THE GENESIS OF A METROPOLITAN ENCOUNTER

The Project

The idea of a drawing, a semiotic ideogram by Paul Klee “the complex system of urban relations” made me think of how important and in which way the tracing designed by every individual in his ways is.
Paul Klee explains in his book – Point, Line and Surface – 1926 – how there can be a graphic tale, similar to an obscure riddle, starting from an I (the point), continuing in our motorial actions (lines) in our paths (broken lines) or in our reflections if we ever changed our paths (counter-movement).
But this is just one of the many graphic tales.
What would happen if we added – besides the graphic sign and the bi-dimensionality – many individuals meeting with each other in a metropolitan scene, according to given rules?
What would happen in 3D in a 360°space, other than tracing signs like x-y?

From a proxemic point of view, each culture has its own codes and its own cohabitation, meeting and relation rules, even though today we tend to act according to “metropolitan” culture”, the homologated and globalised cultures, that give rise to the attitudes of living in standardized architectures, with typologies that repeat themselves forever and in every place.
The individual living in a place, occupying it and interacting with it and with the objects and the other people, needs his how scene.
His ways of aggregation are as immeasurable as the needs of every single individual.
Urban metropolitan conflicts lead the individual to the research of his own place and a part of his space, not only from a material but also from a social point of view. He looks for a place which is able to represent him allowing him to express his wishes and desires.

The triangle, a perfect and precise shape, cutting and dynamic, is compared to the individual.
The shapes of the triangle are as many as are the personalities of human beings.
Triangle / man, the only difference is the shape / character, angularity / desires, though sticking to one’s own category of triangle or human being.
We pass to a structural conformation of a model representing the dynamics of the individual.
A Photogram simulating the structure of a crowd, observing the distance between individuals and creating a virtual net, denotes both casual and voluntary aggregations of every single individual in comparison with the others.

A formal and tridimensional composition of an analogical model is created, where every single individual changes in terms of texture, shape and shades. This means an explicit or implicit place, closed or open, a urban corner, a square, a flat, a space leading to privacy or a corner for individual meditation.
Individual, Distance, Space and Construction.
It is fundamental to state that Analogous means a reality being somehow parallel to another reality but not exactly alike.
The Analogous reflects selecting characteristics and aspects of its parallel without forcing any conventional answers.
The Analogous offers a way of seeing and perceiving familiar subjects under conceptual aspects or in a new way, giving the opportunity of new and fresh thoughts.
So it is possible to interpret social relations with the same reading key of every single triangle.
The distance…the relation,
The meeting…of surfaces,
The relations…close and far one from another,
The space…open-closed, occupied by relations,
The volume…group
The single…individual.

The place
This model, developed with such characteristics, also obeys the laws of insertion in a place which already has its conformation, instead of invading it.
We know that any architectural model to be projected needs all those “local” reference points, i.e. history, culture, the respect for what exists already,
in other words the evaluation of what has already been constructed.
The creation of standardised forms and typologies leads to the lack of individuality and character, which results in urban and spatial repetition and death of history.
The same thing could be said about the difference between globalisation and multiracialism.

Architecture producing spaces is also the creating subject of all those silent languages spoken by its users.
Architecture, with its spatial limits, supports different uses of space and leads to different ways of aggregation.
Given that we – the individuals – are not spiritual entities and that we are part of a space that surrounds, separates, unites us and makes us meet, it is appropriate to speak of an attempt of space semiology.

The final representation of In-Virtual spaces (that do not exist but could though), the demonstration of a use of the collective and individual, free and apocalyptic space; with the prerogative of meeting and socialisation, cultural exchange and entertainment.
The creation of action sets and social operations and of a structure containing and representing photograms of social life and scenes.
From the macrostructure of the crowd to the microstructure of the group, to the single individual.
Space, with its stereo metrical rules, and the Architectural and Urban landscape which is created all around, is the expression of a sensorial process of man used in the construction of his own perceptive universe.

Presenting a new concept of space for the town centre.
Place: as project of a space where architecture, light, material and culinary choices are fundamental elements.
Place: as “convivial” expression of a non declaredly formal representation. Meditated and refined covering.
Place: as a contemporary space where to eat, drink, meet, relax, learn information, create opportunities…
Place: as response to the complex art of social representation.