The home as a projection of the self: an exploration into the folds of dwelling

The discipline of design could be defined as “omnivorous” since it is intrinsically open to interferences and draws innumerable suggestions from tangential areas, which then re- elaborates in its own specific discipline: art, cinematography, graphics, anthropology, as well as literature, psychology or marketing, provide invaluable contributions that enable designers to respond to contemporary complexity.
Preservation also represents a “frontier knowledge” with which the design world can fruitfully dialogue, to open up new scenarios for reflection and new design actions. Roberto Pane has always emphasised the urgency of this interdisciplinary approach, when it was not yet codified as an indispensable methodological procedure, recognising “the importance of specialisms, but above all of the need to compose disciplines in the making of the project” (Occelli, 2010, 256). Therefore, today he would probably appreciate and support this effort to identify the short-circuits between preservation - understood as “philosophy” (Pane, 1987, 15), as science, or more generally as the cultural expression of a community - and the design thinking promoted by many contemporary designers.
We are obviously talking of that design soul most sensitive to a “relational” approach, most attentive to an aesthetic and emotional dimension of urban fruition, not seen as an extraneous body to the individual, but on the contrary as an “accumulation of affiliations”: a territory where human subjectivity can be express within broader communities, with which faded identities can be reaffirmed and stratified memories shared.
This design-oriented vision tries to imagine new urban rituals and new domestic models, which can also fulfil those symbolic-affective functions, perhaps ethereal, but so important in determining the identity structure of a place. The ambition is to rediscover - and enhance - the human dimension of dwelling, an ambition that is not new but never fully realised and that Roberto Pane already pursued when he stated that “architecture should regain ‘human meanings’ “ (Giannattasio, 2010, 154).
Embracing the teachings of Calvino, who describes The Invisible Cities (Calvino, 1972) as a sum of memories, desires and words, this project orientation seeks to structure “interior” spaces (enclosed within walls or in the open air) that fulfil perceptive as well as functional needs, to be intensely lived and not simply used, in which to leave traces and share everyday gestures. It is a design that could be succinctly described as “of proximity” (Lambertini, 2013, 10), which makes use of inexpensive, reversible tools that are “delicate” in their ability to interpret and fit into a physical context, pursuing that approach to design that today seems most capable of responding flexibly to the contemporary dynamism.
memory, beauty and transdisciplinarity
Davide Crippa
Dipartimento di Culture del Progetto, Università Iuav di Venezia
Barbara Di Prete
Department of Design, Politecnico di Milano
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space and memory
The themes that most likely represent a fertile ground for comparison between design as described above and preservation refer to those concepts of memory, beauty, and a psychological approach to dwelling on which the book has invited us to reflect (dwelling in its dual meaning of individual experience, on the one hand, and collective ritual, evidence of a shared cultural identity on the other). Roberto Pane, with his anticipatory reflections, was among the first to bring these issues to the attention of the scientific debate.