Tag Archives: Paolo Carlotti

Avvisi

READING BUILT SPACES – 4th ISUFitaly Conference

Leave a comment

Bari, 26-28 September 2018

The conference’s aim is to propose a dialectical comparison between scholars of Architecture, Urban Planning, Urban History, Restoration, Geography, on the theme of urban morphology with an interpretative perspective based on the concept of “operating history”. Search for a multidisciplinary syncretism that eludes single analyzing techniques and aims to the complete reconstruction of the urban phenomenology in its totality and concrete essence, through the study of the changing and inflexible condition of ‘fluidity’ hinged on the world’s events. An integrated thought based on the critical concept of ‘making’ that constitutes, phase by phase, the signifying element of each present, explained through the relationship between the before and the after: that is the research perspective of ‘being’ that announces the notion of transformational process.              Therefore, the projection in the future of the urban form is the central theme of the conference that proposes to stimulate the reflection on the issues as: recovery (not only of the historical city), re-use of existing urban spaces, regeneration, ex novo design in peripheral and peri-urban areas and natural spaces. All that, without neglecting the issue of sustainability, not considered with the strabismus of those who surrender to the “technique” pre-domain.

Themes:

THEORY

1. Urban form theories

2. Urban form between identity and spatial semantics

3. Contemporary urban spaces between form and process

4. Urban form between architecture and landscape

5. In making structural or timeless paradigm?

READING

1. Form and structure of the historical city

2. Urban morphology and settlement process

3. Relation between periphery and natural space

4. Structure of the informal city

5. Metropolis and megalopolis in the making

DESIGN

1. Today’s city and future shape

2. Urban restoration and post-trauma re-construction between conservation and innovation

3. Fringe belt riqualification

4. The urban project between city and nature

5. Ecological urban environments

Conference Chairs
Matteo Ieva, Polytechnic University of Bari, Italy
Paolo Carlotti, ‘Sapienza’ University of Rome, Italy
Loredana Ficarelli, Polytechnic University of Bari, Italy

saggi e articoli

OBSERVATIONS ON URBAN GROWTH

Leave a comment

 

 

 

 

 

FrancoAngeli, Milan 2018

OBSERVATIONS ON URBAN GROWTH    
edited by Giuseppe Strappa

 

CONTENTS
Presentation
The form of expanding cities  – Giuseppe Strappa
Metropolis in transformation .

A study of fringe belts in Belo Horizonte, Brazil:
a contribution to developments in urban morphology
Staël de Alvarenga Pereira Costa, Karina Machado
de Castro Simão »

The contemporary metropolis growing.
The case-study of Buenos Aires
Anna Rita Donatella Amato »

Urban densification, vertical growth and fringe
in American cities
Paolo Carlotti »

Guangzhou-Foshan Metropolitan Area.
An adaptive notion of urban fringe belt for the
continuing Chinese city
Anna Irene Del Monaco

The growth of traditional cities

Post-industrial Eindhoven and its radial fringe belt:
A morphology of contemporary urban growth
Daan Lammers, Ana Pereira Roders, Pieter van Wesemael »

Conquest of organicity within the Liège’s 19th-20th
century serial-linear tissues
Matteo Ieva »

From urban nodalities to urban fringe belts.
The case-study of Krakow
Marco Maretto »

Urban growth of Turkish cities
Tolga Ünlu »

The Hybrid, the Network City and the Territory
“elsewhere”.The contemporary “fringe” condition in
north European urban phenomena
Nicola Marzot »

