Mapping Urban Spaces

Mapping Urban Spaces focuses on medium-sized European cities and more specifically on their open spaces from psychological, sociological, and aesthetic points of view. The chapters illustrate how the characteristics that make life in medium-sized European cities pleasant and sustainable - accessibility, ease of travel, urban sustainability, social inclusiveness - can be traced back to the nature of that space. The chapters develop from a phenomenological study of space to contributions on places and landscapes in the city. Centralities and their meaning are studied, as well as the social space and its complexity. The contributions focus on history and theory as well as concrete research and mapping approaches and the resulting design applications. The case studies come from countries around Europe including Poland, Italy, Greece, Germany, and France, among others. The book will be of interest to students, scholars, and practitioners in architecture, urban planning, and landscape architecture.

Lamberto Amistadi is an architect and an associate professor in the Department of Architecture at the University of Bologna - Cesena Campus and the coordinator of the ArchéA program. He is the deputy director of the scientific journal FAMagazine, devoted to research and projects concerning architecture and the city, and co-director of the series TECA, Teorie della Composizione architettonica (Naples: Clean). Along with Ildebrando Clemente, he founded and directs the series SOUNDINGS: Theory and Architectural Openness (Florence: Aión), which has included monographic volumes on John Hejduk and Aldo Rossi. He is also the author of numerous publications. Valter Balducci is an architect, has a PhD in architecture (IUAV, 1994), and is a professor at the École Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture of Normandie, Rouen-Darnétal. He has been a teacher in the Faculty of Architecture at the Genua University (1990-2000), and a researcher and assistant professor at the Bologna University (2001-2014). Since 2014, he is a full professor in urban design at ENSA Normandie. His major research interests are focused on urban analysis and history. Since 2003, he has been conducting research on seaside tourism and projects on public space within seaside territories in relation to climate change. Tomasz Bradecki, PhD, is an architect, a researcher, and a lecturer of architecture and urban design in the Department of Urban and Spatial Planning, Faculty of Architecture, Silesian University of Technology since 2010. His main fields of interest include housing, urban design, and mapping with models. Besides research and teaching activity, he has been running an architectural firm since 2008. He is a member of the Polish Chamber of Architects. He is an author and co-author of many publications focusing on housing, commercial, and urban projects. Enrico Prandi is an architect and an associate professor at the Department of Engineering and Architecture of the University of Parma and the coordinator of the Parma group of the ArchéA program. He is the director of the scientific open access e-journal FAMagazine. He has been contributing to various research projects concerning architecture and the city and is co-director of the series AAC - Arts | Architecture | City (Turin: Accademia University Press). Since 2016, he has been the coordinator of the research project conducted by architect Luigi Vietti at the CSAC - Study Center and Communication Archive. He is also the author of numerous publications. Uwe Schröder is an architect and a professor at the RWTH Aachen University. In 1993, he founded his architectural office in Bonn, and since then he has devoted himself to the theory and practice of architecture. Between 2004 and 2008, he was an ordinary professor of architectural theory and design at the TH Köln, and since 2008 he has been a professor in the Department of Spatial Design in the Faculty of Architecture at RWTH Aachen University. Besides his research and teaching activity in Germany, he taught as a visiting professor at various Italian universities, including Bologna, Naples, Bari, Catania, Milan, and Parma.

INTRODUCTIONThe ArcheA Method Lamberto Amistadi PART 1: MAPPING SPACES. The Phenomenological Approach to the City of Spaces. 1. A Spatial Understanding of Architecture and the City. 2. Landmarks in a History of Spatial Mapping. 3. The Many-faceted Notion of Space: On the Hypothesis of Mapping and the Observation of Spatial Phenomena. 4. Stadtraumgestaltungen: On Perceiving and Reading Urban Spaces. 5. Where the Compact and Open City Meets: Inner and Outer Spaces on the Periphery of Aachen North. 6. Here and There: On the Ambivalence of Transitional Spaces. PART 2: MAPPING PLACES. The Italian Tradition of Urban Studies. 7. Drawing the City. Form and Meaning. 8. Urban Events and the Soul of the City. The Poetic Political Tripartition of Urban Form. 9. Civic Urbanity. The Places of Everyday Life. 10. Venice as a Paradigm: Urban Studies and the Value of Emptiness in the City's Design. 11. Nature Prepares the Sites, But It Is Man Who Creates the Organism: Bologna Through Its Geography, Its History and Its Planning Tools. 12. New Urban Landscapes. Fragments of Civil Architecture. PART 3: MAPPING NATURAL SPACE. The Significance of Landscapes for the Urban Project 13. The Role of Green Spaces in Urban Design Theories in France. 14. Green Space as an Element for a New Urban Dynamic. 15. Uses of Mapping: Methods of Investigation and Ways of Narrating Territory in Architectural Practice and Teaching. 16. Towards a More 'Natural' City? PART 4: MAPPING CENTRALITIES. Urban Regeneration towards a Polycentric City. 17. The Long-Term Method of the Urban Project in Italy and the Parma School. 18. Designing the European Medium-Sized City. Urban Regeneration Technique Through the Structured Densification of the Centrality System. 19. The Project of a Metropolitan Urban Centrality. The Case of the Former Fruit and Vegetable Market of Bologna. 20. Densification as the Key to Suburb Regeneration. The Case of Driescher Hof In Aachen. 21. The European Medium-Sized City: The Characteristics of the Urban Form. 22. The Idea of Space and Urban Sequences. The Case of Parma. PART 5: MAPPING SOCIAL SPACE. Demographic Analysis as an Image of Urban Complexity. 23. Mapping Urban Spaces with the Use of Physical, Digital and Augmented Reality Models: Experiences from Applications in Architectural and Urban Education. 24. The Urban Circle of Life' of People with Disabilities: Mapping Urban Inconveniences. 25. Multigenerational Spaces in Conceptual Urban Projects in Polish Cities. AFTERWORDProblems of the Contemporary City Raffaella Neri