I nuovi orizzonti della complessità nella forma dello spazio sociale

The great social accomplishments of the post-war period have manifested their limitations, both in the level of degradation reached, as well as in the substantial inadequacy to represent that accumulation of symbols and rituals that may allow the inhabitants to say: “living is being at home anywhere”. On these places branded by “historical absence” it may still be said today, in the words of Guy Debord, that “Nothing has ever happened here, and nothing ever will.” (G. Debord 1960 in M. Perniola, 2005). What has been sacrificed is the anthropological relationship between Man and the inhabited space and what, after all, coherently with all the processes of contemporary civilization by exalting the value of the mass, has dispersed the sense of community. Certainly, the situationist examination has contributed to ripen critical thinking on the outcomes of public housing policies, first and foremost those in France. The massive redevelopment plan of the Grandes Ensembles that France has implemented over the last thirty years, has indeed reached new peaks in projects of typological urban renovation and functional integration of the public and private space. The typological reappraisal of buildings, in detail, has started up processes of morphologic remodelling – the case of La Caravelle in Villeneuve, by R. Castro and S. Derissof - or of expanding the cross section of the housing – “Living the wall” by B. Pourd and C. Tautel in the ‘La Cité des 4.000’ at La Courneuve (V. Balducci and V. Orioli 2006). Of great interest are also some Dutch programs - Greg Lynn in redesigning the buildings of the Kleiburg block in Bijlmermeer - and German projects, on the issue of the renewal city blocks in Berlin - the projects for Rummelsburger Bucht by K.T.Brenne, K.Pudritz and B. Paul and by Kees Christiansen for Havelspitze (E. Puccini 2008). The contributions selected for this section - three degree theses and three course papers – tackle two entirely different aspects of the peripheral condition of living - the first periphery and the contemporary periphery shaped on post-war urban models - and two cities - Siracusa and Catania - in contexts of hardship and social marginalization - “La Mazzarrona” and “Librino”. The notion of anthropology of living, applied to the “domesticity” of the space – has made use of techniques of expansion of the types and remodelling the forms, focusing on integration, flexibility and sustainability of the functions, buildings and spaces.