————————————————————————

PRESENTATION

THE FORM OF EXPANDING CITIES
Giuseppe Strappa

The reading of the changes underway at the edges of contempo¬rary cities, where the countryside – often already partly urbanised – densifies and turns into urban matter, is one of the most difficult sub¬jects to tackle methodically. Proof of this is the descriptive literature produced on the topic, where depictions of an inextricable complexity and the suggestion of fragmentation, particularly amongst architects, have become true literary genres in themselves. The obvious obstacle is that the forms in which expansion takes place continuously evolve in time and space and seem beyond any rational, general law, while following a comprehensible process is an essential condition for the construction of a study method that can be communicated (and there¬fore of a design).
The growing complexity of the phenomena that develop on the edges of the built environment, where rural areas prepare for change in ways that seem continually different, can be clearly recognised in post-industrial cities, but the uncertainty inherent in the tools we use to understand and monitor them was already apparent in the post-war period: the very period that attempted to create a limit to the irrational¬ity of cities in chaotic expansion by developing new tools for under¬standing them.
As far back as the 1960s, the Conzenian school offered a clear inter¬pretation of these phenomena, attempting to generalise instances of interpretation developed for individual cities. This method originated in Alnwick’s exemplary study (Conzen, 1960) which, for that matter, we have published in an Italian edition due to the usefulness of the in¬formation it contains. The notion of fringe belt, which arose with these geographical studies – and initially fell on deaf ears (Whitehand, 1996) – was taken up with greater conviction in recent times, becoming a tool for analysis adopted by both architects and town planners.
The method is based on recognising the urban plan, building types and land use as essential factors in determining the kinds of changes that take place. The common features of one or more of these factors allow us to distinguish fairly uniform areas (morphological regions), allow¬ing us to construct models of expansion where we can distinguish forms and phases.
While the resulting model is spatially fairly simple, based as it is on successive rings that move out from the urban centre, its application to the actual built environment is rendered more complicated by the discontinuity of expansion, which usually occurs in stages of rapid growth alternating with periods of relative construction stagnation. M.R.G. Conzen discovered the link between these various phases of consolidation of the urban perimeter and the particular features of building types and land use that determine its form. This is interpreted as the relationship between the result of centripetal forces – particu¬larly obvious in the formation of the inner nucleus, the Central Busi¬ness District (CBD) – and centrifugal forces that push out towards the edges, infrastructure that does not require immediate access, as well as low-density single-family housing.
This relationship between phases allows us to define the concept of ‘fringe belt’ as one that is linked to an urban phenomenon that recurs over time, that takes place at the margins between urbanised and rural areas when the growth of housing fabric stops or slows down abruptly, allowing the consolidation of urban structures through services and infrastructure encouraged by the low cost of these areas and the avail¬ability of land. In other words, some elements of the urban structure tend to be located on the margins of the built environment, creating specialised areas ‘around’ housing fabric.
From the many studies that have been carried out, it is clear how the term ‘around’, whose meaning seems inextricably linked to the term ‘belt’, should actually be interpreted as a spatial hierarchisation rather than in its geometric meaning. To the point where there are many examples of growth across urban nuclei scattered throughout a territory, each of which forms its own fringe belt, before merging and forming new urban entities (see a number of the cases published here).
The fringe belt concept, which emerged with the interpretation of historic cities and is often usefully applied to the study of walled cities (Whitehand, 2017), also seems to contribute to the study of both the growth of industrial cities as well as the more complex expansion of modern-day metropolises.
In fringe belt foundation studies, particularly in the English-speak¬ing world, the benchmark example is the British metropolis, particu¬larly London. If, however, we consider the illegal urban sprawl typical of Mediterranean metropolises, consisting of detached houses on the edges of rapidly expanding housing areas, or the ‘informal’ expansion of South American and Asian cities, it becomes clear how, in many ways and with the proper caveats, the behavioural model features sig¬nificant analogies.
Saverio Muratori clearly noticed, during the same period as Conzen’s research, the condition of crisis that saw post-war cities expanding chaotically and attempted to include them in efforts to trace the myr¬iad urban phenomena back to a common interpretation, to a rational whole that could be taught and passed on (Muratori, 1963).
In the wake of his teachings, Gianfranco Caniggia provided us with a theoretical model of the forms of urban expansion that was very different to that of Conzen but that could be traced back to the same concepts when it comes to some of his general principles. What are, deep down, the infrastructures that are located on the margins of cities in the Conzenian model, that occupy the empty spaces consisting of cheap land if not the Caniggian model’s ‘anti-polar’ construction? And yet, Caniggia seems to refer, above all, to pre-industrial, organic cities that grow according to a modular law, through successive doublings, where each module is part of a larger urban organism and contributes to its life whilst nevertheless maintaining its original characteristics as a distinct and recognisable sub-organism. If we insist on a comparison, ‘mixed land use’ areas can be equated to the peripheral arrangements of partially specialised sub-organisms, in direct contact with rural ar-eas, that form during static phases of city construction.
Both these interpretations, which complement each other in the interpretation of fundamental aspects of the expansion of European cities, are products of the cultural areas where they formed. However, both have been recently adapted – more or less explicitly – to the study of other urban areas, such as those of North America or China, which feature very different characters.
In the early 1960s in North America, specific areas of growth were identified in the expansion on the edges between cities and countryside areas. Gerrit Wissink attempted to classify their typical features with specific characteristics in areas adjacent to the city ‘suburbs’, and more isolated ‘satellite’ areas in the territory, also considering their variations: ‘pseudo-suburbs’ and ‘pseudo-satellite’ areas (Wissink, 1962).
The study method that had to be employed when interpreting North American urban areas had to take into account particular condi¬tions. The differing mechanism of land value almost always hinders the formation of a fringe belt that can be spatially recognised as a single unified whole. There, a strip of available cheap land where anti-polar infrastructure can be set up rarely forms. The increase in land value, determined by the advantages that a particular location offers, begins decades before such land is actually exploited for construction, hin¬dering that clear difference between rural and urban land values that

