Houses for the Human City

(1)

Quaderni | 1

VILLES MINIERES | MINING CITIES

edited by

Cecilia Fumagalli, Eliana Martinelli, Emilo Mossa

1 Q

uader

ni

Vil

les M

inier

es | M

inin

g Ci

ties

١ | رت اف د

(2)

(3)

(4)

Series “Quaderni/ رت اف د”

Editorial Committee: Michele Caja, Francesco Collotti, Cecilia Fumagalli (coordinator), Martina Landsberger

Villes Minieres | Mining Cities

(edited by Cecilia Fumagalli, Eliana Martinelli, Emilio Mossa) All the photos credits are listed below the images

Edition n. 1

Milano, January 2020 ISBN 9788894488500

©Associazione Culturale Nostoi

Associazione Culturale Nostoi C.F. 97839560154

20125, Via Stefini 2, Milano, Italy.

Printed in Italy by Pixartprinting S.p.A., Quarto d’Altino (VE), Italy.

Limited-edition 50 copies. Non-profit publication.

The materials in this publication are made for research and are not distributed for commercial reasons.

Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use.

(5)

Quaderni | 1

VILLES MINIERES | MINING CITIES

edited by

Cecilia Fumagalli, Eliana Martinelli, Emilo Mossa

(6)

(7)

The series of international agreements on climate change that has shaped the environmental agenda during the past two decades, from Rio (1992) to Kyoto (1997) and Paris (2015), tries to highlight the limits of our devel-opment model and the role that different forms of ur-banization, which are relevant aspects of the general anthropization processes, have played in it. As usual, any generalization in the scientific field must be tested and verified on a case-by-case basis.

The issue on which we would like to focus here, con-cerns the experience of the Moroccan villes minières. The Moroccan government is in fact currently support-ing an intensive new towns program dedicated to build-ing new settlements in former minbuild-ing areas.

As we approach and investigate this topic, we need to remind ourselves that open questions are a daily tool for our work and that multiple perspectives need to be con-sidered. In fact, on the one hand, there is a temptation to start every time ‘from zero’, inventing the so-called ‘new’ settlements’ models based on a lost (or almost rejected) memory of a preexisting culture of dwelling; on the other hand, we can try to learn from the past and avoid to ignore the housing forms and urban morphol-ogies already experienced. Glorifying the keyword of the Smart city or 2.0 towns does not exempt us from investigating once again both the consolidated urban tissues and urban morphology, as a persistent mark still able to generate designs even today.

In our work, the envisaging of future uses and the ap-propriation of ancient solutions live side by side. Is

(10)

con-20 HOUSES FOR THE HUMAN CITY 5

structing not far from reconstructing?

Green building and environmental sustainability have been two mainstream concepts in the last years. Are we sure that new towns – even if eco-built – are anyway the right answer to a better environmental quality? The recent experience of Italy, France, Spain, to name but a few, could – in all modesty – suggest that another way is possible or, otherwise argued, let us try to learn from the mistakes of our recent past. The major issues are (always) in front of us. How does the city grow, what is replaced, what remains, what is safeguarding cultural heritage, what is reconsidering the preexistent urban fabric, without being tempted by the tabula rasa, by the clean slate?

What interests us is openness to change and not em-balmment. A few fixed points that remain despite the transformations. Architecture is distinguished by its lack of inclination to sudden change. The presence of the past, all around the Mediterranean Sea, is project forming. Somebody calls it typological permanence. As architects we remain convinced that, in our work, we are rarely faced with a new invention, more often it is about refining an already experienced and consolidated form. In architecture, fast progression/innovations and antique gestures go hand in hand: continuity is a con-dition, not a choice. We are not interested in freezing the past. We prefer to recognize its ability to accept the transformation without denying it. Extending the ques-tion to a more theoretical point of view, we could try to understand why cognition and recognition are inextri-cably linked for an architect. Just as the best writers are also passionate readers. In the same way constructing and reconstructing are closely connected. The challenge with the past is direct, obliged, site-specific. For centu-ries, all around the Mediterranean, new buildings have been built on the ruins and foundations of previous works. I suggest to consider the presence of the past as project forming. Architecture is about carrying forward what has preceded us, providing a more advanced

(11)

ver-21 FRANCESCO COLLOTTI

1

See Adriano Olivetti, Geno Pampaloni, Città dell’uomo (Milano: Edizioni di Comunità, 1960).

sion of how we found it. As architects, we usually work by hypothesizing, by showing similarities, sometimes by associations or even by placing – by choice – side by side buildings otherwise far away. Linking them to each other – comparing them – is an attitude capable of producing meaning. Did the giving-shape-to-the-memory replace the classical architectural language? We are talking about the architecture of the Mediterranean city, but – at the same time – we are talking about the houses for the human city1_{. How do we learn dwelling,}

how we do learn living together, how we do learn ex-periencing a public space? A house is a tool, perfected by usage over time, but it is also the mirror of daily life’s transformations.

Therefore, we are not talking about stylistic exercises, nor about oddities, which, unfortunately, have often accompanied the building of new towns, masking with make-up operations a lack of ideas about dwelling. On the contrary, we are supporting a research concerning houses as living spaces, with the aim to establish a con-crete idea and, at the same time, to interpret the greatest social changes in the use of spaces.

