Journal articles on the topic 'Vittorio Gregotti'

This paper focuses on the close correlation between drawing and writing in the architecture of Vittorio Gregotti, in order to understand how both constitute symbiotic tools for his praxis, and showing how the practice of architecture and theoretical thought in Gregotti are to be understood as one. Drawing and writing constitute inscriptions of his ideas, a calligraphy that expresses his understanding of architecture as a conceptual reality, regardless of its later physical construction. It is therefore essential to comprehend how theoretical thought in Gregotti is materialized in the architectural project. For this purpose, based on Gregotti’s drawings and writings, this paper aims to underline the deep importance of drawing and writing as complementary processes related to the symbiotic connection between theory and praxis in his work. Considering both tools as a mechanism for visualizing the author’s ideas, we intend to prove that drawing and writing are close components of his expression and the development of a thought that, in the process of being materialized, acquires physical shape, strength and coherence, becoming perceived by others.

La obra de Vittorio Gregotti (1927-2020, t. 1952) tenía ya un papel destacado en la historia de la arquitectura, no solamente italiana, antes de su fallecimiento este mismo año como una de las numerosas víctimas de la pandemia global. Publicado en la colección Materiali de la editorial Feltrinelli, que albergaba escritos de especialistas para el gran público, el libro en su conjunto no indaga en el territorio como nueva escala de trabajo de la arquitectura, un argumento al que solamente dedica una de las cuatro partes. Por el contrario, se concentra en la búsqueda del territorio de la arquitectura entendido como su espacio y su papel en la cultura moderna, aceptando, de partida, su conexión con la sociedad, las artes y la literatura y reconociendo la condición del arquitecto como un intelectual más que materializa sus propuestas a través del proyecto de arquitectura. Sin ánimo de actualizar anacrónicamente el libro, sino con la intención de historiarlo en su propia época, esta recensión histórica de un texto vivo, a la vez que rinde el debido homenaje, muestra que la cuestión que el libro planteaba y la curiosidad intelectual que movía a Gregotti a mediados de los sesenta están aún plenamente vigentes.

In the post-Second World War period, Italian architects opened up a debate on the role of history and time in architectural discourse that resulted in multiple interpretations of historical time in their work. Vittorio Gregotti, one of the main protagonists of the discussion, offered an interpretation of time based on an assemblage of intellectual tendencies, from phenomenology to structuralism and the history of the longue durée. This paper traces ideas that Gregotti developed in his less known and as-yet un-translated texts such as Il territiorio dell’architettura from 1966 as well as in his project for the University of Calabria from 1972. In these, Gregotti makes an original contribution to the problem of history in relationship to urban and natural environments.

Na distância de quase 40 anos, o discurso do arquiteto italiano Vittorio Gregotti ainda parece muito atual. Seu texto “O Território da Arquitetura” (1966) é precursor de vários estudos e antecipou muitos temas que seguem em discussão, em especial a mudança da escala do objeto para a escala geográfica do território, o que representa uma evolução coerente em questões acerca de valores ambientais, além de uma série de projetos, que consubstanciaram uma alternativa possível em teoria e prática do utopismo megaestrutural e planejamento territorial. As reflexões adensaram-se em relação à complexidade ambiental, à escala de intervenção e sua relação com a paisagem, bem como a relação entre tipologia de edifícios e morfologia urbana. Gregotti, portanto, expandiu o campo de atuação da arquitetura, abordando o tema da relação desta com a paisagem, como geografia e história. Para ele, os pontos de interesse são o território e a cidade, sua morfologia e as razões de sua formação na história.

Dal secondo dopoguerra fino al corso di tutti gli anni Settanta in Italia si č prodotta una particolare stagione per l'architettura in cui i fermenti sociali, politici, le istanze di modernizzazione e la speculazione filosofica, legata in buona parte a tali fermenti, hanno avuto un forte ruolo nel dibattito architettonico ed urbanistico. L'analisi di questi fattori teoretici extradisciplinari si rivela perciň indispensabile per comprendere la spinta innovativa data da Pietro Derossi, Vittorio Gregotti, Adolfo Natalini, Franco Purini, Marco Romano e Bernardo Secchi all'architettura e all'urbanistica italiane.

