of view, can foster the proposal of adequate strategies for action and planning of sustainable actions, developing new methods, working techniques and shared measurements, through well-considered hierarchies of priorities necessary to optimize the choices of the project and to determine the reliable cost/benefit balances (especially of environmental nature).

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  RESILIENCE BETWEEN MITIGATION AND ADAPTATION

  Vol. 6 (2019)

  AGATHÓN issue 6, titled ‘Resilience between Mitigation and Adaptation’ collects reflections on environmental, climatic and anthropic changes that characterize the beginning of this millennium and that are an increasingly major subject in the international debate since they influence, on the one hand, the protection of territories, landscapes and fragile urban areas, on the other the uses, performance and efficiency of architectural artefacts and everyday objects. Moreover, the shortage of natural resources, the global economic crisis, mass migratory flows, and the unpredictability of seismic events, are a source of continuous instability which can be dealt only with ‘resilient thoughts’ capable of answering continuous or sudden changes.
  Within a positive dynamic process, aimed at managing events and rebuilding a new balance (landscape, urban, architectural, economic, social, etc.), Resilience does not imply the restoration of an initial state, but the acquisition of a new balance and maintenance of functionality through two approach strategies. The first strategy is Adaptive, focused on the dynamic nature of operational methods – from ideational, compositional/design, to productive, realization, operational and management methods – in which all the elements of the built environment, from the territorial, urban and building scale, to the material and object scale, effectively adapt to new balances with higher performance levels; The second strategy is Mitigative, where research is directed to innovative technologies (process, project and products) aimed at risk prevention and minimizing any impact – concerning disturbing events due to environmental, seismic, anthropic and social change – and aiming at the realization of territorial urban systems, buildings, components, objects, and sensitive materials, with variable behaviour and in energetic-dynamic equilibrium with climatic and environmental changes.
  In the published articles is widely highlighted, under various disciplinary and scientific facets, the pressing action of climate, environmental and anthropic changes on the environment in general, and in particular to the urban one. This issue of AGATHÓN contains varied methods, research, considerations and projects, all aiming both at adaptive Architecture and Resilience Design, focused on achieving a sustainable symbiotic relation between man and the Planet in which we live.

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  PRO-INNOVATION | PROCESS PRODUCTION PRODUCT

  Vol. 5 (2019)

  The beginning of the third millennium has marked a period of unprecedented change for cities, architecture and product/visual design. Over the last two decades, economic, social and environmental causes have stimulated and conditioned research and production, directing them towards substantial paradigm changes, proposing new challenges to create more smart, more resilient, more responsive and adaptive, more efficient and more sustainable urban systems, buildings and objects – from nearly Zero Energy Buildings (nZEB) to Positive Energy Architecture (PEA) – designed and built faster, with lower costs and with a positive effect on the environment, society, health and productivity: more innovative, in a nutshell. It is a common knowledge that innovation is, now more than ever, the tool needed to recover from the global economic crisis, to aim for economic prosperity and quality of life improvement, to increase productivity, to foster competitiveness, to support the challenge of globalization and environmental sustainability, both at an ‘incremental’ level (improvement of an already existing production process) and ‘radical’ (to create a new unmatched method or production system).
  In this regard, AGATHÓN deals with the subject of ‘Pro-Innovation | Process Production Product’ with the aim of collecting essays and critical reflections, researches and experiments, projects and creations (of new architectures, recovery and restoration interventions, art and product/visual design) that might be case studies for innovation, sustainability and social inclusion, describing the subject: 1) Process Innovation as sequence and organization models, management and control of the process stages, operating methodologies (ideational, design, productive, operational, management and of disposal of the work/product) of the whole life cycle of the artifact; regulations; new professional experts and technical skills; ways to involve professionals and users in the several decision-making stages, etc.; 2) Production Innovation, i.e. tools suitable for the optimization of the different stages of the production process including machines and robots for digital manufacturing (CNC milling, laser cutting, 3D printing, etc.), for prototyping and for prefabrication, relating to analysis and design/simulation software (also with virtual reality) CAD and CAM, BIM, digital, parametric, algorithmic and generative, environmental, structural, energetic and thermal; installation and assembly techniques and technologies, etc.; 3) Product Innovation, i.e. smart, advanced, composite, recyclable, sustainable, nanostructured, shape-memory, phase-change, self-repairing, responsive, adaptive, low-cost and high-performance materials/components/objects with a low environmental impact; automation, detection, management and control equipment for performance optimization; ‘passive’ technologies for efficient casings, including natural ventilation and cooling systems, water collection, storage and recycling, and off-grid renewable energy production.
  Many proposals and new visions of the process, its management and building production, showing new paths for innovation and professionals. But, at the same time, they also make us think on the (possible) loss of a cultural and technological knowledge that considered the designer as the one holding a global knowledge that nowadays seems to be increasingly fragmented.