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fig. 1 – San Martin das Flores in the state of Jalisco, Mexico. Sixteenth-century Spanish settlement turned into slums by the uncontrolled growth of Guadalajara.

encourages the formation of distinct strips of anti-polar construction. Moreover, one should take into account the fact that the greater or lesser marginality of areas of potential city expansion does not depend on their distance from the centre, but rather on complex factors, in¬cluding their accessibility, which has relevant influence, due to the very nature of American cities.
This situation leads to an early division of properties and a change in the size of building lots, smaller near areas of expansion but with a significantly higher value. The development of fringe belts here is therefore less continuous and often opposite to development in radial strips, sometimes following a linear, though discontinuous, form of expansion along transport arteries and, at other times, a growth of ‘clusters’ scattered throughout the territory, depending on a method intrinsic to the market-driven rationale of intense speculative activity and few town planning regulations.
The distance from one’s workplace, often located in the CBD or at its edges, combined with the extensive use of private transport and the formation of associated large-scale infrastructure, contributes to the complexity of this multi-faceted model of growth that is so hard to generalise. Thus the concept of the rural-urban fringe (R-U fringe) emerg¬es, understood to mean the transitional zone that, in Western cities, indicates a discontinuous territory and a contradictory landscape on the border between city and countryside, made up of extensive areas featuring specific, recognisable characters. One character that is usu¬ally identified with R-U fringe is due to the particular condition of its inhabitants, who live there despite not being part of the place either economically or socially (Herington, 1984). It is, moreover, a structural phenomenon linked to the inexorable growth of the urban population, which has for some time now overtaken the rural population (over 54% in 2017), with a percentage growth that seems relentless. This explains the renewed interest in the concepts of ‘fringe belt’ and ‘R-U fringe’, which still seem suited to interpreting the new, uncontrolled phenomena (that are, nevertheless, dynamic and innovative) of the market-led expansion of cities, where new anti-polar structures are often placed beyond the immediate administrative limits not only of large cities but also of small towns, in peri-urban areas that are hardly regulated, occupied by a combination of detached single-family houses and large entertainment complexes, commuter districts and noisy small businesses that cities push to their margins, areas used by undertak¬ers and warehouses of all kinds, shopping malls and venues for large events, concerts and festivals along the edge of farmland. The fact that concepts that have now become traditional, such as those of the fringe belt and R-U fringe have, for some time now, been placed at the centre of design project instruments for areas in urban expansion, succinctly tackling spatial as well as political and social problems, is proof of the attempt to establish the latest town planning frontier, limiting the fragmented city (Gallent, 2006).
However, we cannot deny that the idea of limits, which once con¬stituted one of the pillars of urban studies from the post-war period on, is now definitively in crisis, together with that of a perimeter, which was not only used as a planning tool but also as a mindset, allowing us to establish distinctions and borders.
Nevertheless, I believe that architects and town planners are not al¬lowed to accept reality as it is (contrary to the aesthetically pretentious movement that has recognised in the disintegration of every order the representation per se of the modern world). Often disorder, if ob¬served methodically, contains its own explanation, multifarious aspects of manmade principles that can be recognised and analysed rationally.
In any case, the model used to interpret and critically explain the phenomena of urban expansion is not just a scientific tool: it is also knowledge in action, it contains a design project. I believe we need to ‘designedly’ seek out the form of cities that expand, even in their seem¬ingly chaotic, formless parts (Strappa, 2012).
This book compares and contrasts a number of essays on urban expansion that examine case studies located in various different geo¬graphic areas: from Europe to Asia, from North to South America.