Il Progetto Bicocca ha trasformato radicalmente una porzione consistente della Milano industriale, insediando funzioni residenziali, universitarie e direzionali in un'area dismessa nel cuore della cittŕ. Il seguente contributo ripercorre la storia di questo controverso intervento, soffermandosi a descriverne le principali caratteristiche in termini di forma urbana, funzioni e presenza di spazi pubblici. Si vuole in particolare sottolineare come gli esiti di questa importante trasformazione urbana abbiano coinciso solo in parte con le attese che diversi attori, pubblici e privati, riponevano su di essa, in particolare per quanto riguarda la creazione di un nuovo "centro in periferia" auspicata da Vittorio Gregotti, realizzatore del masterplan relativo all'intera area.

If you want to know what society looks like, look at our cities, look at their distribution of spaces, their scales, their densities. Look at how cities curate events. This article sketches the basis for architectural thinking on individual/collective social formations as read through the texts of Vitruvius and Freud with support from Aristotle, Arendt, and Lacan, in parallel with city projects by the rooms+cities studio, a Master’s-level design research unit at the University of Dundee, which is itself a collective project that begins with the close reading of canonic city plans in search of the collective body of knowledge that comprises the discipline and practice of architecture. Teaching may not be the only way to change built environment thinking but it is one way. Vittorio Gregotti reckoned that the schools were best placed to challenge establishment practices with avantgarde thought. We use architecture to think the relation between the individual and the collective, and thereby to make a space for politics and public life. This article is thus comprised of two arguments, one predominantly textual, the other graphic, of complementary weight and importance, that run side by side and occasionally cross or mingle.

Este artigo tem como objetivo relatar resultados parciais da pesquisa que analisou nove projetos do arquiteto Português Álvaro Siza (1933), produzidos entre os anos de 1966 e 1998, a partir do trinômio “arqueologia, metamorfose e inflexão”. A partir de análise atenta à obra do arquiteto português, observaram-se indícios da existência de processos contínuos de recuperação, transformação e atualização de soluções presentes em seu repertório de projetos pregressos, em novos contextos, processo que seria qualificado por Vittorio Gregotti (1972), com o termo “arqueologia autônoma”. A partir dessas considerações, surge o pressuposto sintetizado no título da dissertação que sugere uma chave de leitura e entendimento da obra de Siza a partir da ideia de que três inflexões mais radicais de linguagem teriam sido tributárias e deflagradas por três projetos não-construídos precedentes, que poderiam ser considerados seus “prenúncios”. Este Artigo apresenta uma entrevista com o Prof. Dr. Jorge Figueira, na busca de esclarecer as possíveis origens da inflexão de linguagem ocorrida no Museu da Fundação Iberê Camargo, única obra do arquiteto português Álvaro Siza construída no Brasil até a data. O trabalho busca evidenciar a relevância da memória, acumulação de influências e experiências pregressas no processo de projeto do arquiteto Álvaro Siza.

On August 2016, Ana Tostões interviewed the architect Manuel Salgado, councilor of the Municipality of Lisbon since 2007, in order to discuss the main policies undertaken and his ideas on urban planning in its connection to mobility infrastructures, public space and the continuous reconstruction of park and green areas, in Lisbon. Manuel Salgado was born in 1944, Lisbon, and studied architecture at the Lisbon School of Fine Art (1968). From 1971 to 1982, he was the technical responsible for the architectural office CIPRO and in 1984 he became manager of the architectural office Risco. From 2002 to 2008, he was architecture professor, at Instituto Superior Técnico. He has participated in conferences worldwide and widely published, on urban planning, and has designed major urban projects and buildings in Portugal: the Belém Cultural Centre (with Vittorio Gregotti), the Lisbon Theatre and Film School, the Polytechnic Institute of Setúbal, the Expo’98 public areas, the FC Porto Dragão Stadium, the Lisbon Luz Hospital, etc. His architectural and public space projects received several awards: the Valmor Award (1980, 1998), the International Award Architecture in Stone (1993), the AICA Award (1998); the Portuguese National Design Award (1999) and the Brick in Architecture Award (2003). Within the Municipality of Lisbon, he took the position of councilor of the Urbanism and Strategic Planning Department in 2007, which accumulates, from 2009 to 2013, with the Municipality Vice-Presidency. Currently, as councilor, heads the Department of Planning, Urbanism, Urban Rehabilitation, Public Space and Construction of the Municipality of Lisbon.