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  IMPERMANENCE BETWEEN NECESSITY AND PLEASURE

  Vol. 4 (2018)

  In the past, the time determined and ruled the relationship between architecture and history, highlighted the architecture’s capability of being passed on to posterity, to be inheritance and proof of a certain historical period. Today, the idea of duration must be rethought, having to face typical variables of the contemporary era, and identifying a new Mobile Architecture, giving rise to new forms and systems belonging to an architecture that we can call Temporary. A modernity that more and more gives immediate answers to constantly changing situations, characterized by the availability of new materials, components and construction systems that have made the creation of temporary mobile artefacts more correspondent to the needs of work and users. Temporary Architectures have become the non-places of architecture, originating a new and original research, experimentation and design sector, aiming to the creation of ephemeral built places, in contrast with permanent and enduring ones, belonging to a consolidated and more conventional architecture. This is combined with the long history of impermanence and ephemeral in architecture and in the arts connected to it and, among other things, meant as an opportunity for celebrations and for design experimentations.
  Other that an answer to emergency (natural disasters, migrations resulting from wars or political traumas, etc.), to which every community must be capable of giving real answers in case of an unexpected impermanence of home environment, impermanence can have a key role in architecture, and with mobile and variable innovative systems, can give functional answers to the solicitation of our senses: tasting, seeing, feeling, touching, smelling. These solicitations simulate the designer’s creativity to search for temporary architectures and respond to needs and requirements that define and characterize the impermanence (assembling, disassembling, set-up, flexibility, transportability, etc.). Another value sustains impermanence, enriching its meaning and giving to ‘pleasure’ an added value for the creation of temporary buildings that are highly technological, or representative, where materials and techniques can enhance the building and become, even for a short period, Architecture. Pleasure’s magnitude is linked to the project’s magnitude, which researches its fulfilment, where anthropometry, typological-dimensional requirements and materials merge into a final result that, in addition to responding to the specific parameters of temporary architecture, also offers suitable solutions to accessibility for all categories of users.
  All the papers identify new aspects of Impermanence. It is no longer relegated to an initial and brief stage of the constructive process, in which Architecture does not seem to be involved, but on the contrary, as specified in this editorial’s introduction, the idea of duration must be rethought, having to face typical variables of contemporary era, and identifying a new Architecture, although Temporary and Impermanent, is also long-lasting thanks to its new features, where materials, techniques and social framework can enhance the building and become, even for a short period, Architecture.

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  TEACHING AND PROJECTS OF ARCHITECTURE SCHOOLS

  Vol. 3 (2018)

  AGATHÓN issue number 3 aims to promote the debate between Teachers, Scholars and Designers on the following questions: What will the new architecture be like in this third millennium? In a national and international context, where Architecture – in its more basic core – seems to be a forgotten art, where the urban landscape is degraded and marked by a tired and worn rationalism, where only the Starchitect’s work stands out, what can be done? What task will the education places have in this complex scenario, with technological and immaterial innovation, but also with cultural and material backwardness? Are Architecture Schools modernizing? Do they have adequate strategies for the new era and for diverse contexts?
  In the editorial of AGATHÓN 2, Alberto Sposito brought to the attention of the readers some doubts that re-emerge in the subjects addressed in this issue: «does Architecture still exist as an artistic practice? Is art inexorably disappearing in the shadow of the so-called Starchitects? Which languages, forms and expressions can originate from the innovation of processes, materials and products, in response to the current needs of a simultaneous economic, social and environmental sustainability? Are the education and teaching systems of Architecture Schools adequate for the various contexts, given the social, political, cultural, economic (and even moral) status, in which we are? Is University able to communicate effectively and correctly to the citizens of tomorrow? Finally, starting Industry 4.0, or better Building 4.0, the rules and procedures related to the project are appropriate and correct or represent oppressive and malefic constraints?». The answers received to the many questions were numerous, had interesting contents and highlighted the differences or connections between the different national and international Schools of Architecture, Engineering and Design.
  It is recommended and necessary «a broad and open dialogue between people in institutions, research, and in the academic, professional and productive worlds, interested in anticipating strategies and implementing actions aiming to offer new competences, to raise the quality of the project and the built works, to rethink the forms of knowledge and the cognitive status of the project» (taken from the presentation at the International Conference La Produzione Del Progetto, SITdA and dArTe, Università Mediterranea di Reggio Calabria, 14-15 June 2018). Maybe the writer of this editorial will never see or participate as a teacher to the results of the new education settings originating and starting from the path of Industry 4.0 or leading towards a new type of Architecture or Design, more aware and respectful of the environment but especially of individuals, trying to remove the curses that complex bureaucratic structures have started to build around education, knowledge and cultural consciousness of future designers.