In the past, the public spaces of the city, namely the piaz-zas and the streets, were more beautiful than the houses of ordinary people, while the houses of the aristocracy (or of the leading class) were similarly exceptional. Now, everyone wants a piece of that beauty for them-selves. This privilege – that is beauty – cannot be found in a fashionable and cozy tiled bathroom, designed by a famous fashion stylist, but rather in the richness of the whole apartment and in the ability of its spaces to give us light, air and wellbeing.

In the Mediterranean area, and therefore also in Mo-rocco, the relationship between public places and homes lies in a gradual progression of public, collec-tive, semi-colleccollec-tive, common, semi-private and pri-vate spaces. A narrow alley, a door which still acts as a threshold, a paved courtyard or a garden, a pergola giving shade, a lobby, a few steps, a vestibule: all these

(12)

22

2

See the contribution to this book by Cecilia Fumagalli, “Historic Models for Modern Urban Settle-ments”, 47-53.

3

Francesco Collotti, “What’s home”, in AA.VV, Firenze Social Housing (Madrid: Edic-ciones Asimmetricas, 2010): 22-25.

4

Translated by the author from the lyric “In orbita” by Jovanotti.

5

“Value capture is a tran-sit funding mechanism based on the idea that public transit creates broad social benefits - from more housing demand to swifter commerce in newly accessi-ble shopping districts – and ought be able to monetize some of those benefits to cover a portion of its construction and operation costs. It takes various forms, from special taxing districts to the direct ownership, development, and selling of transit adjacent land by transit agencies. […] on a more nitty-gritty level, value capture generally requires increasing real es-tate values. But what about neighborhoods where real estate values are stagnant or falling? If these sorts of transfers aren’t allowed – or aren’t available – then value capture has little to offer to most working-class or high-poverty neighbor-hoods, which are often in the greatest need of both economic development and low cost transportation options.” Daniel Hertz, “The values of value capture”, July 12th₂₀₁₆

(http://cityobser- vatory.org/the-values-of-value-capture/, accessed on October 1st₂₀₁₉₎

HOUSES FOR THE HUMAN CITY

are architectural elements (sometimes types) through which the complex filter, that brings us from the city to the house, is developed. The examples by Echochard presented in the following contributions2_{, are playing}

the role of the most advanced attempts in this sense. Once again, we are wondering: “what is a home?”3_{. If}

the preexisting urban tissue is lost, the risk is to generate selfish inhabitants, each one locked up into their own little cluster or shell: “they continuously told us that nobody is safe, but I already knew it and I never thought it was a good excuse to barricade myself at home with the TV on and the door closed”4_{. The richness, and}

often the charm, of old towns lies in their capacity to create spaces-to-be and not only spaces-to-go-to, with all the elements of connection and relationship. Learn-ing from the existLearn-ing town and designLearn-ing the new one: this should be the main target for our work, searching for forms of living able to be compatible with the con-temporary city, but also reminiscent of a slower pace of life. The future city is an idea, a dream, a plan which should not cancel the preexisting one, but should pro-pose addition, reparation, correction. Is it still possible to learn from the medinas, not considering them only as cardboard cities? We conceive the past as building material for the future, against the gated communities which are based on freezing-and-reproducing else-where sociological models based on class segregation and egoistic, self-involved ways of life, promising hap-piness through an exclusive access to services, certified by their supposed excellence.

According to these promises, winning the golden card and the password for accessing the new town is an am-bitious prize, reachable over a lifetime. Value capture in extended significance produces segregated clusters, not quarters5_.

Our idea for the villes minières is rather based on the warm life we have discovered on very sensitive settle-ments of the late Thirties or early Fifties, developed not starting from zero but carefully listening to the old

(13)

me-23

6

Translated by the author. See Carlo Magnani, “Premessa. Ricostruzione: un luogo mentale?”, in Gun-dula Rakowitz and Carlotta Torricelli, eds., Ricostru-zione Inventario Progetto (Padova: Il Poligrafo, 2018): 11-17.

FRANCESCO COLLOTTI

dinas’ urban fabrics, considering that urban morpholo-gy “assumes the characteristics of a common good, the primary component of the welfare state”6_{. Therefore, in}

our exercise we started from the existing experience, supporting the idea of not stand-alone objects, even if apparently bien fait or maybe very well advertised, as if they were luxury cars, that you – potential buyer – cannot do without.

Houses for the Human City

Quaderni | 1

VILLES MINIERES | MINING CITIES

edited by

Cecilia Fumagalli, Eliana Martinelli, Emilo Mossa

1

Q

uader

ni

Vil

les M

inier

es | M

inin

g Ci

ties

١ | رت اف د

Quaderni | 1

VILLES MINIERES | MINING CITIES

edited by

Cecilia Fumagalli, Eliana Martinelli, Emilo Mossa

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION

PART 1 - METHODOLOGY

PART 2 - REFERENCES

PART 3 - RESULTS

APPENDIX 1- DRAWINGS

APPENDIX 2- PHOTOS

71

63

57

47

41

33

25

19

13

9

Houses for

the Human City

Francesco Collotti

1

2

3

4

5

6