Open City Palermo - Cosmopolitan Habitat Urban Design Studio

PALERMO OPEN CITY

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At the crossroads of the Mediterranean, Palermo recently raised international awareness with the Manifesta Biennale of contemporary art “Cultivating Coexistence” and with the installation of the Arabic-Norman World Heritage sites. Both initiatives gave further strength to a cultural and social renaissance of the. Palermo’s vision as a “laboratory for the humanities, arts, and culture” points to a Mediterranean dimension, it is a stage for the challenges of migration, climate change, and the future of the very South of Europe, especially for young people. The book PALERMO OPEN CITY explores how the idea of “Cosmopolitan Habitats” - developed in cooperation with Maurizio Carta- as a global vocation for inclusiveness can influence urban futures. Based on a research and study project and on an international workshop in Palermo, in cooperation with the Department of Architecture of the University of Palermo, PALERMO OPEN CITY asks how tangible and intangible cultural heritage can be conceived as a creative factor for productivity and openness. How can elements, energies, and networks of a collaborative city overcome spatial and social fragmentation? What role can boundaries, limits, borders, thresholds, and peripheries play for envisioning a “Cosmopolitan Habitat”?

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PALERMO OPEN CITY

Cosmopolitan Habitat - Urban Design Studio

Universitätsprofessur für Regionales Bauen und Siedlungsplanung I Institut für Entwerfen und Städtebau I Leibniz Universität Hannover

PALERMO OPEN CITY Cosmopolitan Habitat - Urban Design Studio Edited by Jörg Schröder and Federica Scaffidi Regionales Bauen und Siedlungsplanung Leibniz Universität Hannover

PALERMO OPEN CITY Cosmopolitan Habitat - Urban Design Studio Edited by Jörg Schröder and Federica Scaffidi Regionales Bauen und Siedlungsplanung Leibniz Universität Hannover

// TABLE OF CONTENTS

05

// Foreword

06 01 - INTRODUCTION 09 13 29 35

// Open City explorations // Palermo, Aziz // Palermo: flow of cultures, energies, ideas and cosmopolitan spaces // Creating perspectives on Palermo

39 02 - METHODOLOGY 41 42 45 47

// Concept and objectives // Methodology // Timeline // Output

48 03 - RESEARCH 51 52 54

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03.01 - Theoretical texts // Il n’y pas d’identité culturelle - François Jullien // Forms and flows in the contemporary transformation of Palermo´s city center - Ola Söderström // Designed to scale - Civic Systems Lab

59 60 62 64 66 68 70 76

03.02 - Reference projects // Gnration, Braga // Cité du design - Saint Etienne // The Limerick Drawout // Este no es un solar // Palermo atlas + Manifesta 12 // Magasins généraux // London livesey exchange

81 03.03 - Mapping and diagrams 82 // Settlements and urban fabric

// Infrastructures + public spaces // Tourism // Demography, social structure + migration // Danisinni // University of Palermo

114 04 - EXCURSION 132 05 - WORKSHOP 135 // Timeline Workshop 136 // Cosmopolitan Habitat Trailers 141 // Videomaking Workshop 143 // Pecha Kucha 144 // Output Videomaking

148 06 - PROJECTS 150 160 170 174 178

// Culture-up! Palermo // Isola Danisinni // Zisa: Culturali // Palermo - An open system // Defining urban spaces

182 PARTICIPANTS 185 IMPRINT

TABLE OF CONTENTS

86 90 96 102 108

// FOREWORD Jörg Schröder

The book PALERMO OPEN CITY explores how the idea of “Cosmopolitan Habitats” - developed in cooperation with Maurizio Carta - as a global vocation for inclusiveness can influence urban futures.

