Evolution of urban fabrics

La casa a schiera rappresenta il tipo elementare urbano per eccellenza, che si contrappone al tipo a
corte più caratteristico dei centri rurali. Da queste due tipologie abitative si sono originati la maggior
parte dei tessuti edilizi dei centri urbani mediterranei.
Dal tipo a schiera gli organismi edilizi si sono evoluti, per mezzo di successivi raddoppi delle cellule
e per rifusione di più unità edilizie, dando vita ad organismi più complessi a carattere plurifamiliare
costituenti i tessuti storici delle nostre città.
Il centro storico di Iglesias, cittadina situata nella regione sudoccidentale della Sardegna, è
costituito da un borgo fortificato e presenta diversi esempi del tipo a schiera, originati in periodi
diversi sotto differenti dominazioni e contesti sociali.
Seppure il tema della casa a schiera e della sua evoluzione sia già stati studiato per altri centri storici
italiani dalla scuola muratoriana, ed in particolare da Gianfranco Caniggia tra gli anni ‘70 e ‘80 del
novecento, l'esempio iglesiente suggerisce nuovi spunti di riflessione per la sua peculiarità. Tale
specificità è riscontrabile anche nel costruito urbano di Cagliari, città con la quale ha avuto in
comune gli stessi dominatori, e rappresenta un unicum nel panorama italiano e che nell'Europa
meridionale abbiamo ritrovato solamente nelle regioni attorno a Porto (PT). Questa singolarità è
rappresentata dalla rotazione della giacitura dei tetti delle schiere che si presentano parallele rispetto
al fronte strada. Ciò genera conseguenze sia nell'ambito del paesaggio urbano, in cui i profili degli
isolati sono scanditi dalla successione dei timpani di facciata delle coperture, sia in quello
costruttivo, in cui la diversa giacitura impone soluzioni peculiari per le coperture.
Il paper, riallacciandosi agli studi di altri contesti in area mediterranea, si prefigge di indagare le
cause e le conseguenze di questa scelta costruttiva.

My master thesis concerns the restoration and reuse of the ravelin located opposite the main entrance of the Venetian citadel, the Fortezza, lying on the Palaiokastro hill above the historic center of Rethymno. The Ottomans built the ravelin during the city’s occupation, around 1700 and 1715, inside the defense zone of the citadel, the esplanade, to support the citadel’s entrance. Between 1909 and 1929, the prostitutes were imprisoned in municipal buildings constructed on its terreplein following a Cretan State Law (1897-1913). In 1929, the Greek government occupied the ravelin to convert it into a Prison, whose operation ceased in 1969. The municipality claimed it to house the Archaeological Museum of Rethymno. According to the 1977 Museum study, its interior was demolished, and a new concrete structure was built inside its external walls. The Museum operated from 1991 to 2015. Since then the building is used as a storage of antiquities. The thesis proposes its reuse as an Art-Cafe by developing a project respectful at its Palimpsest. For this reason, time and space analysis is carried out. The description of the current state of the building is based on a detailed survey compared with historical documents to identify the surviving past layers and technical analysis. The heritage value assessment is preceded by the project proposal to justify the intervention level on the urban scale and the building. The current vision and needs of the Municipality, as well as the ravelin’s prominent location, are considered under the aspect of sustainability to devise an economic analysis. Finally, the project proposal includes a master plan aiming to restore the lost integrity of the area establishing a link with the city. The intervention on the building is based on the preceded analyses and value assessment, while useful conclusions are drawn.

The distinctive nature of any city might be called its " ishness ". Gothenburg's identity is Gothenburg-ishness, made up of those elements which express its very individual nature, its own unique " DNA ". The ishness is, in other words, synonymous with physical surroundings of a place, its geographical settings together with the combination of memories and personally experienced bits and pieces. It is a matter of both personal perception and a collective memory. Gothenburg, a city on the West coast of Sweden, is known for its gothenburgishness. Manifested by the language and the local wit, a special identity of Gothenburg is formed in a little less than four centuries. But, it all began with different cultures. Gothenburgishness is not necessarily the same for everyone. Some people may not perceive it at all. The physical space is also changing or evolving from one generation to another. And, like with language, without us perceiving this change. iii As favorite places change or disappear, as new buildings are built, and old ones torn down, as we move to new apartments, as we take other routes to and from work, so changes even the perception. Some periods leave strong material landmarks, others are carried on in oral history creating an imaginary geography iii. But, what is left in physical form, the urban landscape is the only matter allowing orientation in space, allowing us to create a concept of time in that space. The physical remains convey a materialized definition of the spatial narrative and they help carry on the imaginary geography, too. Methods and aims My thesis is that the identity or the ishness is firmly anchored in physical structures, landmarks and these are the essential part of a city's DNA. Every new layer of a city, added trough centuries, is an essential part in creating its identity. But, certain features appear more strongly, overshadowing other layers. By merging, also, different chronological periods lose their own distinctiveness but the ishness is connected to specific iconic material remains, whose documentary values increase with time. I would like to examine how this is affecting the image of a city/place identity. An objectifiable definition of the spatial nature of Gothenburg is available through different indicators and I will work on a model to apply in my further studies. That model will include mapping documented or printed presentations of the city of Gothenburg during the 20th century. Meanwhile, the purpose of this paper is also to elucidate the provenance of the 20th century building in Gothenburg. A period that had the strongest quantitative impact on the city, building more than two thirds of its existing structure. I will sometimes use a metaphorical language to try to evoke images of a historical landscape in change. My images of the city through history are acquired through empirical work in preservation.