The article examines a group of exhibitions that took place in the late seventies and early eighties and are useful for grasping what was at stake regarding the debates on the tensions between modernist and post-modernist architecture. Among the exhibitions that are examined are Europa-America: Architettura urbana, alternative suburbane, curated by Vittorio Gregotti for the Biennale di Venezia in 1976; La Presenza del passato, curated by Paolo Portoghesi for the Biennale di Venezia in 1980; the French version of La presenza del passato—Présence de l’histoire, l’après modernisme—held in the framework of the Festival d’Automne de Paris in 1981; Architectures en France: Modernité/post-modernité, curated by Chantal Béret and held at the Institut Français d’Architecture (18 November 1981–6 February 1982); La modernité, un projet inachevé: 40 architectures, curated by Paul Chemetov and Jean-Claude Garcias for the Festival d’Automne de Paris in 1982; La modernité ou l’esprit du temps, curated by Jean Nouvel, Patrice Goulet, and François Barré and held at the Centre Pompidou in 1982; and Nouveaux plaisirs d’architecture, curated by Jean Dethier for the Centre Pompidou in 1985, among other exhibitions. Analysing certain important texts published in the catalogues of the aforementioned exhibitions, the debates that accompanied the exhibitions and an ensemble of articles in French architectural magazines such as L’Architecture d’aujourd’hui and the Techniques & Architecture, the article aims to present the questions that were at the centre of the debates regarding the opposition or osmosis between the modernist and postmodernist ideals. Some figures, such as Jean Nouvel, were more in favour of the cross-fertilisation between modernity and postmodernity, while others, such as Paul Chemetov, believed that architects should rediscover modernity in order to enhance the civic dimension of architecture. Following Pierre Bourdieu’s approach, the article argues that the tension between the ways in which each of these exhibitions treats the role of the image within architectural design and the role of architecture for the construction of a vision regarding progress is the expression of two divergent positions in social space.

AbstractThe year 1966 demarcated a borderline in the urban design discipline. Three books published that indicated a change of direction: City architecture by Aldo Rossi, The territory of architecture by Vittorio Gregotti and Complexity and contradiction in architecture by Robert Venturi. Aldo Rossi, in contact with Ernesto Nathan Rogers and “Casabella-Continuità”, shifted the attention to the historic, consolidated city, the monument and urban rules of archaeological fabric, while Vittorio Gregotti developed a research trend that founded architecture on geography. Finally, Robert Venturi opened up the architectural project, revealing its relations with media culture and with the contradictions of the consumer society. Critical essays investigated the phase following the second half of the Sixties, at the time when Aldo Rossi began, in 1976, to travel across America, invited by the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies to show his works at a series of exhibitions. His book A Scientific Autobiography, written and developed in America, belonged to this phase, which characterised at an international level by the birth of Paper Architecture (the movement that had placed design at the centre of reflection as the expression of new spatial poetics). The essay aimed to show a change in the paradigm of Rossi’s thought, no longer and solely focusing on past and physical architecture, but unrelentingly entwined with the individual and personal destiny of the Milanese architect. Memory became an active, live field of investigation, as Rafael Moneo maintains on Rossi’s thought, in which an objective vision of architecture no longer counted but one that included the subject and his fragments.

Português No presente artigo, propomo-nos delinear alguns itinerários que a Arquitectura Portuguesa percorreu fora do território nacional e identificar os protagonistas com quem viajou rumo ao reconhecimento internacional que detém actualmente. Referência será feita a casos como Eduardo Anahory e a publicação World Architecture em Inglaterra, entre outras da década de 50 e 60. Expor-se-á como as viagens do arquitecto Nuno Portas e o interesse de arquitectos e editores do Sul da Europa, como por exemplo Oriol Bohigas, Vittorio Gregotti, Bruno Alfieri ou Bernard Huet, oriundos de Espanha, Itália e França, ou os encontros em seminários com a presença de nomes como Aldo Rossi, entre outros, fizeram do ano de 1976 um ano de autêntica viragem, de colocação da Arquitectura Portuguesa sob os holofotes da cena internacional arquitectónica. Em grande medida, os arquitectos Portugueses mostraram e ensinaram então, aos seus congéneres internacionais, hipóteses de saídas para a chamada Crise do Movimento Moderno. E, seriam necessários poucos anos, para que passássemos de uma situação de ser forçados a sair, para atrairmos outros a viajarem ao interior do nosso País e Arquitectura. Inglês The present article aims at presenting some of the itineraries that the Portuguese Architecture has gone through abroad while identifying the main protagonists it travelled with towards the achievement of a widely international recognition. It will be referred cases like Eduardo Anahory and the World Architecture edition in England, among others of the 50s and 60s. The importance of trips taken by the architect Nuno Portas and the interest of architects and editors from South of Europe like, for instance, Oriol Bohigas, Vittorio Gregotti, Bruno Alfieri or Bernard Huet, from Spain, Italy and France, or the meetings and seminars arranged by and with the presence of relevant names like Aldo Rossi, among others contributed decisively to make the year of 1976 a turning point. The international attention was focussed on the Portuguese Architecture putting it under the lights of the international architectural scene. The Portuguese architects showed and taught then to their international colleagues, possibilities for the solution of the so-called Crisis of the Modern Movement. Within a few years, the situation was reversed: it was our turn to attract them to visit our country and to know its Architecture.

