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Manfredo Manfredini

The University of Auckland, School of Architecture and Planning, Faculty Member

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Dr Manfredo is Associate Professor and Director (International Engagement) at the School of Architecture and Planning, The University of Auckland, and Honorary Professor at the Hunan University, Changsha, China. He studied architecture and urban design in Milan and Berlin. He has consistently been involved in fundamental and applied research projects, both locally and internationally, over a wide range of topics in architectural theory and criticism, as well as in design at architectural and urban scales. Since 2010, after teaching architecture and urban design in Italy, Germany and China, he has been teaching architecture and urban design at the University of Auckland. His current research interests address post-urban spatialisation forms and correlated design aspects, particularly focusing on public space, VAM reality geography, architectural and urban heritage; affordable and special housing; and education in architecture. Each of these areas has been explored in collaboration with international and multi-disciplinary teams, and has been as consistently resulted in relevant publications, received successful grants (national and international) and awards (e.g. first price Biennale di Venezia, Sironi Group), and attracted invited participation in major global events (e.g. United Nation Habitat III)

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Papers by Manfredo Manfredini

Pervading Mediatisation and the Metastable Social Space of Urban Centres: An Analysis of the Digital Networks of Emerging Ultra-prosumerist Places

Rethinking Sustainable Pacific Rim Territories. Proceedings of the 2020 APRU Sustainable Cities and Landscapes Hub PhD Symposium

Proceedings of the 4th APRU Sustainable Cities and Landscapes Hub PhD Symposium, University of Au... more

The “mediated shed” - public space and “the forgotten symbolism” of post-consumerist architecture of hypermediated interspatial patterns

The production of pluralistic spatialities: The persistence of counter-space territories in the streets of Hanoi, Vietnam

Mobilized territories in more-than-relational public spaces: Sidewalk territories of resistance in Hanoi, Vietnam

Instances of emerging agonistic spatialities in the contemporary city: The production of differential geographies in the public space of Istanbul

Asian Journal of Humanities and Social Studies, 2017

Today, the virtually deterritorialised digital public sphere produces recombinant effects on the ... more Today, the virtually deterritorialised digital public sphere produces recombinant effects on the increasingly fragmented physical and social urban environment. The Gezi Park Movement in Istanbul has produced an exemplary instance of resurgence of citizens in the struggle against the obliteration of participative engagement enacted by the augmented spectacle orchestrated by hegemonic economic powers. This instance has showed unprecedented collective spatial productions, liberating the potential of the pervading digital realm. This article discusses evidence found in the tensest moments of territorialisation of this situated urban movement generated by a contention on the subsistence of a key central public park – the oldest of the country. Evidence from digital media sources, supplemented by interviews with key stakeholders, is used to support a theoretical speculation on the changing role of public space in our society and the emerging paradox of centrality in the digital age. The e...

New technologies, social media and spatial representations: Auckland’s public space of spectacle and consumption

This paper addresses problems concerning public space in the contemporary city, focusing on issue... more This paper addresses problems concerning public space in the contemporary city, focusing on issues of privatisation, internalisation, disconnection and new forms of integration. Looking at the emerging nodes of public engagement in our cities, post-consumerist shopping enclosures, and the contribution of digital media, it discusses conception, representation and production of urban space in the expanding mixed reality. Through theoretical speculation supported by evidence, it highlights new recombinant factors emerging in the conception, perception and experience of urban public space. These factors counteract the increasing fragmentation and disjunction of urban places and the progressive commodification of the commons. The study uses social network data documenting public experiences, perceptions and conceptions of public space in relation to mental constructs, social lives and shared spatial interpretations. These sources offer invaluable empirical evidence to the complex discourse on public space condition in the digital age, complementing the wide critical and theoretical elaborations of the aspects concerning control, displacement, spectacle and illusion. The use of Instagram allows access to spatially rooted communication, including presence (space and time attributes) and/or reference (place tagging). This kind of communication intimately connects the public realm to the public sphere, potentially contributing to “remember” the political dimension of the social “multitude.” The paper presents the preliminary findings of an investigation on a selected sample of Auckland town centres, involving researchers in a hermeneutic process that embeds them within the widest range of stakeholders of local and transient communities. It experimentally uses new analytical tools to evaluate iconographic-based data on social life in key spaces of consumption, ultimately confirming the hypothesis that there are multiple correlations between those everyday practic

Re-thinking the historic city: framing design processes for Famagusta, a strategic geopolitical and geocultural platform in the Mediterranean area