Based on a research and study project and on an international workshop in Palermo, in cooperation with the Department of Architecture of the University of Palermo, PALERMO OPEN CITY asks how tangible and intangible cultural heritage can be conceived as a creative factor for productivity and openness. How can elements, energies, and networks of a collaborative city overcome spatial and social fragmentation? What role can boundaries, limits, borders, thresholds, and peripheries play for envisioning a “Cosmopolitan Habitat”? PALERMO OPEN CITY aims at new concepts and tools in architectural urbanism: in a performative and creative analysis that links multiple research avenues, including texts and movies, references and innova-

tive forms of mapping, diagramming and information interaction; and in a strategic and inter-scalar design approach that combines spatial activators and connectors, urban patterns and networks, and urban practices.

The research and teaching project PALERMO OPEN CITY has been possible thanks to the collaboration with the Department of Architecture of the University of Palermo, with Maurizio Carta, and with Alessandra Badami, Daniele Ronsivalle, and Barbara Lino, and with their students. It has been a great pleasure, even more as DAAD granted for the cooperation of our two faculties a university dialogue project in 2020, COSMOPOLITAN HABITAT, that will build on the results of the Palermo group’s research and design studio COSMOPOLITAN HABITAT, on the PALERMO OPEN CITY work as well as on the joint workshop. Huge thanks for the research ideas, discussions, and especially for the joint workshop in Palermo! Special thanks to Federica Scaffidi who organised this book as well as our study project, and together with Riccarda Cappeller structured the video workshop, and to Alissa Diesch and Emanuele Sommariva for joining in the workshop’s teaching. Many thanks to Marie Schwarz and Julia Hermanns for the fine layout and design that make this book special. And, most importantly, thanks to all our students for their interest, dedication and great work in this exploration of an immensely interesting topic and of an amazing city.

FOREWORD

At the crossroads of the Mediterranean, Palermo recently raised international awareness with the Manifesta Biennale of contemporary art “Cultivating Coexistence” and with the installation of the Arabic-Norman World Heritage sites. Both initiatives gave further strength to a cultural and social renaissance of the. Palermo’s vision as a “laboratory for the humanities, arts, and culture” points to a Mediterranean dimension, it is a stage for the challenges of migration, climate change, and the future of the very South of Europe, especially for young people.

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INTRODUCTION

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// OPEN CITY EXPLORATIONS

At the crossroads of the Mediterranean, Palermo recently raised international awareness with the Manifesta Biennale of contemporary art with the title “Cultivating Coexistence” (2018) as well as with the installation of the Arabic-Norman World Heritage sites (2015). Both initiatives gave further strength to a cultural and social renaissance of the city that started already in the 1990ies. Palermo’s vision as a “laboratory for the humanities, arts, and culture”, as the mayor Leoluca Orlando put it, points to a Mediterranean dimension. It is a stage for the challenges of migration, climate change, and the future of cities in the South of Europe, especially regarding perspectives for young people.

PALERMO OPEN CITY as research and urban design project explores how the idea of “Cosmopolitan Habitats”- developed in cooperation with Maurizio Carta from the University of Palermo - as a global vocation for inclusiveness can influence urban futures. It asks how tangible and intangible cultural heritage can be conceived as a creative factor for productivity and openness. How can elements, energies, and networks of a collaborative city overcome spatial and social fragmentation?

What role can boundaries, limits, borders, thresholds, and peripheries play for envisioning a “Cosmopolitan Habitat”? PALERMO OPEN CITY aims at new concepts and tools in architectural urbanism: in a performative and creative analysis that links multiple research avenues, including texts and movies, references and innovative forms of mapping, diagramming and information interaction; and in a strategic and inter-scalar design approach that combines spatial activators and connectors, urban patterns and networks, and urban practices.