The current paper is part of the developed instrument for urban analysis. The author explores the urban dynamics based on urban cores activity and traces it via questionnaire among more than 170 people from Bulgaria and Japan. As a result, the rings of attraction for various types of urban cores are observed, and the societal attitudes and the subconscious use of the city. On the other hand, the reasons for avoidance of particular parts of the city are also discussed. The model for analysis may serve not just for development of short and long-term urban strategies, but also for a variety of social, ethnological and economical researches.

This paper is part II of "Towards a model of urban evolution." This paper defines a formal model of the Signature of an urban space, comprised of: an urban genome which captures the expected groups (i.e., users) and activities (i.e., uses) of physical forms; a description of the actual activities and groups of the physical forms; and the signals that are communicated within and among urban spaces. Central to the model is a formeme, which provides the building blocks for a Signature. A formeme captures the interactions among physical forms, groups and activities. We then show how various metrics can define an urban area based on its Signature, and that these metrics can be used to measure similarity of urban spaces. The Signature and its underlying formemes capture the sources of variations in urban evolution.

Purpose: The aim of the study is to question whether this plan, which was signed by Henri Prost and showing the settlements between Beşiktaş and Bebek on the European side of the Bosphorus in detail and explains them in cross-sections, is implemented or not, and to reveal the effect of the plan on the formation of current state of the Bosphorus coasts. In the study, which decisions are taken during the planning process are also questioned.
Design/Methodology/Approach: In the study, the city centers of Beşiktaş, Ortaköy, Arnavutköy, Kuruçeşme, Bebek and the settlements between them and the conditions of the coastal road before, in and after 1939 are examined with the help of maps and aerial photographs. With the aerial photographs that have survived until today, the physical change of the urban texture over time and its current situation are also revealed.
Findings: As a result of the examination, it was determined that most of the plan, which was approved in 1939, was implemented between 1956-1958, during the Menderes period. In this process, many settlements lost their original urban texture, historical structures, and architectural identities. It can be said that the seeds of the pile road, which was built during the Dalan period and cut the connection of the mansions with the sea, was planted with this plan. It was also possible to obtain some clues about the planning approach of the Prost period from this plan. Accordingly, it can be listed as opening squares, turning dead-end streets into streets, widening the streets, and cleansing industrial-related spaces from the coastline. The fact that these plan decisions are encountered in other regions of Istanbul during the Prost period, suggests that although Prost did not draw the 1939 plan, it had a share in its design.
Research Limitations/Implications: Due to the lack of a clear aerial photograph or map after 1939 until 1955, the year in which the changes foreseen in this plan were applied could not be determined clearly, and the time interval was stated.
Originality/Value: This plan, being one of the first steps of the Bosphorus coastal regulations on the European side, is an original document that has not been evaluated in previous research. This plan was drawn when Henri Prost was working as an urban planning specialist in the Istanbul Municipality Zoning Directorate and it bears the signature of Prost's approval.

Este artigo procura abordar de forma quantitativa as causas locais da expansão urbana da Área Metropolitana de Lisboa (AML). Com base na exploração dos dados dos Censos-2011, um modelo de regressão linear múltipla é concebido com o método dos mínimos quadrados ordinários (MQO) para estimar os factores que determinam o crescimento do número de edifícios no período 1991-2011. Os  resultados mostram que a AML Norte e a AML Sul apresentam respostas diferentes aos diversos factores analisados, que as reservas nacionais e os PDM só parcialmente influenciam a redução da construção.