Envisioning Atmospheres of Spectacle and Activism. Utopia and critical urbanism instruments for the reclamation of the fragmented territories of the WALL and the MALL

The Journal of Public Space, 2019

Woundedlands are places of crisis of the civic sphere, where architecture contributes to escalate... more Woundedlands are places of crisis of the civic sphere, where architecture contributes to escalate the agency of forces that annihilate associative, differential and commoning processes. They are spaces of exemplary expression of the destructive capacity of contemporary technology to increase control, abstraction and exclusion. The Wall and the Mall are two salient Woundedland types addressed in this research. The Wall—a harsh boundary displacing and negating access to the stranger—epitomizes the increasing instances of unmovable and unforgiving socio-spatial divides. The heavily armed Demilitarized Zone created by the stalled Korean conflict is chosen as an egregious walling example. The Mall—a supreme urban embodiment of digitally enhanced urban de-commoning and homogenizing forces—typifies the post-consumerist spectacular production of implanted and exogenous pseudo-civic centralities. The heterotopic integrated shopping centre Sylvia Park—the main centre of this kind in New Zeala...

Simulation, Control and Desire. Urban Commons and Semi-Public Space Resilience in the Age of Augmented Transductive Territorial Production

The Journal of Public Space, 2019

Considering place-based participation a crucial factor for the development of sustainable and res... more Considering place-based participation a crucial factor for the development of sustainable and resilient cities in the post-digital turn age, this paper addresses the socio-spatial implications of the recent transformation of relationality networks. To understand the drivers of spatial claims emerged in conditions of digitally augmented spectacle and simulation, it focuses on changes occurring in key nodes of central urban public and semi-public spaces of rapidly developing cities. Firstly, it proposes a theoretical framework for the analysis of problems related to socio-spatial fragmentation, polarisation and segregation of urban commons subject to external control. Secondly, it discusses opportunities and criticalities emerging from a representational paradox depending on the ambivalence in the play of desire found in digitally augmented semi-public spaces. The discussion is structured to shed light on specific socio-spatial relational practices that counteract the dissipation of t...

The Virtual Public Thing: de-re-territorialisations of public space through shopping in Auckland’s urban space

Interstices: Journal of Architecture and Related Arts, 2015

New recombinant factors emerging in urban public space counteract the increasing disjunction of u... more New recombinant factors emerging in urban public space counteract the increasing disjunction of urban places subject to commodification and privatisation. In low-density cities within neoliberal political frameworks, these factors have developed peculiar places of social relationship: the integrated urban enclosures devoted to lifestyle consumption that are the latest evolution of shopping centres. These enclosures are heterotopic places mobilised by spectacle that quickly subsume the fundamental changes occurring in the relations between architecture and associative life in our contemporary post-consumerist, digital era. The paper discusses a comparative analysis of the new mall typology recently introduced into Auckland, exploring the important challenge they pose to architecture and urban design in defining the future of public space.

Dynamics of territorial production in situated and community projects

The Journal of Public Space, 2017

Stand up for Public Space! A networking event at the Habitat III conference and a global online campaign

The Journal of Public Space, 2017

Co-creative urbanism: the production of plural evolutionary spatialities through conflicts and complicities between public and private in the streets of Hanoi, Vietnam

Joelho: Revista de Cultura Arquitectonica, 2016

Under the impact of economic globalization, today cities put a high priority to improve their att... more Under the impact of economic globalization, today cities put a high priority to improve their attractiveness and become ideal destinations for global capital and elites (William S.W. Lim, 2014). Results of these “improvements” are often severe gentrification and spectacularisation processes that compromise resilience of local communities. These have an important impact on the materiality of tradition that constitutes complex of historical, social and cultural linkages is being gradually decontextualized and commodified, severely damaging local identity, community and knowledge (William S. W. Lim, 2013). Epitomes of these disruptions of complex rooted linkages are the “creative,” post-consumerist landscapes of consumption, ubiquitously emerging in public spaces of ancient central city streets.Contrasting such tendency of producing deterritorialised places of consumption, trapping people for hours at a time in hyper-real spaces, relevant socio-spatial instances of resistance are found...