Fig. 4 – Spontaneous ridge routes in the expansion of Mexico City.

It is not, however, just a comparison of urban samples. What interests the editor is to compare interpretational models derived from experi¬ence that come under the umbrella of Urban Morphology, developed in different cultural contexts that nevertheless share the conviction that the form of a city, even in its most seemingly chaotic incarnations, can be interpreted rationally and contains the seeds of future change.

References
Caniggia, G., Maffei, G.L. (1979) ‘Composizione architettonica e tipo¬logia edilizia 1.Lettura dell’edilizia di base’ (Marsilio, Venezia).
Conzen, M.R.G. (1960) ‘Alnwick, Northumberland: a Study in Town- Plan Analysis’ (Institute of British Geographers, London).
Gallent, N., Andersson, J., Bianconi, M. (2006) ‘Planning on the Edge’ (Routledge, London).
Herington, J. (1984) ‘The Outer City’ (HarperCollins, New York).
Lammers, D., Pereira Roders, A., Van Wesemael, P. (2016) ‘Radial fringe belt formation’, Proceedings of the 22nd ISUF Conference, Rome 2015 (U+D, Rome).
Muratori, S. (1963) ‘Architettura e civiltà in crisi’ (Centro Studi di Storia Urbanistica, Roma).
Strappa, G., ed., (2012) ‘Studi sulla periferia est di Roma’ (FrancoAnge¬li, Milano).

 

 