Overall, PALERMO OPEN CITY starts from a review of the recent urban renaissance based on active citizenship and avantgarde urban policies in culture, creativity, and migration. A range of urban strategies in the historic centre, the redefinition of interfaces with the port and seashore, the upgrading of peripheries and new territorial and international linkages in the metropolitan sense are a background for the focus on current cultural and creative productivity (Carta 2017). From this background, the focus area of PALERMO OPEN CITY is defined between the historic centre, the cultural manufactory Zisa, and the Danisinni community: a polycentric and heterogeneous urban area characterised by compact blocks, narrow and winding streets opposed to open spaces and large streets, where physical dispersion and sense of emptiness is one of the main design problem to observe and solve. Nevertheless, the selected site is also a centre of social innovation and cultural fertility. It includes many monuments and creative heritage (i.e. artisans, cultural associations) widespread in the urban fabric as „jewels“ worthy of being discovered and that can surprise visitors and local inhabitants. Its openness characteristics spelt out by the presence of the two spots, Centro Danisinni and Cantieri Culturali alla Zisa, two emerging spaces whose ambition is to create culture and social integration. They aim to attract people and prevent the social dispersion creating new activities in a sort of socio-cultural „oasis“, both opening their spaces to the city.

The communitarian dimension is undoubtedly expressed in the Danisinni centre, for its cosy dimension and social “mission”. The characteristics of density and porosity make the selected area open to new forms of collaboration thanks to its

INTRODUCTION

Jörg Schröder

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communitarian approach, especially in the denser part. At the same time, the collaborative network is also expressed by intangible collaborations made by World Heritage site, Cantieri Culturali della Zisa and the university. Observing the site from the other borders, it opens to the newer parts of the city, preserving its socio-cultural dimension from any interaction and “contamination” with the historically and multicultural denser part (historic centre). In this direction, OPEN CITY focuses on new living and working models, innovative pathways for an urban renaissance based on cultural and productive innovation, collaborative and sharing spaces.

The methodology of the research and study project is centred on exploration - not only of a city and its inscribed energies, concepts, and practices in shaping urban space - but especially as exploration of narratives (Salmon 2017) and patterns (Schröder 2018) of chances, as a performative analysis and projective visioning. In these terms, the methodology is directed at understanding and learning from a city as a territorial system of interconnected layers in a diachronic and trans-scalar perspective (Solà-Morales 2002). The investigation into promising points, lines, fields, and networks includes digging into the past of spatial-social dynamics and to understand social, cultural, and economic dynamics today from a spatial perspective; it also includes understanding the spatial dependencies and fields of changes in its potentials and limitations. The sharpening of concepts and tools of qualitative research in a spatial-architectural perspective offers concepts of space not as a separated “physical aspect”, but as a hybrid construction of figurative, material,

functional, and meaningful flows leading to hybrid concepts of configuration. The work in the reading phase of the studio is connected to explorations into actual urban perspectives in flows, segregations, heritage, and global dimensions, as well as to artistic exploration in the video format in the workshop.

Open City Explorations, thus, can be seen as directed to more interactive, more material, and more emotional qualities of space. This concept is deeply linked to the idea of moving from the observation and evaluation of spatial transformation towards inventive exploration as basis for strategies that not only deal with, but actively foster positive spatial change and dynamics. An understanding of space as an aggregator of inclusion and as a newly attractive material reality call for refreshed abilities in urbanism to work on and with territorial creativity— abilities linked to activities and agents—and for expertise in constructing new interaction of space and society. This idea is opposed to the concept of “using territorial capital” as passive asset to be put into action.

Thus, “shared territorial visions” (Schröder 2015) or “explorative scenarios” (Schröder 2018) can become drivers rather than outputs of integrative and interactive processes of spatial change in different scales.

The manifest and new demand in abilities in urbanism is not limited to co-designing processes in strong relation to space and communities. It also calls for new forms and new roles of designing visions, for exploring capacities and potentials in a projective sense, and for co-constructing free spaces as “socially interactive machines (that are)

The “Open City” as opposed to the “Closed City” is an idea introduced by Richard Sennett (2013) as a place where citizens actively try to “found new communities” based on “agreeing in differences” and where urbanism also supports “experiments in urban forms and space.” Sennett states critically that in urban design and urban development “we have more resources to use than in the past, but resources we don’t use very creatively”. He sees the reason for this paradox in the “over-determination both of the city’s forms and its social functions”.