«For a place to leave an impression on us, it must be made of time as well as space – of its past, its history, its culture» (Sciascia, 1987). Architecture is one the many disciplines which, due to their heteronomous nature, aspire to represent the past, present and future of a community. Just as the construction of buildings is not merely a response to a need, but rather an act that incorporates the concrete translation of desires and aspirations, so too do music, philosophy, and the figurative arts reflect contemporary themes in their evolution. The fragmentation of skills, the specialisation of knowledge, the rapid modification of the tools we work with, the digitalisation and hyperdevelopment of communication are all phenomena that have a substantial impact on the evolution of disciplines in a reciprocal interaction with the intangible values of a community – economic, social and cultural – as well as the material assets of the places where it expresses itself. Interpreting heteronomy as a condition in which an action is not guided by an autonomous principle that is intrinsic to the discipline, but rather determined by its interaction with external factors, a theoretical reflection on the evolution of the tools of knowledge and creation has the task of defining possible scenarios capable of tackling the risk of losing an ability to synthesise the relationships between the conditions that define the identity of architecture itself. The challenge of complexity is rooted in social, technological and environmental shifts: a challenge that involves space, a material resource, in its global scale and its human measure; and time, an immaterial resource, nowadays evaluated in terms of speed and flexibility, but also duration and permanence. These elements impact upon the project as a whole, as a combination of multiple forms of knowledge which, given their constant evolution, is subject to continuous comparison. The cultural debate has investigated at length the topic of art being forced to devote itself to heteronomy whilst also retaining a need for aesthetic autonomy. The risk of forgetting its own ontological status, of losing its own identity in the fragmentation and entropy of the contemporary world, finds an answer in the idea of design as a synthesis between an artistic idea and the social and environmental conditions in which it is places, configuring itself as an element capable of reconciling the antithetical drives towards an autonomous vision of the work, on the one hand, and a heteronomous one linked to its geographical, cultural, sociological and psychological characteristics, on the other. In the systemic and concerted working process so intrinsic to disciplines such as filmmaking and music – but also the visual arts or even philosophy – the act of designing is the expression of the relationship with a community of individuals whose actions are based on a role that is as social as it is technical, given that they act based on material and immaterial values of a public nature. If indeed the sciences – as Thomas Kuhn demonstrated in his writings on the scientific revolutions – cannot be understood without their historical dimension, then disciplines such as those addressed in this Dossier represent cultural phenomena that can only truly be understood in their entirety when considered in the context of their era and the many factors that fed into their creation. However, precisely as demonstrated by Kuhn’s theories (Kuhn, 1987), their evolution also consists of “scientific revolutions”: moments of disruption capable of changing the community’s attitude towards the discipline itself and, perhaps more importantly, its paradigms. Music, cinema, art, architecture and philosophy are all expressions of that which makes us human, in all its complexity: divided and confined to their own disciplinary fields, they are not capable of expressing the poetic quality of life and thus «making people feel and become aware of the aesthetic feeling» (Morin, 2019). Emanuele Coccia, an internationally renowned philosopher and associate professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, imagines a world in which everything you see is the product of an intentionality articulated by human, non-human and non-living actors. Design – not only anthropocentric design – is the most universal power in the world. Every living being can, in effect, design the world, but at the same time, every agent of matter can also design, and it is the interplay between these elements that creates a continuous metamorphosis of our environment. In other words, being alive is not a necessary condition for being a designer. The two anthropologists Alfred Gell and Philippe Descola, in their writings on Western society and nature, present contrasting views on the presence of the soul/animism in nature. The result is a sort of architecture of the landscape, in which nature itself is imbued with a sense of design intentionality that exists in a continuum with mankind. Edoardo Tresoldi, a young Italian sculptor, is one of the latest exponents of the heteronomy of architecture, which rejects the limiting confines of individual disciplines so as to imagine a transversal vision of the environment and its construction. Through the interplay of transparencies created with ephemeral metal structures, Tresoldi exalts