saggi e articoli

Leggere la periferia con occhi nuovi

Leave a comment

LEGGERE LA PERIFERIA CON OCCHI NUOVI
Giuseppe Strappa

Il problema dello studio della nostra periferia, di una città moderna che si è sviluppata in modo contraddittorio nel territorio di confine tra tessuti consolidati e campagna, è quello di leggere un’edilizia nuova sulla quale, al confronto con la bellezza e l’autorità riconosciuta al centro antico, si è consolidato un giudizio sbrigativo di città instabile e vaga, non legittimata dalla storia: senza struttura.
Le tante letture che si sono succedute, dal neorealismo in poi, nella letteratura, nel cinema, nell’architettura, non hanno fatto che rafforzare l’immagine di un indefinito mondo di confine, a volte estremo, trasformando la realtà di quartieri, insediamenti abusivi, intensivi abitativi pubblici o di speculazione, in luoghi della mente tanto verosimili e consolidati da essere accettati come verità: dalla disperazione delle case popolari di Val Melaina in Ladri di biciclette, alla speranza delusa delle abitazioni del Quadraro di Mamma Roma, ai fondali urbani dei drammi di Rossellini, De Sica, Antonioni, Monicelli, Zampa, Pasolini. L’ultimo brandello di ordine cui aggrapparsi prima del naufragio nei casermoni disordinati, sembrava costituito, curiosamente, dalla rigidità del Quartiere Don Bosco, nella versione metafisica che ne ha dato di Fellini o in quella ironica e malinconica di Dino Risi. Oltre questa soglia, astratta e simbolica, si stendeva un territorio di conflitto senza monumenti e senza memoria, che si alimentava di infiniti segni e permetteva infiniti codici.
Una città strabica, peraltro, che ha sperimentato il mito populista della crescita per quartieri indipendenti proprio nel momento di transizione della città da capitale di stampo ancora ottocentesco verso un incerto futuro di metropoli. Che ha continuato a proporre, con i “comparti” del piano del ’62, una crescita per brani isolati in un verde fragile, virtuale, trasformato presto nei prati desolati cui è legata l’immagine letteraria della periferia romana, e saturato poi, a ondate dalle successive, da caotiche espansioni di frettolosa edilizia privata, epilogo inevitabile e provvisorio di un naufragio amministrativo ancora in corso.
Non è stato deliberatamente riconosciuto alla periferia romana quel valore culturale che pure doveva essere evidente, né individuato alcun processo formativo che ne spiegasse ragioni e vocazioni. Eppure la forma del suolo strutturata da lievi crinali già in parte abitati, separati da compluvi dove scorrevano le marrane, ha costituito il riferimento alla struttura di percorsi e perfino alla costruzione dei primi tessuti di speculazione o abusivi degli anni ’50, in un inconscio rispetto di un territorio storico ancora operante. Per questo la sua struttura è stata volutamente ignorata: perché una città senza forma sembrava aprirsi a qualsiasi possibilità e, dunque, a qualsiasi forma, anche alla più apparentemente improvvisata. La colpa è stata attribuita soprattutto alla brutalità degli interventi privati, ai “palazzinari” senza scrupolo. Anche se, credo, qualche responsabilità, seppure marginale, abbiano avuto alcuni interventi “informali” di illustri architetti che, nelle espansioni originate dalla legge 167 del ’62, hanno indicato la strada di un ordine astratto e individualistico di parti isolate di città a fronte di un disordine generale del territorio. Esattamente il contrario di quello che sarebbe servito.
D’altra parte il fallimento del progetto per il Sistema Direzionale Orientale, che avrebbe dovuto organizzare, con i quaranta milioni di metri cubi previsti, l’intera struttura urbana di un’area immensa comprendente Pietralata, il Tiburtino, il Casilino e Centocelle, è stata l’espressione plastica dell’impotenza della politica di fronte ai problemi reali.