With a definition of attributes of closed systems fixed shape, equilibrium, and integration - Sennett points out that as one main characteristic of the “Open City”, over time “an open system can be non-linear, and within that frame range from path-dependency to the patterns of chance”, in interaction between spatial creation and social behaviour that together form “agency” in the city

(Sennett 2018). This reasoning can be transferred to a wider understanding of habitat as living space in and beyond the metropolis. Especially in the further spatial definition of boundaries and walls as characteristic for the “Closed City”, and - in opposition - porosity and borders as characteristics of the “Open City”, Sennett states that porosity and borders “create liminal space; that is, space at the limits of control, limits which permit the appearance of things, acts, and persons unforeseen, yet focused and sited”. In the reasoning of “Open City” as concept for habitat as living space, one may well argue that the liminal space today can be found everywhere and that fragmentation thus becomes a major chance for urban futures.

Bibliography: Carta M. (2017) Augmented City. A Paradigm Shift. Trento-Barcelona, ListLab. Mathews S. (2006) From Agit-prop to Free Space: The Architecture of Cedric Price. London, Black Dog Publishing.

Salmon C. (2007) Storytelling: La machine à fabriquer des histoires et à formater les esprits. Paris, La Découverte.

Sennett R. (2018) Building and Dwelling: Ethics for the City. New York. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Sennett R. (2013) The Open City. Lecture at GSD Harvard. Available online at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEx1apBAS9A (16.04.2020).

Schröder J. (2018) “Urbanism and Architecture in Regiobranding”.

In: Schröder J., Ferretti M. (2018) Scenarios and Patterns for Regiobranding. Berlin, Jovis. pp. 6–15.

Schröder J. (2015) “Integrated Territorial Visions”. In: Regione Lombardia ed. (2015) RURBANCE Rural-Urban Governance. For a Balanced Development of Rural and Urban Areas. Final Publication ERDF Alpine Space project. Milano, Directorate General for Environment, Energy and Sustainable Development of Lombardy Region. pp. 20–37.

Solà-Morales I. (2002) Territorios. Barcelona, Gustavo Gili.

INTRODUCTION

highly adaptable to the shifting conditions of their time and place,” as Cedric Price postulated with The Fun Palace and The Potteries Thinkbelt (Matthews 2006). Territorial creativity can be seen as major aspect for innovative arts, entrepreneurship, and communities that aim at actively shaping urban futures. New approaches, tools, and strategies in urban design and a “territorial perspective” can be seen to promote spatial qualities, capacities, and dynamisms, and to respond to an actual demand for the quality of lived space in ongoing cultural and political debates. On a conceptual level, the move from staying fixed to oppositions towards the consideration of dynamic factors and polarities— crossing the inherent limits of systems—implies extending the notion of city towards more complex spatial relationality.

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[excerpt from Maurizio Carta, Futuro. Politiche per un diverso presente, Rubbettino, 2019, translation by Federica Scaffidi]

// PALERMO, AZIZ. The archipelago city of diversity and creativity

“Palermo, museum of the Mediterranean: if you want to know what has passed on these blue waves come to Palermo” Gabriel Hanotaux I know Palermo well. I love it for how beautiful it is, and I hate it when it wastes its resources.

I have studied it for a long time, designed many times - often with my students - and even administered her. I know its history and expectations, its monumental spaces and carnal ravines, its communities and tribes. That is why in a book about the future I decided to use it as a synecdoche of arguments, as part of the whole. An emerging practice, if not already a laboratory, of the direction that cities in the global South can take to change the contemporary trajectory and aspire to a different future based on the generative value of diversity and creativity.

Plato in Politéia (The Republic) described the city as “grazing and nourishing society”, stressing that it must be good, nourishing, healthy and aimed at the common good. And many centuries later Lewis Mumford, in his violent - and far-sighted - attack on American cities, victims of the automobile and the sacrifice of space offered to the highways, wrote that «the first lesson we must learn is that a city exists not for the constant passage of cars but for the care and culture of men»1. Urban planning, as I have already said, is for me also neuro-urban planning, a psychology of space that helps to shape our behaviour through an emotional as well as rational, psychocognitive as well as normative, narrative as well as technical relationship.

