Architettura e movimento: percezione dinamica e progetto dello spazio contemporaneo

Can architecture, in respect to dynamics of contemporary urban spaces, create an environment (urban scenarios) where movement, time and distance can coexist with human scale? The answer may probably be affirmative, if it’s possible to find the way the city can, through the architectural language of public spaces, transmit to people the idea of movement and define a parameter of relationship between human scale and dynamics materializing in them. We deduce the great significance of establishing the perception parameters of movement, because just through movement people find his relationship with contemporary spaces. Everyday people move through different paths crossing the city and realizes a real “journey through urban spaces”. Chapter 1. Analysis of movement dynamics in cities, order of magnitude, dimensions, functional motivations of transformations in urban form. Analysis is proposed trough the reconstruction of the historic paths of urban spatial transformations and of the dynamics which caused the changes. Historic path and contemporary situation are seen related to city and people, men and spatial scalar dimension, function and habits, society and identity of places. This comparison highlights the character of contemporary spaces related to people living in them and crossing them, reconstructs which elements have been lost and which have been gained, during the temporal path of transformation. Chapter 2. Study of movement languages in the urban image for building a structure of language and a common key to both observers’ perception and urban spaces, joining compositional elements of spatial construction with technics from film editing. Chapter 3. Vision of contemporary cities as cities of movement. Relationship between cities and people crossing urban spaces. Analysis of perception modes and characters of communication between urban spaces and people: visual signs as image, light, form, fullness, emptiness. Speed, rhythm and dimension of perception. Analysis of dynamic function of transit spaces. Some places have the function to drive users in their movement through a path or in their circulation around a node; this character may be defined as dynamic function: places related to dynamic function may be defined as transit spaces. Project of “kinetic language” and “kinetic spaces”. Kinetic language, necessary for coordinating different levels of information, produces a type of space that is suitable for movement and freedom of action, the called “kinetic space”. The project of kinetic space has to use a kinetic language, appropriate to arouse the perception of movement. At the same time, it has to build the multi dimensionality of spaces, making them adaptable to the different rythms of contemporary urbanity.