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Architecture in the Making

Conversations on Urban Morphology and Design

  • 2025
  • Book
Authors
Rita Salamouni
Nicola Scardigno
Giuseppe Strappa
Publisher
Springer Nature Switzerland
Part of
Springer Professional "Business + Economics & Engineering + Technology"
Springer Professional "Engineering + Technology"
Springer Professional "Business + Economics"
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About this book

This book is a discourse on the study of urban form in the form of a conversation. It proposes a method of investigating the built environment and demonstrates it with many case studies. The method is based on the notion of process, a circular procedure that starts from the built reality and, by seeking the general in the particular, defines a finite series of general principles (abstractions) from which an infinite series of possible results (actions) in the production of the architectural form can be derived.

Architecture in the Making: Conversations on Urban Morphology and Design also investigates a contemporary notion of organism that is useful for architectural design. This concept has nothing to do with the imitation of nature, but it instead expresses the contemporary aspiration for a unifying synthesis, which runs through even the most critical phases of architectural history. The problem of designing organically, following the formative process of built reality, clashes today with design techniques undergoing a progressive phenomenon of abstraction. The dialogue presented in this book directly addresses the manipulated interpretation of the built environment superimposed on the direct and natural perception of reality.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter

Conversations with Giuseppe Strappa

Frontmatter
Chapter 1. Introduction
Abstract
Combining both internal and external spaces, architecture is, par excellence, the art of delimitation. In this sense, the work of the Roman architect Giuseppe Strappa allows us to make some reflections on ways of conceiving the relationship between space and limit. Two notions deeply rooted in history as the “true form” of reality and which, in the opinion of the author, contribute to the construction of a lexicon necessary to also express architecture poetically.
Rita Salamouni, Nicola Scardigno, Guiseppe Strappa
Chapter 2. Method
Abstract
At the beginning of the conversation, the problem of what could be the most suitable method for reading urban form in an operative way is examined. The problem is made complex by the current conditions of crisis that make a shared truth impossible. Against widespread relativism, it is argued that the architect should possess his own truth (even knowing that many others exist) that entails responsibility and allows choices. The proposed method is based on the notion of process, a circular procedure that starts from the built reality and, seeking the general in the particular, allows at defining a finite series of general principles (abstraction) from which to derive an infinite series of possible outcomes (action) in the production of the form. The process is not continuous, but even fractures should testify a procedural drama (an extreme, sudden transformation) inserted in the wide flow of built environment transformations. The form is not intended as the surface that we perceive of things: it is the way in which a structure is shown to our eyes, how we know, individually, even what we do not see directly.
Rita Salamouni, Nicola Scardigno, Guiseppe Strappa
Chapter 3. Form
Abstract
This chapter addresses the problem of the definition of form in architecture, also in its relationship with the visual arts. The definition of form given by the philosopher Luigi Pareyson as “both concluded and open at the same time, in its non-finite completeness” and Noam Chomsky's definitions of language, as an unlimited set of sentences constructed from a finite number of phenomena, are examined. The problem of context is also explored not only as a physical and material place in which the form is meant to deal with, but also a cultural, immaterial condition which generates choices and programs. In particular, the landscape could be grasped not only in its aspects related to perception, but as a visible appearance of a material culture, a transforming territorial structure. Some examples of projects based on the study of form as successive stages of transformation of matter are provided.
Rita Salamouni, Nicola Scardigno, Guiseppe Strappa
Chapter 4. Organism
Abstract
This chapter examines a contemporary notion of organism useful for architectural design. The new definition of organism and organicity, have little to do with the naturalistic matrices used through the imitation of nature. They rather express the aspiration, often disappointed but always persistently sought, for a unifying synthesis, which runs through even the most critical phases of architectural history. The idea of organic solidarity between the components that determine the appearance of the built form still continues in the center of modernity, like in much of modern Mediterranean architecture, using load-bearing and enclosing forms, organic binding construction, space, language in an aesthetic synthesis. The problem of designing organically, following the formative process of built reality, clashes today with design techniques undergoing a progressive phenomenon of abstraction. The media and manipulated interpretation of the built form is superimposed on the direct and natural perception of reality. Examples of design practice are proposed.
