Abstract
Through the concept of intensity, this chapter intends to propose a different point of view to approach new questions posed by the contemporary urban context, concerning the reactivation and recoding of uses and practices within consolidated city spaces. Today, just as during the “spiritual crisis” of the ‘70s, free plots, abandoned buildings, empty apartments, rooms, roofs, and all the city surfaces become magnets that are able to create additional capacity for the unspoken desires, as able to the visible and invisible characteristics of spaces. In other words, thanks to different practices and phenomena, spaces are re-thought (or re-conceived) as a platform for different possibilities over time. Intensity, rather than density, is a tool capable of showing this potential in a kinetic process. Through an etymological analysis, the interpretation of the role of the project in generating vitality within the urban space. Hereafter, the intensity acts as a key to reveal the potential of space to catalyze un-programmed and free uses not yet conceived thanks to its design and devices. In other words, intensity allow conceving project as a process. All the spaces become a platform for interaction and opportunity—from the house to the city.
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Notes
- 1.
“To live together in the world means essentially that a world of things is between those who have it in common, as a table is located between those who sit around it; the world, like every in between, relates and separates men at the same time. The public realm, as the common world, gathers us together and yet prevents our falling over each other, so to speak”. Arendt (1958:1998), The human condition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, p. 52.
- 2.
“This polymorphous dynamic, clandestine or official, militant or more institutional, informal or more organized, often arises in industrial wastelands, public or abandoned spaces where new, responsible ways of building, living or sharing can be tested out.
(…) In these open places, “Third Place activities” are the norm, “alternative buildings” are the rule, “reversibility” is a standpoint, “fragility” is an observation and “workshopping” a way of doing things that implies movement, possibility, and openness. Something like the possibility of a town begins to take shape between do-it-yourself and open innovation, urbanism and activism. (…) The blurring of time, activity, and status, the blurring of living space, scale, and recomposition, the tendency toward multipopulated and multiscalar alliances and recompositions: all these lead to a hybridization of structures, objects, and practices”.
Luc Gwiaździński, Localizing the in-finite, in Infinite Places, Paris: Editions B42, p. 43.
- 3.
“(…) le possible est une tentation que le réel finit toujours par accepter”, Bachelard (1932). L’intuition de l'instant, Paris: Stock, 45.
- 4.
“As porous as this stone is the architecture. Building and action interpenetrate in the courtyards, arcades, and stairways. In everything they preserve the scope to become a theatre of new, unforeseen constellations. The stamp of the definitive is avoided. No situation appears intended forever, no figure assert its “thus and not otherwise” W. Benjamin, One-way street and other writing, NLB, London, 1979, Naples, p. 169.
- 5.
“Whereas utopias are unreal, fantastic, and perfected spaces, heterotopias in Foucault’s conception are real places that exist like “counter-sites”, simultaneously representing, contesting, and inverting all other conventional sites. The heterotopia presents a juxtapositional, relational space, a site that represents incompatible spaces and reveals paradoxes”. Foucault, Michel, Of Other Spaces, Heterotopias, Diacritics No. 16, 22–27, 1986.
- 6.
“We use the word “loft” as a term that sums up these urban qualities. (…) It is used to describe adaptable, flexible, and, at the same time, a powerful space. (…) The qualities of the loft are in that sense not limited to a single building—they can be transferred to the urban context as a whole”. Martina Baum, Kees Christiaanse, City as loft. gta Verlag, ETH Zurich, 2021, p. 9/10.
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Baima, L., Robiglio, M. (2020). Intensity of Uses and Spatial Devices. In: Lami, I. (eds) Abandoned Buildings in Contemporary Cities: Smart Conditions for Actions. Smart Innovation, Systems and Technologies, vol 168. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35550-0_4
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