Urban Project, a Matter of Morphology

Abstract

This research faces the theme of the actuality of the Urban Morphology discipline. Starting with the reconstruction of the history of urban studies in the schools of architecture in Italy in the last century, a personal approach to the theme is proposed as a result of an intense activity of academic cooperation of the authors (from the University of Naples Federico II) with the research group of Uwe Schröder (RWTH Aachen University in Germany). The main innovation, if referred to the Italian tradition, is that the city is now observed not only from the point of view of the ‘form’ but also considering the ‘space’: thus, the different qualities of the spaces that build every city and its wealth. The ‘results’ of this research are in the projects that the authors develop on different academic occasions; in fact, in Architecture, theory and practice are strictly connected. This is the reason why two projects are described at the end of the study in order to demonstrate that only a disciplinary knowledge of the city can produce its responsible modification, while more general ‘Conclusions’ define the innovation that the study proposes to the debate on Urban Morphology.

Keywords

• urban morphology
• urban analysis
• urban spatiality
• Italian urban studies
• urban design