Rita Salamouni, Nicola Scardigno, Guiseppe Strappa
Chapter 5. Territory
Abstract
In this chapter, we talk about the territory as an architecture in its fullest meaning, arising from the collaboration between man and nature. Also Territory is materia signata (marked matter) a substance to which man's consciousness recognizes an aptitude for transformation. The territory is considered as a “territorial organism” and its processual meaning cannot be understood unless its elements (routes, settlement, productive areas) are placed within a frame of relationships of necessity between them. Landscape is defined as the visible aspect of the structure of a man-made territory. Understanding the structure of a territory through the phases of its anthropic use should begin with the reading of the routes, the way in which they form, consolidate, specialize, and hierarchize among themselves in a cooperative way, according to relations of congruence and proportion with the settlements and productive areas to which they fit in. As for contemporary conditions, the land is considered today the place in which architecture is “situated”. Territory, itself an architecture, and it is necessary to consider its actual disaster as a state produced by crises, conditions of rapid, traumatic change, even climatic. And also produced, by the fact that we no longer know how to read the territory in its architectural structure. Differently from the general meaning of the term, it is proposed to give the word “Anthropocene” a cultural sense: “Anthropocene is the epoch in which man began to completely transform the earth without reading its form.”
Rita Salamouni, Nicola Scardigno, Guiseppe Strappa
Chapter 6. Expression
Abstract
This chapter deals with the problem of expression that in morphology we could define as “readable order” and, at the same time, individual “aesthetic synthesis.” It is, in other words, a design and compositional problem. The topic also raises the problem of language in the use of architectural and urban form. The theme of expression is today complex as the forms currently produced end up belonging not only to their own cultural pertinent area, or exchanges between areas, but to the more general content of an universal media circuit in crisis of transformation. The disorder that this condition generates should be considered a resource, the seed of transformation and innovation. Several examples of projects that deal with the problem of expression from a morphological point of view are provided.
Rita Salamouni, Nicola Scardigno, Guiseppe Strappa
Chapter 7. Didactic
Abstract
This chapter addresses the problem of the designer’s responsibility for his own choices and the way in which its request should be transmitted to new generations. It deals with the problem of ethics in architecture and how it could be possible to overcome the de-responsibility induced by homologated forms consumprtion, which end up constituting a reassuring repertoire. It is therefore necessary to study the deep transformations substratum of the built environment which explains why things are as they appear. Studying the formative processes of the built reality, the different changing phases, the project should be considered as the critical, last phase of transformation, that of the near future. The reading of the transformation processes does not provide a solution but offers a series of congruent possibilities from which the designer has the responsibility to choose and which he is required to express through a personal aesthetic synthesis. The reading of the built reality cannot be, in other words, a description, but a vital and operative interpretation.
Rita Salamouni, Nicola Scardigno, Guiseppe Strappa
Chapter 8. Contemporary Condition
Abstract
The conclusion of the conversation deals with the context in which architectural forms are produced today, characterized by an ever-increasing distance between research and the concrete reality of the built world, and by progressive specialization. Architecture is, instead, a synthetic activity. In a society in which knowledge cultivates increasingly specific fields, this could not be a weakness or an anachronism, but a great resource. A critique of the current condition is proposed: the architect should have a critical role in the society in which he is operating, but this seems not happening. The architect seems to look, rather, to adapt blindly to a condition of rapid consumption, spectacular images, and waste of resources. Architecture, from construction, has become communication. Demands for change toward a wise use of resources are, however, becoming pressing in recent years. The organicity of the built world is turning from requirements imposed by necessity in past centuries, into a conscious choice. The method of a “formative architecture” is proposed. Some personal considerations, in this regard, about the legacy of Saverio Muratori, Louis Kahn, Gianfranco Caniggia, and their relevance in the contemporary condition are reported.
Rita Salamouni, Nicola Scardigno, Guiseppe Strappa
Backmatter
Title
Architecture in the Making
Authors
Rita Salamouni
Nicola Scardigno
Giuseppe Strappa
Copyright Year
2025
Electronic ISBN
978-3-031-86833-7
Print ISBN
978-3-031-86832-0
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-86833-7

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