The University as a Settlement Principle: Territorialising Knowledge in Late 1960s Italy

Description

The 1960s and the 1970s marked a generational shift in architectural discourse at a time when the revolts inside universities condemned the academic institution as a major force behind the perpetuation of a controlling society. Focusing on the crisis and reform of higher education in Italy, The University as a Settlement Principle investigates how university design became a lens for architects to interpret a complex historical moment that was marked by the construction of an unprecedented number of new campuses worldwide. Implicitly drawing parallels with the contemporary condition of the university under a regime of knowledge commodification, it reviews the vision proposed by architects such as Vittorio Gregotti, Giuseppe Samonà, Archizoom, Giancarlo De Carlo, and Guido Canella, among others, to challenge the university as a bureaucratic and self-contained entity, and defend, instead, the role of higher education as an agent for restructuring vast territories. Through their projects, the book discusses a most fertile and heroic moment of Italian architectural discourse and argues for a reconsideration of architecture’s obligation to question the status quo. This work will be of interest to postgraduate researchers and academics in architectural theory and history, campus design, planning theory, and history. Cover Half Title Series Page Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Table of Contents List of figures Acknowledgements Timeline Introduction: University by (urban) design Notes PART I: Beyond campus: Chronicle Prologue I: Another campus Note 1. The campus phenomenon Urban revolution The fate of Jefferson: Campus neutralised 1963: Academic community dissolved and reclaimed Cedric Price: The large scale of higher education Notes 2. Imagining an urban Italy Anxiety A new urban dimension … or città territorio Claiming originality: A temporary pause Notes 3. Reform or revolution The chimera of autonomy Minimalist reformism Revolution and restoration A precedent to reject The university in academe Notes 4. Architecture or system: A parable in four episodes The controversy of competitions Florence, 1970: inside, outside, or neither Cagliari, 1971: University workplace Calabria, 1972: The spectre of the campus Salerno, 1973: the triumph of system Notes Epilogue to Part I: End of an illusion Notes PART II: Academic territories: Four takes Prologue II: The principle of concentration Notes 5. Exemplars of order: Vittorio Gregotti, Giuseppe Samonà, and academic gigantism Ordering eagerness ‘New directions in Italian architecture’ Ambiente totale and the anthropogeographical project Continuity or amnesia Partisan interests Cities with no outside The concentration conundrum Notes 6. Information à la carte: Archizoom and territorial deinstitutionalisation From knowledge to information The Marxist-Operaist helix Exaggeration or project The deschooling helix Territory of learning webs Notes 7. Reversing the pyramid: Giancarlo De Carlo and the dilution of the university The founding of Universicittà Urbino (or the cell and the collective) Dublin (or disciplinary reshuffling) Pavia (or diluting the university) School buildings: why/how? Notes 8. The anti-city: Guido Canella and the nomadic university A system of learning Politecnico di Milano 1963–74: experiment with a mass university The complication of school Theatrical pedagogy The university is everywhere Rappel à l’ordre Notes Epilogue II: Academic instability Notes Conclusion: Towards academic commons Notes Appendix 1: Conference on university design, ISES (Istituto per lo Sviluppo dell’Edilizia Sociale), Rome, 1–2 October 1970 Appendix 2: Designing the Italian university: Four competitions Appendix 3: Higher education: An international architectural discourse, 1960–1977 Bibliography Index