Meeting with Paola Viganò_
The concept of “deriva” (french: dèrive, english: drift) was introduced by surrealists as a rapid movements through different places.
Dr. Vigano, agreed that walking into the city adds an incredible value to the exploration and to the understanding of the city. She teaches her students to go on the field and to walk for a determined amount of time in order to grasp the sense of the place. When questioned: “what are the things you get on the physical place you do not get from the map”, she answer: “all that is related with the 5 senses”. You have to touch the city, to hear the city (a reference to the city sound), you have to see and to smell the city.
She doesn’t think that the psychological dimension is prevalent in respect of this sensorial dimension, because she think that there is a psychological dimension even when you read a “map”. The psychological dimension pass through the map, whereas the physical dimension is not available than in the physical place. There is a map of Switzerland that is called Dufur Map, in which the heights are marked with orthogonal marks rather than isobars. This kind of approach can be considered as a “romantic” approach for literature.
Dr. Vigano thinks that the “project” creates knowledge only when it produces description of something. Some dimensions of a place became known only through a project.
A context in which she applied the participant approach is when she worked in the urban re-design of Prato (FI) in Italy. This city was an industrial one, unique in Europe because residential areas where dispersed through industrial plants. She carried out a project where she actively interviewed people on the streets, and walked with people on the street to understand the city. People give her a great feedback, highlighting personal and very “secret / intimate” perspective of the urban tissue that where unexplored or unknown up to that moment.
One of the dimension of collaboration she sees in collaborative design is the challenge of speaking the same language. She tried, several times to have external consultants (like geologists) participate in the project. In this sense, she supports the idea that different people working together have to compare different mental maps or internal representations, to converge on a common view of the city.
References:
1. Chombart De Lauwe:
Sociologue franÁais (Cambrai, 1913 ó Paris, 1998).
CrÈateur du Centre d’ethnologie sociale et de psychosociologie, il s’est surtout consacrÈ ‡ l’Ètude des problËmes de la civilisation urbaine (Paris et l’agglomÈration parisienne, 1952; Des hommes et des villes, 1965; Aspirations et Transformations sociales, 1970; La Fin des villes, mythe ou rÈalitÈ, 1982).
2. Paola ViganÚ, Un progetto per Prato, Alinea, 2000 (Laboratorio Prato PRG)
3. Situationists cities (2000-2003); Internazional situazionista (IS)
4. Giancarlo de Carlo, approccio partecipativo
(b. Genoa, Italy 1919)
Giancarlo de Carlo was born in Genoa, Italy in 1919. He trained in Italy as an architect from 1942 to 1949, a time of political turmoil which generated his philosophy toward life and architecture. Libertarian socialism is the underlying force for all of his planning and design. De Carlo sees architecture as a consensus activity. He generates his designs from the inherent conflict that occurs in the site and historical context of architecture. His ideas link CIAM ideals with late twentieth century reality.
Although his political beliefs have limited his portfolio of buildings, his ideas have remained untainted by ‘Post-Modernist’ beliefs through his journal Spazio e Societa and through his class on the International Laboratory of Architecture and Urban Design (ILAUD), as well as through the support of his Team 10 colleagues.
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