the geometrical qualities of this raw material, going beyond the simple spatiotemporal dimension to establish a dialogue between place and the artistic representation thereof. Tresoldi recounts this journey of his through five themes: Place, because architecture in itself is markedly conditioned by its context, as is – in his case – art; Design, that is the act of envisaging the work, which is ultimately influenced by everything around us and our imagination; Time, as art is characterised by a potential interweaving, a continuity in the creative processes influenced by the history of the place; Material, or rather, materiality and the duality between the technical and artistic parts; and, finally, “What’s Next”, exploring the idea of what the future holds for us. On this last point, Tresoldi imagines his works further opening up to a diversified range of skills in a way that would also carve out new professional profiles for young people. Cristina Frosini, Director of the Milan Conservatory, with a contribution on music – «the supreme mystery of the sciences of man» (Lévi-Strauss, 2004) – offers reflections on a field with deep affinities with the discipline of architecture, with both sharing a strong relationship between composition and execution. The sheer vastness of musical expression, from the precision of the classical score to the freedom of interpretation exemplified by the conductor or the improvising jazz musician, sees the concepts of overall rhythm and melody, the homogeneity and identity of different instruments, and the circularity of the process as the key themes of music as a public art whose creative process has always been founded upon the relationship between technical factors and cultural factors. The contribution provided by Michele Guerra, an academic and professor of History of Cinema, confirms the words of Edgar Morin. «Nowadays, cinema is widely recognised as an art, and in my opinion, it is a tremendous polyphonic and polymorphous art that is capable of stimulating and integrating into itself the virtues of all the other arts: novel-writing, theatre, music, painting, scenography, photography. [...] it can be said that those who participate in the creation of a film are artisans, artists, who play an important role in the aesthetics of the film» (Morin, 2019). The work of the “cinematographic construction site” is driven by forces which, incorporating the status quo of the technical and material factors, lead to “an idea of imaginary metamorphosis” which reflects the aspirations of a society in its efforts to become contemporary. A concept of a heteronomous approach to “making” is also founded upon recognising the didactic value of the work, as emerges from Luigi Alini’s contribution on the figure of Vittorio Garatti – an intellectual first and architect second – whose pieces are the result of work that is as much immaterial as it is material, with an «experiential rather than mediatic» approach (Frampton, in Borsa and Carboni Maestri, 2018), as true architecture is expected to be. The heteronomy of architecture, much like that of other similar disciplines, is based on engagement on two fronts: an understanding of the relevant international scenarios and the definition of the project charter, with a view to conforming it so that it takes into account any changes, operates in continuity with and with an appreciation for history, and develops in harmony with the universality of the discipline and the teachings of its masters. Stimulating a dialogue between different cultural positions is a means to create the conditions for a degree of adherence to contemporaneity without compromising on a principle of historical continuity. In light of this, the contribution by Ferruccio Resta – the current Rector of the Politecnico di Milano – focuses on the varying cultural and intellectual positions that have animated the culture of the Politecnico over the years, representing a highly valuable heritage for the university. Nowadays, with the presence of certain indispensable premises such as sustainability and connectivity, technology seems to overwhelm the design process, outsourcing it to a sort of management of the engineering and component production aspects. Hence the need to reaffirm a “humanistic and human” dimension of the act of making, starting at the root by orienting the training processes in line with the words of historian and philosopher Yuval Noah Harari, who says: «Many pedagogical experts argue that schools should switch to teaching “the four Cs” – critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity. More broadly, they believe, schools should downplay technical skills and emphasize general-purpose life skills. Most important of all will be the ability to deal with change, learn new things, and preserve your mental balance in unfamiliar situations». This need reopens the theme of the dualism between “art” and “discipline”, surpassing it in favour of a coexistence of terminology in that it is the quality of the design and the piece that define where it belongs. Reflecting on the foundations of the paths and tools employed in different disciplines – in light of the innovations that involve the project charter in terms not only of concepts, but also of instruments – means reflecting on the concept of “project culture”, understood as the ability