My diploma thesis concerns a large-scale urban intervention in the heart of Rethymno historic center aiming to enhance and regenerate it. It envisions connecting and highlighting monuments of various historical periods in a unified urban system. For this reason, the area once occupied by the main public spaces of four consecutive historical periods of Rethymno (Venetian, Ottoman, the Cretan State, the 30s) is initially identified in the present tissue. Then their recovery and connection to the modern public space of the historic center are proposed. A network of public walkways and green spaces is developed to enable connections between the fragmented sections of the urban fabric. Furthermore, new buildings and canopies are proposed, while some existing structures would be demolished to create urban transitions between monuments and public spaces and to develop new urban fronts, where is needed. Finally, the partially demolished Venetian Clock Tower would be restored to become the landmark of the new public space created in the traces of the Venetian Piazzetta.

My thesis project aims to present the relationship between the urban fabric and the authoritative power in a city. Particularly the urban evolution of Rethymno is being examined along with the interventions made by the relevant authority in each historical period shaping its image. In general, the evolution of a city is motivated by the requirements of each authoritative power, the needs of society, the natural terrain, the visions of urban planners, architects, etc. who are undertaking the projects, and the technical knowledge of each period. A comparative analysis of the urban evolution of three Mediterranean cities-ports - Naples, Marseilles, and Barcelona – that date since antiquity highlights several interventions made on their urban tissue on a larger scale. Based on this analysis, follows the presentation of the historical and urban evolution of Rethymno, indicating the formative role of Authority in the city’s development. The urban space structure is identified by the study of the city boundaries, the urban factors and the architecture of the city, the memory of its districts and the place names, the void and the full, as well as the amorphous of its historic center. Finally, conclusions are drawn.

Issu d’une recherche CPDT Wallonie sur la densification des tissus urbanises wallons, cet article presente une typologie de ces tissus. L’elaboration de cette typologie est le fruit d’une methode experimentale d’identification morphologique systematique. Les informations utilisees proviennent de bases de donnees informatiques et sont manipulables avec un systeme d’information geographique (SIG). La modelisation resultante, testee sur la commune d’Ath, permet une classification chrono-typologique rapide, la reproductibilite de la methode a l’ensemble de la Wallonie et des comparaisons et croisements avec d’autres donnees cartographiees. Cette demarche est orientee vers la question des densites residentielles mais pourrait etre adaptee a d’autres types d’analyses spatiale.

Ostia is one of the most extensively excavated cities of the Roman period. The port-city of Rome, which today lies 4km from the coastline, was established in a very constrained environment at the mouth of the River Tiber. Based on a review of the geoarchaeological and archaeological research at Ostia, 4 new cores analysed through palaeoenvionmental methods, and 21 new radiocarbon dates, we propose a new model of the fluvio-coastal landscape of Ostia from its origin: (1) the coastline shifted rapidly westward between the 8th and the 6th c. BCE followed by a slow progradation and possible erosion phases until the end of the 1st c. CE; (2) the castrum of Ostia (c. late 4th–early 3rd c. BCE) was founded away from the river mouth but close to the River Tiber; (3) between the 4th and the 1st c. BCE, the River Tiber shifted from a position next to the castrum, below the northern Imperial cardo of Ostia, to 150m to the north; (4) a possible harbour was established to the north of the castrum during the Republican period; (5) the city expanded and a district was built over the harbour and the palaeochannel between the Republican period and the beginning of the 2nd c. CE, showing that Ostia was a dynamic and resilient city during that time. Finally, we suggest the possibility to combine urban fabric analysis (the orientation of the structures) and palaeoenvironmental analysis for reconstructing the evolution of the city in relation to the fluvio-coastal mobility.

The paper will be based on an ongoing PhD research, which is being carried out with the guide of professors Claudio D'Amato and Elisabetta Pallottino within the joint doctoral program between the University of Roma Tre and the Polytechnic University of Bari: Architecture - Innovation and Heritage.

It will be argued that the staggering coherence of richly layered historical settlements rests upon “unwritten – but uncompromising – rules and laws of cohesion and relation within the urban fabric” (Paolo Marconi, 1997). These rules apply to the composition – and to the visual interpretation, i.e. the perception – of historical built environments, and are borne of both cultural and elementally human (Ernesto De Martino, 1962) issues.

This thesis will be discussed drawing from a vast array of sources and references, both within the boundaries of architecture and beyond: from the works of Christopher Alexander, to the Italian Ambientismo and Gustavo Giovannoni; from linguistics to the history of architecture; from studies on the composition of the figurative arts, to Gestalt psychology.

It will be suggested that in reading into the processes that underlie some successful examples of our own built tradition, it may be possible to learn some invaluable lessons to help us with the challenge of caring for our common home, finding in a distant heritage the keys to define truly contemporary, truly contextual architectural languages.