Critical Transitions in the Public Space of Contemporary Chinese Cities: Evaluating the “Otherness” of the Malls of Consumption and Spectacle in Changsha

22Nd Isuf Conference City As Organism New Visions For Urban Life, Feb 13, 2015

Modern Housing Retrofit: Assessment of Upgrade Packages to EnerPHit Standard for 1940–1960 State Houses in Auckland

Buildings, 2015

Energy upgrade to Passive House standard for historic public housing in New Zealand

Energy and Buildings, 2015

The Augmented Meta-Public Space. Interpreting emerging transductive territories in enhanced centres of consumption

The Journal of Public Space, 2017

Give Us Space! Augmented public space geographies in the changing public/private relationships

The Journal of Public Space, 2018

The aim of this article is to reflect on and share the findings of the Networking Event ‘Give us ... more The aim of this article is to reflect on and share the findings of the Networking Event ‘Give us Space: Augmented public space geographies in the changing public/private relationships.’ The Event addressed emerging spatial issues in the production of the public realm of contemporary cities. This topic has been at the centre of the discourse on urbanism in both humanities and social sciences for decades, reflecting the increasing interest in spatial problems that have contributed to the crisis of public life in the socioeconomic, cultural and political spheres. The recent pervasion of spatial privatisation and public sphere mediatisation processes require a refoundation of this discourse. The discussions addressed some of the key areas of concern raised by the New Urban Agenda (NUA) related to open space, focusing on socio-spatial problems in the pervading production of semi-public spaces in contexts of rapid urbanization. Using a comparative urbanism perspective that highlighted the...

Reappropriation of Centrality and the Reproduction of Relationality in Emerging Core Urban Spaces

COVID-19 restrictions have exacerbated the effects of an urbanisation mode that, through the comb... more COVID-19 restrictions have exacerbated the effects of an urbanisation mode that, through the combination of rampant neoliberalism, pervasive translocalism and ubiquitous digital transduction, has produced a fragmented and enclavic space with high spatial inequalities. Threatening to enhance these inequalities, centres of public life, as shopping and entertainment malls, are subject to an inexorable process of creative destruction determined by transnational capitalist logics. The system of distributed centrality of the modern shopping centre is further polarised by the ultra-modern mega-enclosures. The ultra-modern mega-enclosures introduce a participatory transductive experientialisation that supplants the scripted eventfulness of the modern shopping centre. This form of experientialisation integrates consumption and production to exploit free labour and further dispossess the public and private local entities of their asset ownership and control. However, this new form of consumer...

Pervading Mediatisation and the Metastable Social Space of Urban Centres: An Analysis of the Digital Networks of Emerging Ultra-prosumerist Places

Rethinking Sustainable Pacific Rim Territories. Proceedings of the 2020 APRU Sustainable Cities and Landscapes Hub PhD Symposium

Proceedings of the 4th APRU Sustainable Cities and Landscapes Hub PhD Symposium, University of Au... more

The “mediated shed” - public space and “the forgotten symbolism” of post-consumerist architecture of hypermediated interspatial patterns

The production of pluralistic spatialities: The persistence of counter-space territories in the streets of Hanoi, Vietnam

Mobilized territories in more-than-relational public spaces: Sidewalk territories of resistance in Hanoi, Vietnam

Instances of emerging agonistic spatialities in the contemporary city: The production of differential geographies in the public space of Istanbul

Asian Journal of Humanities and Social Studies, 2017

Today, the virtually deterritorialised digital public sphere produces recombinant effects on the ... more Today, the virtually deterritorialised digital public sphere produces recombinant effects on the increasingly fragmented physical and social urban environment. The Gezi Park Movement in Istanbul has produced an exemplary instance of resurgence of citizens in the struggle against the obliteration of participative engagement enacted by the augmented spectacle orchestrated by hegemonic economic powers. This instance has showed unprecedented collective spatial productions, liberating the potential of the pervading digital realm. This article discusses evidence found in the tensest moments of territorialisation of this situated urban movement generated by a contention on the subsistence of a key central public park – the oldest of the country. Evidence from digital media sources, supplemented by interviews with key stakeholders, is used to support a theoretical speculation on the changing role of public space in our society and the emerging paradox of centrality in the digital age. The e...

New technologies, social media and spatial representations: Auckland’s public space of spectacle and consumption

