Cities in Transformation

My chapter 'Publoid Space in the Microcosmopolis: Two new business districts of Manchester and Salford' has been published in

CITIES IN TRANSFORMATION: RESEARCH & DESIGN
ideas, methods, techniques, tools, case studies

edited by Marco Bovati, Michele Caja, Giancarlo Floridi and Martina Landsberger

The two volume set is published by Il Poligrafo, Padua

Architecture schools are fundamental deposits of knowled-ge and abilities, which have contributed productively for a long time to the growth of studies on architecture and the city. The aim of this book is to share the results of research work carried out under the patronage of EAAE and ARCC in the main European and American architecture schools on the issue of the city and its recent transformations. Through the comparison of different points of view, the goal is to hi-ghlight the need for a broad and open discussion, appropria-te to the vastness and complexity of the problems faced. The well known sentence by Leon Battista Alberti, “The house is like a small city and the city is like a large house”, is a brief indication of the subjects of the volume: the widespre-ad phenomena of urbanization of large parts of the world, the problems of diametrically opposed so-called shrinking cities and the severity of the effects of climate change and energy issue. Architectural and urban contents are also main themes in EU policy where the crucial role of Architecture has been stressed in many documents concerning the development of European cities. These arguments are developed in a thematic interweaving that goes from architecture and city's analytical and design techniques to those connected with organization, construc-tion, security, planning, conservation and practice of a pro-fession whose role has taken on ever greater responsibility within the human destiny.

Palazzo between two Piazze, Padua

Garden and city in Verona and Padua

Giardino Giusti, Verona


Orto Botanico, Padua

Piazza, Palazzo, Padua

From the northern Italian city of Padua, the complex of the Palazzo della Ragione, standing between the Piazza dell’ Erbe and the Piazza della Frutta, presents an early example of the genre of the communal palace in a process of transformation towards a recognisable type. Morphologically it has an unusual trapezoidal form straddling across a roughly rectangular space divided into the two tapering piazze. The pragmatic nature of this form is entirely appropriate since the structure originated in the booths of the markets which still operate on the site. Constructed as a series of stone cells, they formed the base of a great hall, il Salone, where justice was dispensed. The multi - level arcaded nature of the hall, facing on its two long sides towards the market squares was surmounted by a great barrel vaulted roof which defines the uninterrupted central space, behind the layers of arcades and market stalls. There is therefore an incremental intensification of the functional relationship from the space of the market to the space of the hall, and a direct continuity between the daily life of the city, the higher functions of civil society and the sense of the city’s own history through the reuse of earlier structures. The Salone was begun in 1218-19 which places it in the very early phase of this process of urban self- representation, when other communes were building less substantial civic palaces. The Paduans modified the extent of their ambition by tying the new structure to the mundane world of the market. However, by the time the great hall was cleared of internal divisions and the roof raised in 1306-09 there could be no concealing the status the civic authorities sought for themselves, despite the additional layers of arcades added in 1318 over the external staircases.

Gothic versus Classic: two facades

As examples of epiphanic walls, neither of these two examples give too much away. Above, the facade of Sant' Antonio ('il Santo') in Padua, photographed on Good Friday, presents an austere brick face to the world which rehearses the basic theme of the interior. Softer in character San Trovaso (Santi Gervasio e Protasio) in Venice, photographed on Easter Sunday has a stucco surface on which to mark an harmonic geometrical composition.