Ostia is one of the most extensively excavated cities of the Roman period. The port-city of Rome, which today lies 4km from the coastline, was established in a very constrained environment at the mouth of the River Tiber. Based on a review of the geoarchaeological and archaeological research at Ostia, 4 new cores analysed through palaeoenvionmental methods, and 21 new radiocarbon dates, we propose a new model of the fluvio-coastal landscape of Ostia from its origin: (1) the coastline shifted rapidly westward between the 8th and the 6th c. BCE followed by a slow progradation and possible erosion phases until the end of the 1st c. CE; (2) the castrum of Ostia (c. late 4th–early 3rd c. BCE) was founded away from the river mouth but close to the River Tiber; (3) between the 4th and the 1st c. BCE, the River Tiber shifted from a position next to the castrum, below the northern Imperial cardo of Ostia, to 150m to the north; (4) a possible harbour was established to the north of the castrum during the Republican period; (5) the city expanded and a district was built over the harbour and the palaeochannel between the Republican period and the beginning of the 2nd c. CE, showing that Ostia was a dynamic and resilient city during that time. Finally, we suggest the possibility to combine urban fabric analysis (the orientation of the structures) and palaeoenvironmental analysis for reconstructing the evolution of the city in relation to the fluvio-coastal mobility.

This paper explores the spatial complexities of Hanoi’s urban form, with a focus on the evolution of the pathways linking the front door of individual households engaged in home-based income-generating activities, and the local main streets and marketplaces that provide opportunities for commerce. The pathway is an overlooked spatial element in existing urban studies, despite its critical importance in urban dwellers’ everyday lives. At the city scale, a space syntax methodology is employed to examine the changing configuration of the street network in Hanoi across five historical periods. The analysis simulates the distribution of human movement across the network, highlighting the natural formation and changes to major economic hubs. The formation, evolution, and spatial character of these pathways are then examined at the neighbourhood scale, by employing three-dimensional mapping and semi-structured on-site interviews with Home-Based Business owners. The paper extends existing understandings of how urban form influences citizens’ economic well-being.

After the national unity, in Parma as in other cities of the industrial estate was developed on public land made available by the fall of walls, forming a homogeneous semi-circular band that embraces the historic core to the north. with time this has been abandoned for the displacement of activity that settled there, and then recently upgraded with architectural projects of replacement and / or restructuring of the most significant artifacts, such as the conversion of hotels in the cold store and concert hall designed by Renzo Piano former Eridania sugar.
The nineteenth century had identified in this plan between the city and the railway the area most suitable for the setting of the productive and service facilities. The rapid saturation of the east has led to expansion to the north of the railroad, where the industry was finally expelled to the outside of the urban, between the railroad and Highway of the Sun, following the same process of decentralization had already characterized the history of urban production activities in previous centuries.
In fact the city was founded as a settlement aggregation and already knows its origin from the diversification and specialization of activities inurbate, which corresponds with the time a specific characterization of the architecture. The production company of the city has in fact much more distant roots, and its presence has conditioned the structure, growth and architecture, highlighting a crucial relationship with the first urban infrastructure, in particular the hydraulic system.
Our cities have experienced so very early in the presence of settlement activities with special needs, which are reflected in the specialization of the same typology of buildings and urban morphology, characterized by the coexistence of different functions and roles in both the social structure that places the life collective.
This attitude has been maintained for centuries before the emphasis of nineteenth-century bourgeois culture, which in some cases celebrated the rhetoric of labor in the quality of industrial architecture. Few are so historical references to the activities and especially to buildings that protected them, now incorporated into the residence and / or adapted from activities that flank, but still recognizable irregular alterations in the tissue and in the presence of specific urban areas. An interesting aspect concerns how persistent production and longevity in the historic fabric of buildings, which remained for centuries. The most obvious example is that of medieval mills, most of whom were still active at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The abandonment of primitive activities, to which they are now permanently expelled other alternate has resulted in the inclusion of other functions in the ground floor, leaving the upper floors of the residence staff.
The complete demolition is limited to interventions that do not affect the single architecture but entire blocks, as for the realization of the Long Parma, which led to the disappearance of the Salnitrara.

References
Castagnetti Hainess, Le mura di Parma, III volume, Battei, Parma
Eugenio Battisti, Storia della tecnologia, Boringhieri
Sitti, Parma nel nome delle sue strade,
 P. Zanlari, Tra rilievo e progetto - idrografia e rappresentazione del territorio nel parmense: il caso del Canale Maggiore, Parma, La Nazionale, 1985