This paper addresses problems concerning public space in the contemporary city, focusing on issue... more This paper addresses problems concerning public space in the contemporary city, focusing on issues of privatisation, internalisation, disconnection and new forms of integration. Looking at the emerging nodes of public engagement in our cities, post-consumerist shopping enclosures, and the contribution of digital media, it discusses conception, representation and production of urban space in the expanding mixed reality. Through theoretical speculation supported by evidence, it highlights new recombinant factors emerging in the conception, perception and experience of urban public space. These factors counteract the increasing fragmentation and disjunction of urban places and the progressive commodification of the commons. The study uses social network data documenting public experiences, perceptions and conceptions of public space in relation to mental constructs, social lives and shared spatial interpretations. These sources offer invaluable empirical evidence to the complex discourse on public space condition in the digital age, complementing the wide critical and theoretical elaborations of the aspects concerning control, displacement, spectacle and illusion. The use of Instagram allows access to spatially rooted communication, including presence (space and time attributes) and/or reference (place tagging). This kind of communication intimately connects the public realm to the public sphere, potentially contributing to “remember” the political dimension of the social “multitude.” The paper presents the preliminary findings of an investigation on a selected sample of Auckland town centres, involving researchers in a hermeneutic process that embeds them within the widest range of stakeholders of local and transient communities. It experimentally uses new analytical tools to evaluate iconographic-based data on social life in key spaces of consumption, ultimately confirming the hypothesis that there are multiple correlations between those everyday practic

Re-thinking the historic city: framing design processes for Famagusta, a strategic geopolitical and geocultural platform in the Mediterranean area

Envisioning Atmospheres of Spectacle and Activism. Utopia and critical urbanism instruments for the reclamation of the fragmented territories of the WALL and the MALL

The Journal of Public Space, 2019

Woundedlands are places of crisis of the civic sphere, where architecture contributes to escalate... more Woundedlands are places of crisis of the civic sphere, where architecture contributes to escalate the agency of forces that annihilate associative, differential and commoning processes. They are spaces of exemplary expression of the destructive capacity of contemporary technology to increase control, abstraction and exclusion. The Wall and the Mall are two salient Woundedland types addressed in this research. The Wall—a harsh boundary displacing and negating access to the stranger—epitomizes the increasing instances of unmovable and unforgiving socio-spatial divides. The heavily armed Demilitarized Zone created by the stalled Korean conflict is chosen as an egregious walling example. The Mall—a supreme urban embodiment of digitally enhanced urban de-commoning and homogenizing forces—typifies the post-consumerist spectacular production of implanted and exogenous pseudo-civic centralities. The heterotopic integrated shopping centre Sylvia Park—the main centre of this kind in New Zeala...

Simulation, Control and Desire. Urban Commons and Semi-Public Space Resilience in the Age of Augmented Transductive Territorial Production

The Journal of Public Space, 2019

Considering place-based participation a crucial factor for the development of sustainable and res... more Considering place-based participation a crucial factor for the development of sustainable and resilient cities in the post-digital turn age, this paper addresses the socio-spatial implications of the recent transformation of relationality networks. To understand the drivers of spatial claims emerged in conditions of digitally augmented spectacle and simulation, it focuses on changes occurring in key nodes of central urban public and semi-public spaces of rapidly developing cities. Firstly, it proposes a theoretical framework for the analysis of problems related to socio-spatial fragmentation, polarisation and segregation of urban commons subject to external control. Secondly, it discusses opportunities and criticalities emerging from a representational paradox depending on the ambivalence in the play of desire found in digitally augmented semi-public spaces. The discussion is structured to shed light on specific socio-spatial relational practices that counteract the dissipation of t...

The Virtual Public Thing: de-re-territorialisations of public space through shopping in Auckland’s urban space

Interstices: Journal of Architecture and Related Arts, 2015

New recombinant factors emerging in urban public space counteract the increasing disjunction of u... more New recombinant factors emerging in urban public space counteract the increasing disjunction of urban places subject to commodification and privatisation. In low-density cities within neoliberal political frameworks, these factors have developed peculiar places of social relationship: the integrated urban enclosures devoted to lifestyle consumption that are the latest evolution of shopping centres. These enclosures are heterotopic places mobilised by spectacle that quickly subsume the fundamental changes occurring in the relations between architecture and associative life in our contemporary post-consumerist, digital era. The paper discusses a comparative analysis of the new mall typology recently introduced into Auckland, exploring the important challenge they pose to architecture and urban design in defining the future of public space.

Dynamics of territorial production in situated and community projects

The Journal of Public Space, 2017

Stand up for Public Space! A networking event at the Habitat III conference and a global online campaign

The Journal of Public Space, 2017

Co-creative urbanism: the production of plural evolutionary spatialities through conflicts and complicities between public and private in the streets of Hanoi, Vietnam

Joelho: Revista de Cultura Arquitectonica, 2016

Under the impact of economic globalization, today cities put a high priority to improve their att... more Under the impact of economic globalization, today cities put a high priority to improve their attractiveness and become ideal destinations for global capital and elites (William S.W. Lim, 2014). Results of these “improvements” are often severe gentrification and spectacularisation processes that compromise resilience of local communities. These have an important impact on the materiality of tradition that constitutes complex of historical, social and cultural linkages is being gradually decontextualized and commodified, severely damaging local identity, community and knowledge (William S. W. Lim, 2013). Epitomes of these disruptions of complex rooted linkages are the “creative,” post-consumerist landscapes of consumption, ubiquitously emerging in public spaces of ancient central city streets.Contrasting such tendency of producing deterritorialised places of consumption, trapping people for hours at a time in hyper-real spaces, relevant socio-spatial instances of resistance are found...