La periferia romana sembrava condannata a incarnare l’essenza pittoresca della modernità urbana. Una modernità che ha avuto i suoi cantori, che interpretavano la frammentazione e il disordine urbano come germe di figure in continua rigenerazione. Col risultato concreto di legittimare, in qualche modo, la disinvoltura con la quale ancora oggi si procede per parti o, meglio, per spartizioni, attraverso insediamenti autonomi e tuttavia, non autosufficienti, incapaci di comporsi a formare una vera metropoli. Schegge che si vanno ormai saldando o meglio giustapponendo senza che nessuna struttura razionale, tra polarità immaginarie e centralità rimaste sulla carta, le possa realmente integrare. Le proposte di questi giorni per il nuovo stadio di calcio, contro la stessa cultura contemporanea delle città europee, prevedono strutture autonome d’iniziativa privata: migliaia di metri cubi di nuove abitazioni isolate intorno a un centro vuoto, una struttura separata e monofunzionale. E’ la vittoria del contingente e del casuale, della trattativa tra politica e promoter.
Un dato è evidente dalla constatazione del fallimento del piano del ’90: il “generoso” dimensionamento dell’edilizia privata ha portato a due esiti ugualmente disastrosi.
Da una parte la dilatazione delle quantità realizzabili ha indotto a un notevole abbassamento, oltre che della dotazione di servizi, anche privati, della qualità edilizia dei nuovi quartieri, costruiti con un cinismo sconosciuto perfino agli interventi speculativi dei decenni del dopoguerra; dall’altra il numero elevatissimo delle unità immobiliari immesse sul mercato ha comportato il netto prevalere dell’offerta sulla domanda senza peraltro produrre, com’è avvenuto in altre parti del mondo, una significativa riduzione dei prezzi di vendita. Si ripropone, in altre parole, quel vistoso e devastante fenomeno di rendita di posizione contro cui per decenni si è scagliata la parte più impegnata della cultura architettonica romana ma che ora sembra accettato come inevitabile portato dei tempi. Basta osservare le recenti espansioni di edilizia privata, ormai unica forma di costruzione abitativa, che hanno invaso le aree libere lungo le consolari, per rendersi conto di come i tipi edilizi impiegati siano sostanzialmente gli stessi di quelli degli anni ’80, ma dilatati in altezza e profondità, “gonfiati” dalla labilità delle regole e dalla mancanza di una qualsiasi idea di città. Ritornano perfino gli stessi dettagli, gli stessi balconi, le stesse facciate dove le aperture si affollano banalmente secondo un elenco ignaro di ogni regola, interrotte a volte, senza pudore, da qualche patetico tentativo di “ravvivare” la composizione con improbabili partiti diagonali.
Questo quadro desolante dà conto di una condizione, ma esprime anche, credo, l’urgenza del cambiamento. Istanza particolarmente avvertita da un gruppo di docenti e dottorandi del nostro dottorato Draco in Architettura e Costruzione i quali hanno studiato la possibilità di riconoscere aspetti progressivi in alcuni quartieri della periferia romana costruiti con finanziamenti privati. Quartieri, cioè, realizzati da una categoria imprenditoriale storicamente considerata tra le più arretrate e voraci della Capitale, che ha invece messo in campo, nei casi di studio esaminati, insospettate capacità di scelta e anche, in alcuni casi, di vera ricerca. E’ un dato tanto più rilevante perché riconosciuto in un momento della crescita urbana nel quale la mano pubblica sembra del tutto latitante, avendo da tempo rinunciato a fornire qualsiasi contributo alla qualità della produzione edilizia. E, d’altra parte, assegnando un compito di mediazione alle procedure di progettazione, la politica non ha mai dato troppo peso al ruolo propositivo e innovatore che l’architettura potrebbe svolgere nel ricomporre i pezzi dispersi delle periferie.
I testi che seguono spiegano ampiamente le ragioni scientifiche di questa nuova attenzione per la “città privata” che ha coinvolto criticamente anche la disciplina dell’estimo, spesso confinata, in ricerche come questa, in un ambito di competenze isolato dai problemi dell’architettura della città.
Vorrei però rilevare l’ottimismo con il quale questi docenti e giovani ricercatori hanno guardato a un passato recente nel quale sembrava difficile leggere segnali positivi. Leggendo da progettisti e oltre i luoghi comuni, com’è giusto che sia, anche nel desolato banale quotidiano i segni di un possibile cambiamento.

