Recognizability of the urban parts in the medium-sized city. The thaumaturgy of the project

This project for a large area in north-west Bologna known as the “Ex Mercato Navile” is an urban project and as such its forms are inspired by the larger scale of the city. Thus, it is clear that from both theoretical and practical standpoints, this project proposal puts the form of the city and its historical evolution at the very core of the urban and architectural invention. In other words, taking the forms of the city’s architecture and transfiguring them into as many forms of contemporary design. So, one of the features of this design approach consists in considering the city – following Lévi-Strauss’ counsel – as “the human thing par excellence”; in which the memories, aspirations and desires of collective life converge, as is common knowledge. To a certain extent, this is a truism, but one which helps us think of urban artefacts as a form of spiritual life and therefore consider them a work of art. Seeing the city and its urban artefacts as a work of art means that in some way the relationship which is established between the city and the architectural invention must be primarily of an imaginative order. Indeed, I personally believe that with this approach we can revitalize and restore the relationship between the city and urban design within compositional research that is essentially rational, but also abounds in unsuspected developments.