The city, therefore, concretizes the pact between space and society, and when the pact is broken

there is no longer the city, but the anti-city is generated with its metastases, like the city composed of an assemblage of waste objects, a prolapse of forms, represented by Thomas Hirschhorn in his Plan B installation. The cure is one: urban space must return to the common good, and the city itself must be a macro common good. In cities that want to return to feeding their inhabitants, the organisation of physical space is neurologically reconnected to the organisation of social and environmental space. And this happens when the city returns to responding to the needs of citizens in public space, in streets and gardens, in squares and courtyards, and above all to the demands of assistance and safety, beauty and quality, happiness and innovation, participation and democracy. «The streets are the homes of the collective», wrote Walter Benjamin commenting on Baudelaire’s poetics. And he added: «the collective is an always restless being, always on the move, who lives, experiments, knows and invents as much between the walls of buildings as individuals sheltered by the four walls of their homes. For this collective, the companies’ glittering enamelled signs are an ornament equal and even superior to the oil painting in a bourgeois living room, and the walls with défense d’afficher are his desk, the newsstands the library, the letterboxes the bronzes, the benches the furniture in the bedroom and the terraces of the cafés the bow-window, from which he observes his home. The passage is their living room. In it, more than anywhere else, the street becomes known as the furnished and lived intérieur of the masses»2. Today urban planning is undergoing a profound metamorphosis to respond to the demands of open and cosmopolitan society and the proactive action of the many

INTRODUCTION

Maurizio Carta

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changemakers. There are an increasing number of spontaneous and autonomous urban practices and urban planning tactics that transform the city into a place composed not only of citizens who ask, but of citizens who respond. In contemporary cities that are being reborn, citizens are once again producing new community lifestyles, experimenting with new forms of integration between ethnic groups, generating and nurturing sustainable mobility by redesigning urban space for the new civic prominence of cyclists, rediscovering spaces for slow mobility and creating new connections between neighbourhoods, becoming knowledge workers through workshops and creative incubators, new craftsmen of the digital revolution, or self-producing cultural events through crowdfunding. Citizens become the amplifiers of the new sensitivities towards the quality of the landscape and the environment, nonpolluting mobility and energy saving, renewing the traditional role of associationism, no longer just pointing out the problem but becoming part of the solution, and taking an active and responsible approach to it.

PALERMO, COSMOPOLIS OF COUNTERPOINTS The mass migrations that are crossing the Mediterranean again - a migratory epicentre since the Neolithic age - reviving and renewing communities and cultures, as well as the burden of human tragedies and the anguish in front of the death of innocent people tortured before the wars, from the miseries and desertification from which they escape, then from the traders of men who kidnap them - when our government does not kidnap them - and then from the racisms

that surround them in the false Eden in which they often disembark, put us before a new way of thinking about our cities. Because European cities - garrisons of culture - must rediscover their cosmopolitan roots in order to respond to the metamorphosis of the world that calls us to be both citizens of the cosmos - an increasingly transnational world - and citizens of the polis, floating inhabitants of world cities. Especially the southern ones will have to renew their cosmopolitan identity which has forged them and made them medine, kalse, riad, vuccirie.

We have been migrating for at least two million years, and every escape, wave and coexistence has made us evolve, making us more intelligent and adaptable3. Since Neolithic times human transitions have forged our body and intellect, so much so that in Greek philosophy, the fertile mother of our Mediterranean thought, all human beings are citizens of the world and citizens of the polis. Our cities are born cosmopolitan, they evolve and grow as a hub of relationships, of territorial flows that cross a world that today is even more open and connected. And it is Diogenes who reminds us that cosmopolitanism is the right to a mobility that transcends and mixes borders, that revolutionizes the logic of distinction and cancels the terror of otherness by sailing towards the horizon of equality, of diversity as multiple belonging that extends the roots and spreads its wings. Facing the migrations that have resumed the Mediterranean route, welcoming migrants and refugees is not only a matter of reception and compassion, it is also an ethical and political issue, but, I would add, it is also an urban issue.