 

Avvisi

Phd in Architecture and Construction – Sapienza University – Rome – 2017/18 Admission tests

Leave a comment

Phd in Architecture and Construction (DRACO) – Director Prof. Giuseppe Strappa

Sapienza University, Rome – 2017/18

The PhD program in Architecture and Construction, aims at educating researchers who will be able to inquire into the entire disciplinary and phenomenological breadth leading architectural design and theorization to be embodies in built space, binding the ars aedificandi with the emerging needs of society.
These researchers will need to be able to reconstruct the links between design and building, recovering and reformulating the theorical-operational paradigms which have today lost much of their strength, bound to the invention of figuration, typology and urban morphology. The recovery of this fundamental knowledge will be carried out within a problematic field of highly innovative character, where the issues of the environmental crisis, the role of media, the recent urban transformations for the spectacularizationof the city, and the new technological resources all play a fundamental role.
During the last two decades, urban and architectural design have on one side grown closer to the historical-critical areas, on the other to urban planning, with further outreaches towards anthropology and sociology. The central problematic area it once occupied was therefore abandoned. In seeking new and broader openings towards bordering disciplinary areas, and in the attempt at creating multiple connections with other aspects of architecture, the practice of urban and architectural design has broadened its horizon, thus losing its specific density, which considerably suffered from this process. A number of problems of great relevance today remain unsolved, such as the question on how architectural composition, with its intrinsic statute regarding the figuration, building typology and urban morphology, are translated, through specific processes, into buildings.
The PhD program is articulated in such a way as to focus the students’ experiences on the theoretical-practical aspects of research. The ignition of individual critical awareness is considered the primary value, together with the continuing critical confrontation with the faculty’s inputs, and with the state of knowledge as it emerges from recent publications and contributions.
The entire range of issues included in the research program mirrors the research interests of the individual faculty members. It was deemed necessary to build the study and activity program on the basis of a single curriculum, with the intention of underscoring the natural disciplinary and operational extension of the scientific sector of urban and architectural design. The proposed curriculum thus responds to the double necessity of fundamental research and applied research, similar to what takes place in architecture, which given its double nature of practice and science requires skills extending to the entire cycle leading
from the theoretical formulation to the dialectic confrontation with reality. In this sense the curriculum covers the field with modalities and intents which are otherwise not available in our University’s educational offer, aiming at the education of experts and cultural operators which are widely requested both in the field of research and of public administration. The interaction between architectural theory, realization techniques, and social studies are aimed at interpreting the mutations occurring in the
contemporary cities, is likely to attract external subjects.
The curriculum’s organization is structured in order to offer students:
The participation in group research activities organized by the program’s faculty, aiming providing them an experience of teamwork in this field. Where possible, these activities are to be coordinated with research taking place withing the Department of Architecture and Design, in order to enhance a possible synergy between the students’ and the instructors’ goals The participation in one or more thematic lecture cycles held by faculty members of external guests, aimed at providing students with a plurality of different views on the methodology of research. These lectures, to be held on a weekly basis, are a constituent part of the students’ first-year coursework.
The participation in a reading seminar, dedicated to the study of some key texts indicated on the basis of each student’s research orientation. This activity is aimed at guiding students, during their first year, in a gradual approach to their individual research themes, allowing them to start the research work at the beginning of the second year. The seminar, which is concluded with a lecture and a paper by each student, is also useful to fine-tune scientific writing skills.
The first year fill therefore be balanced between group work and individual work. This initial training, which is coordinated by the PhD Board as a whole, is concluded by the indication of a thesis supervisor for each candidate, and the beginning of individual research work on the thesis. The supervisor’s role consists in supporting the candidates’ individual research throughout the thesis’s development, up until the dissertation’s defense.
The second and third year of activity is therefore dedicated to individual research, along the guidelines indicated by each supervisor. During each year candidates are asked to present the advancement of their research work to the PhD Board on three distinct occasions, tentatively in the months of February, June and October. Furthermore students can be involved, individually or in groups, in other research-oriented activities, such as seminars, design workshops or other activities taking
place within the Department of Architecture and Design.
All PhD candidates are invited to actively take part in the Department’s cultural activities, participating in conferences, congresses, exhibitions and other events. Furthermore, their participation in national and international scientific initiatives is warmly encouraged. Finally, students are encouraged in the production of scientific papers to support the construction of an adequate scientific curriculum.
Website : https://web.uniroma1.it/dottoratodraco/

PROVE DI AMMISSIONE (Admission tests)
Dottorato in architettura e costruzione 33ciclo

data esame scritto 8 settembre 2017, ore 9.00 aula 4, via Gramsci 53
data esame orale 18 settembre 2017
descrizione: I candidati dovranno svolgere una prova scritta elaborando una riflessione sui temi proposti dalla commissione. Particolare attenzione sarà richiesta per gli argomenti che riguardano la scienza e la pratica del costruire nel confronto dialettico con la realtà costruita. I candidati potranno corredare il testo con elaborati grafici.
I risultati saranno affissi presso la sede del dottorato a via Gramsci 53 dal 12.09.2017
e pubblicati sul sito del dipartimento
prova orale: ore 9.00 aula 6 via Gramsci 53
descrizione: I candidati dovranno sostenere un colloquio di approfondimento delle tematiche affrontate nella prova scritta, sul proprio curriculum e su una proposta di ricerca
I risultati saranno affissi presso la sede del dottorato a via Gramsci 53 dal 20.09.2017 e pubblicati sul sito del dipartimento
Segreteria: Rossella Laliscia
email:     gstrappa@yahoo.it
rossella.laliscia@uniroma1.it