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  ARCHITECTURE AND NATURE

  Vol. 2 (2017)

  Defining the two terms Architecture and Nature, is difficult: this is because Architecture has always been present in culture while assuming different meanings from civilization to civilization or from era to era and because nature has been shaped over time by unpredictable phenomena and forces. As Gabriele D'Annunzio noted (Il Fanciullo) «nature and art are a bifrons god [...] you do not distinguish one face from the other face but you feel the unique pulsing heart that is hiding in the double-figure», so we too can say that nature and architecture constitute a binomial not as a sum, but as an indissoluble whole of two entities linked by a close relationship. To clarify and to give orientation we assume these two meanings.
  Architecture is the art of forming, through technical, constructive and artistic means, spaces that can be used for human needs: buildings, gardens and even monuments, considered in their spatial function; Architecture is a construction project conceived and executed, in which the various parts are conceived, structured and composed as elements of an organism belonging to the figurative arts. In other words, Architecture is therefore also an art that is part of the so-called visual-plastic arts, like sculpture; it is the discipline that has as its purpose the organization of space at any scale, but mainly that in which man lives. Nature is the foundation of existence in its physical configuration and in its biological becoming, as a causative presupposition, operating principle or phenomenal reality. Nature is the whole of all existing things considered in its overall form, in the totality, that is, of the phenomena and forces that manifest in it; it is the set of characters of a region, little or not yet modified by civilization. The term derives from the Latin nature, future participle of the verb nasci (to be born), and literally means 'what is about to be born'; according to the etymological meaning, in philosophy nature is intended in the finalistic way as the principle that operates as a life force, superior to the reality of inanimate matter, which drives all living beings to the maintenance of species through reproduction.
  We asked to specify the two terms of Architecture and Nature, with this call, from three different points of view: on formal, visual and material aspects; in particular: a) on the forms that architecture assumes in reference to those of nature; b) on the natural materials used in architecture, such as stone, wood, terra cotta, adobe, green, water; c) on the natural landscape and on the urban landscape, aimed at protecting and modifying the natural environment or structuring the urban environment, to make it increasingly functional and responsive to the growing social concentration in the cities.
  In this sense, we should read the contributions on architectures of animal and plant nature, designed in a conscious, interactive and adaptive way, and those on Responsive Envelopes, i.e. capable of providing services in response to the people present in a given environment, to climate changes and to particular environmental variations. One wonders: does architecture continue to exist as an artistic practice? Is it art that goes inexorably disappearing in the shadow of the so-called archistar? Which languages, forms and expressions can derive from the innovation of processes, materials and products, in response to the current needs of a simultaneous economic, social and environmental sustainability? Is the education and teaching system in the Schools of Architecture adequate for the various contexts, given the social, political, cultural, economic (and even moral) status, in which we find ourselves? Is University able to communicate effectively and correctly to the citizens of tomorrow? Finally, starting to Industry 4.0 or better to Building 4.0, the rules and procedures related to the project are appropriate and correct or constitute oppressive and malefic constraints?

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  CONTINUITY: PROJECTS FOR THE HISTORICAL CITY

  Vol. 1 (2017)

  From the crisis of the 1970s to the 1990s, in addition to a policy aimed at the recovery of modern and contemporary building heritage, it was possible to detect both a wider research on the cultural heritage of our country and an increasing interest of the public towards the ancient contexts . By the term ancient contexts it was used to refer to those architectural and environmental assemblies with strong historical connotations, which are layered from ancient times, often superimposed, and occupy non-urban and urban environments.  These sites are places where disciplinary confrontation between archeology, history of art, architecture, museography, urban planning, naturalistic engineering and, last but not least, technology is needed; Not only for their knowledge, but also for their preservation, value and fruition.
  In order to stimulate the comparison on this particular theme between different disciplines, AGATHÓN collects the contributions of scholars with these goals: 1) contribute, with analysis related to training processes, to the complex, multidisciplinary knowledge that the ancient contexts require for recovery, conservation and fruition; 2) to integrate humanistic culture with scientific, technological and environmental culture; 3) determine criteria, parameters and estimates for a lasting and adequate conservation, both degradation and specific context; 4) aim at putting into value and the fruition of such ancient contexts, seeking its museographic and economic implications.
  Each issue of the Journal welcomes research work on specific themes (rejecting published work or work that has been submitted to other editors for publication) regarding industrial and artisinal architecture, art and (product and visual design). The articles will be published mainly in English and Italian; its aim being to find is niche in the wider context of international research. The founding principles of the Journal are the originality and significance of the articles, the rigorous nature of the methodology, but also the easy access and wide-scale diffusion of the articles. An appropriate space, up to 40%, is entrusted to images. The humanist Giovanni Aurelio Augurelli, in a Latin carmé written in the second half of the 1400s, said regarding pictures: «multi multa ferunt, eadem sententia nulli est / pulchrius est pictis istud imaginibus», that is, many propose many interpretations, no one is of the same opinion; all this is more beautiful than the pictures themselves, whether paintings or photographs. In other words, the beauty of the pictures is that they push us to look for meanings, to remember and to activate the imagination, with multiple results.