Libri di Giacomo Ardesio

1956.  Falling Modernism and Arising Landscape Urbanism. The selected essays are related to the hermeneutical circle established between Europe and the U.S. after World War II. Radically changing the “geography” of architecture, this circle critically acts in the crisis of the Modern Movement. The year 1956 in particular sees the concurrence of specific conditions (Waldheim, 2009), which open up a Pandora's box in the research on the city: the “Urban Design Conference” at Harvard University; the CIAM of Dubrovnik; the exhibition This is Tomorrow; the Alba Congress; and Hilberseimer’s projects in Detroit. These analytical lines mark a first step in the deformation process of the dominant systems activated in architecture from the beginning of the century. Landscape Urbanism is the latest step. Very promising, it reverses the circle’s direction, introducing North American research into European knowledge. The book considers Theory as the new Practice. To take power away from reality in order to introduce a new modality in knowledge, prior to a new shape: this is the first aim of the texts collected in this theoretical anthology. In order to create infinite platforms of research about the city. Elisa Cristiana Cattaneo Graham Foundation Grant Recipient in 2014, She is Adjunct Professor in Landscape Design at the Politecnico di Milano. She researches experimental ecological urbanism and its theoretical implications. In 2004, after a degree cum laude in Architecture and Urban Planning, she attended the European Master in Strategic Planning for the Architectural, Urban and Environmental Resources. In 2009, she completed a PhD with Merit in Architectural and Urban Design, defending the thesis Void Density: a Relational Approach for Urban Design. In 2010, she was Visiting Scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, developing the research project: Space, Place, Context, Landscape: the Hermeneutical Circle US-Europe since 1956. In 2011-2012, she was Visiting Scholar at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, developing the research project: WeakCity: Notes on Landscape Urbanism (List Publisher, 2015). She is founder and director of an independent research agency Weakcircus, active in studies, research, and project development in contemporary urbanism within the Theory of Weakness. She is co-founder and co-director of B.L.U.E. (Building Ecological and Landscape Urbanism), platform of research on landscape as new strategy for contemporary cities. Since 2002, she has been the principal of her firm, active in public projects and international competitions.  Mirko Andolina  Mirko Andolina is an architect working on the relationship between ecology and contemporary cities, in particular in emerging and crisis territories. He holds a Master of Architecture degree from Politecnico di Milano, with the thesis Hologramatic Territory-Ecological Strategies in West Bank Territories, partnership with Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. He is currently an architect at Topotek1, Berlin. developed in Since 2012, he has been a part of the independent research agency WeakCircus.  Giacomo Ardesio  Giacomo Ardesio is a graduate of the Politecnico di Milano in Architecture with the thesis A Swarming City, Patterns of Interference, a body of research on the urban dynamics acting within the informal settlements in Mumbai developed with URBZ. Since 2014, he has been a part of Fosbury Architecture, a collective of architectural research and design based in Milan and Rotterdam.

This project emerges as part of the urban studies and fieldwork done with URBZ in the city of Mumbai for the Istanbul Design Biennial 2012. The research aims to describe the phenomenon of homegrown neighborhoods in Mumbai and their role within the urban dynamics. Starting from a pragmatic position of accep-tance, the objective is to seek the distinctive and characteristic features of this context in order to think of a different approach to interact with this phenomenon. The prototype, developed in Politecnico di Milano in the masters thesis and further resear-ches, is meant to define, according to the entropic character of informal settlements, how this energy can renew the urban system. The purpose is to orient the growth of these neighborhoods through a weak strategy, able to control without fixing the urban form, in relationship with the socio-economic fabric. The final result is a naive but genuine vision, without the ambition to give a definitive answer of how to think about a diffe-rent action upon these neighborhoods. It is a vision that grants them the right to survive as an active and productive part of the urban system. 0-n Collection of Master Thesis of Politecnico di Milano within the Theory of WeaknessDirector and Coordinator: Elisa C. Cattaneo "0-n" is a collection of master thesis which I oversaw as supervisor at Politecnico di Milano. These books are a platform of heterogeneity, which find their common field in the theory of weakness, as imperfect and manifold way of knowledge. The aim is to experience an alternative method for contemporary spaces, able to regenerate the stabilized ideas of design. They are more experimental and vital texts/tests than verification procedures: this attitude brings them away from a strictly educational approach. They can be read according to two levels of meaning: in their specific contexts and as open platforms for contemporary researches. Almost all of them are focused on processual values and on project transdisciplinary, in order to promote a cognitive space before a real one. I provided the students with fews thematic lines (a sense of short-circuit, trial, process of meaning), which were underlining an interpretation of knowledge in a horizontal sense, as Gilles Deleuze had defined.These topics have been independently developed by the candidates, so that they can be considered as authors of a new idea. I instructed this learning and researching method, because I belive that the secret of an effective education in to coinvince each student to be able to build his own vision of the world, without stereotyped positions.I am finalising the object of education in the freedom of intelligence, and not in the rules of disciplines, by broading the students' needs and points of view. To cross the world in new expanded geographical horizons.Elisa C. Cattaneo     Notizie sugli Autori » Giacomo Ardesio Teaching assistant and lecturer at Politecnico di Milano, he graduated with honors in Architecture with a thesis titled A Swarming City, Patterns of Interference, developed between Mumbai, Istanbul and Milan in partnership with URBZ.Between 2012 and 2014 he worked between Italy and India following the path defined in this book in order to continue this investigation. Since 2013 he is part of the independent research agency WeakCircus. His main interests involve emerging forms of urbanism and ecologies and the definitions of of non conventional tools for design. » URBZIt is an experimental urban research and action collective which organizes collaborative workshops, facilitates hands-on research projects, creates urban forms and concepts, and develops web content about urban space and places since 2008. It has shown its work at the Istanbul Design Biennial in 2012 and will showcase again at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in November 2014. They have - through their joint initiatives - Urbanology and Homegrown cities combined efforts in the fields of research, consultancy...