to work through actions which combine different contributions, tackling complex problems by way of a conscious creative process. The ability to envisage the new – as is implicit in the etymology of the word “project” itself – and, at the same time, to interpret continuity in the sense of a coherent system of methods and values, is shared by the disciplines and skills brought together in the Dossier: dealing with culture, society, the city, the landscape and the environment all at once requires a multifaceted vision, an ability to read problems, but also a certain openmindedness towards opportunities, the management of complexities, control of the risks of drops in quality in service of concepts of efficiency based on numerical parameters and the standardisation of languages. A comparison of the various contributions and perspectives throws up a picture in which the importance of relationships, the search for what Eiffell defined «the secret laws of harmony», the disciplinary specificity of design as the ability to relate in order to «understand, criticise, transform» (Gregotti, 1981), the ability to distinguish that which is different by involving it in the transformation of design, all represent the foundations for the evolution of heteronomous disciplines in how they move beyond the notions of technique and context as passive referents which generate possibilities in line with the Rogersian reflection on pre-existing environmental elements as historical conditions for reference, critically taken on as determinants. Hence the validity of a “polytechnic” cultural approach that is not only capable of deploying tools and skills which can deal with the operating conditions to be found in a heteronomous context, but also of stimulating critical approaches oriented towards innovation and managing change with the perspective of a project as an opportunity – in the words of Franco Albini – for «experimentation and verification in relation to the progression of construction techniques, tools for investigation, knowledge in the various fields and in relation to the shifts in contemporary culture» (Albini, 1968). The need for a sense of humanism is strongly linked to the reintroduction of the concept of “beauty”, in its modern meaning, under which it shifts from a subjective value to a universal one. Hence the importance of the dialogue with disciplines that identify with the polytechnic mould – that is, one which has always been deeply attentive to the relationship between theory and practice, to the design of architecture as an action that is at once intellectual and technical. As such, starting from the assumption that «no theory can be pursued without hitting a wall that only practice can penetrate» (Deleuze and Foucault 1972; Deleuze, 2002; Foucault, 1977; Deleuze, 2007), it is now essential to promote the professional profiles of artists, musicians, philosophers, humanistic architects and so on who are capable of managing design as a synthesis of external factors, but also as an internal dialectic, as well as skills capable of creating culture understood as technical knowledge. Sometimes, faced with the difficulty of discerning an identity for disciplines, we attempt to draw a boundary that allows us to better understand their meaning and content. However, going on the points of view that have emerged in the Dossier, it seems more important than ever to «work on the boundaries of each field of knowledge», drawing upon a concept expressed by Salvatore Veca (Veca, 1979), making communication between fields a central value, interpreting relationships and connections, identifying the relational perspective as a fundamental aspect of the creative act. The position of architecture as an “art at the edge of the arts”1, as so often posited by Renzo Piano, allows for a reflection on its identity by placing it in a position that centralises rather than marginalises it. A concept of “edge” that touches upon the sociological viewpoint that distinguishes the “finite limit” (boundary) from the “area of interaction” (border) (Sennet, 2011; Sennet, 2018), in which the transformational yet constructive contact with the entities necessary for its realisation takes place. The heteronomy of architecture coincides with its “universality”, a concept that Alberto Campo Baeza (Campo Baeza, 2018) believes to represent the identity of architecture itself. Indeed, its dependence upon human life, the development of society, of its cultural growth, derives from a single and inalienable factor: its heteronomy, the necessary condition for a process as artistic as it is technical, tasked with expressing the values of a community over time and representing the “beautiful” rather than the “new”. A design practice based on – to borrow some concepts already expressed years ago by Edgar Morin – “contaminations that are necessary as well as possible”, on the contribution of “knowledge as an open system”, but above all, one aimed at working “against the continuities incapable of grasping the dynamics of change” (Morin, 1974), thus becomes an opportunity to develop a theory on the identity of the discipline itself, striking a balance between the technical and poetic spheres, but necessarily materialising in the finished work, lending substance to the «webs of intricate relationships that seek form» (Italo Calvino).