Design of the Ephemeral in Urban Spaces

Theephemeralanditsvariabletimearethegreatparadigmwithwhichthe discipline of contemporary design should be reinterpreted. The absolute prominence of time is testified by important essays, first of all the historical Space, Time Architec- ture by Sigfried Giedion (1941), where he introduces the temporal component to read the Bauhaus revolution. Many years have passed since Gropius and his colleagues, and time has increasingly acquired a fundamental dimension, supplanting the space variable in interiors and architecture. An increasingly “relative” time (to steal Eiste- nian intuition) paradoxically transforms the temporary into the only constant of our lives. Lives are immersed in a society that has made change its identifying feature.