Critical Transitions in the Public Space of Contemporary Chinese Cities: Evaluating the “Otherness” of the Malls of Consumption and Spectacle in Changsha

22Nd Isuf Conference City As Organism New Visions For Urban Life, Feb 13, 2015

Modern Housing Retrofit: Assessment of Upgrade Packages to EnerPHit Standard for 1940–1960 State Houses in Auckland

Buildings, 2015

Energy upgrade to Passive House standard for historic public housing in New Zealand

Energy and Buildings, 2015

The Augmented Meta-Public Space. Interpreting emerging transductive territories in enhanced centres of consumption

The Journal of Public Space, 2017

Give Us Space! Augmented public space geographies in the changing public/private relationships

The Journal of Public Space, 2018

The aim of this article is to reflect on and share the findings of the Networking Event ‘Give us ... more The aim of this article is to reflect on and share the findings of the Networking Event ‘Give us Space: Augmented public space geographies in the changing public/private relationships.’ The Event addressed emerging spatial issues in the production of the public realm of contemporary cities. This topic has been at the centre of the discourse on urbanism in both humanities and social sciences for decades, reflecting the increasing interest in spatial problems that have contributed to the crisis of public life in the socioeconomic, cultural and political spheres. The recent pervasion of spatial privatisation and public sphere mediatisation processes require a refoundation of this discourse. The discussions addressed some of the key areas of concern raised by the New Urban Agenda (NUA) related to open space, focusing on socio-spatial problems in the pervading production of semi-public spaces in contexts of rapid urbanization. Using a comparative urbanism perspective that highlighted the...

Reappropriation of Centrality and the Reproduction of Relationality in Emerging Core Urban Spaces

COVID-19 restrictions have exacerbated the effects of an urbanisation mode that, through the comb... more COVID-19 restrictions have exacerbated the effects of an urbanisation mode that, through the combination of rampant neoliberalism, pervasive translocalism and ubiquitous digital transduction, has produced a fragmented and enclavic space with high spatial inequalities. Threatening to enhance these inequalities, centres of public life, as shopping and entertainment malls, are subject to an inexorable process of creative destruction determined by transnational capitalist logics. The system of distributed centrality of the modern shopping centre is further polarised by the ultra-modern mega-enclosures. The ultra-modern mega-enclosures introduce a participatory transductive experientialisation that supplants the scripted eventfulness of the modern shopping centre. This form of experientialisation integrates consumption and production to exploit free labour and further dispossess the public and private local entities of their asset ownership and control. However, this new form of consumer...

Time Frames: Conservation Policies for Twentieth-Century Architectural Heritage

Time Frames provides a reconnaissance on the conservation rules and current protection policies o... more Time Frames provides a reconnaissance on the conservation rules and current protection policies of more than 100 countries, with particular attention to the emerging nations and twentieth-century architecture. The contributions illustrate the critical issues related to architectural listings, with a brief history of national approaches, a linkography and a short bibliography. The book also provides a short critical lexicography, with 12 papers written by scholars and experts including topics on identities, heritages, conservation, memories and the economy. By examining the methods used to designate building as heritage sites across the continents, this book provides a comprehensive overview of current protection policies of twentieth-century architecture as well as the role of architectural history.

Book Launch / Time Frames /London, Naples

The role of architectural history and the conservation rules within the recognition process for t... more The role of architectural history and the conservation rules within the recognition process for twentieth-century architecture are of high relevance for the contemporary critical debate.
The historical survey and preservation strategies of modern architecture are being gradually associated with sustainability, while twentieth-century buildings are becoming an integral part of multiple strategies for the development of urban landscapes. Today, new critical perspectives and protection policies contribute to the deployment of projects related to the study, classification, listing, conservation and promotion of modern architecture.
These issues are confronted in Time Frames: Conservation Policies for Twentieth-Century Architectural Heritage (Routledge, 2017) by exploring the policies used to designate buildings as heritage sites worldwide. The editors of the book focus on the so-called ‘time rule’ which elapses between a building’s construction and its protection, if it exists. What emerges is a variable definition of what is “contemporary”, ie architecture which has not yet become “historic”.