It concerns us as inhabitants and designers of fervidly cosmopolitan cities, where public space

between cultures already engraved on the fourlingual plaque (Hebrew, Latin, Byzantine Greek and Arabic) preserved at the Castello della Zisa, but by making it a daily reality through the multicultural paths of the Vie dei Tesori, more and more interface between places and cultures, or through the words and sounds of the Festival of Migrant Literature. The Festino di Santa Rosalia itself has always been a syncretism of languages and people, just as Santa Rosalia is the dual patron saint with Vishnu of the numerous Tamil community.

In Palermo cosmopolitanism becomes a living space in the historical centre. In Ballarò, the district of the old town centre that today has become synecdoche of the rebirth of the Alberghiera district, giant murals painted by Igor Scalisi Palminteri face the images of Santa Rosalia and Benedetto il Moro, multi-ethnic patrons of a city that has always been an open port.

The first seed of Ballarò’s rebirth was Moltivolti, a non-profit social enterprise that, from 2014, finds its economic balance in offering shared work spaces and the adjoining Sicilian-ethnic restaurant, where cuisine becomes a metaphor for coexistence and sustainable development.

And then Arci Porco Rosso, a convivial space but also an open laboratory for analysis of the city’s conditions. SOS Ballarò (Storia Orgoglio Sostenibilità - History Pride of Sustainability), an informal network of associations, residents and shopkeepers that, through initiatives of urban regeneration and event organisation, is carrying on the path of the rebirth of the neighbourhood. And Ballarò’s lived space has generated other spaces conceived by subtracting them from degradation, and today Piazzetta Mediterraneo, thanks to the

INTRODUCTION

once again becomes a place of integration, where pedestrian streets are sutures of cultures and no longer fractures of space, where markets return to multicoloured exchanges of goods with varied flavours, and the buildings themselves are palimpsests of languages and uses.

Palermo has always been cosmopolitan, Phoenician and Roman in its primitive forms and language, Arabic and Norman in its streets and architecture, Aragonese and Angevin in its splendour, Art Nouveau in its dreams, hybridizing cultures, welcoming styles and enriching traditions. Nothing that has passed through Palermo from the world has remained unchanged in its encounter with the city: cultures, traditions, architecture, plants, cuisine, words and the arts have become cosmopolitan themselves, opening the city to a whirlwind of signs that exalts its multifaceted nature. There is no place that is not a palimpsest of identity, a narrative hypertext of lives, a womb of stories. Palermo «which everyone welcomes and everyone assists; the mother who keeps the doors open even at night, because you never know if someone is coming; who keeps the fire burning and a pot to boil, because you never know if someone is hungry; who always has clean sheets, because you never know if someone is sleepy; the mother who welcomes in the house as much as the landlord wants (la mamma che capi la casa quantu voli u patruni). Palermo: the Great Mother», as Giuseppina Torregrossa describes in her recent Cortile Nostalgia. And this being both world and place, Palermo has elevated it to a vision of the future. Not only by sculpting it in the Palermo Charter on International Human Mobility4, a great battle of civilization promoted

by Mayor Leoluca Orlando that renews the pact

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voluntary work of artists and residents, is the epicentre of the new plural city, an example of a possible metamorphosis, of an incremental process that stems from people’s ability to recognize themselves as the soul of the neighbourhood.

And similar experiences are emerging in Vucciria thanks to a committee of entrepreneurs, activists, professionals, merchants and residents, in Cassaro Alto, Zen, and the Uditore, Sant’Erasmo and Borgo Vecchio, evidence of a different present capable of redirecting the trajectory of the future.

Manifesta 12, the European Nomadic Biennial, has also grasped the value of the city’s “planetary garden” - once again a place and world - a place of fertile human, vegetable, cultural and artistic contamination: a paradigm of the world in metamorphosis and a platform of change to propose new plural readings of the city, communities and flows and to cultivate cosmopolitanism with the creative seeds of the contemporary arts5. And in 2018 Palermo was the Italian Capital of Culture, showing precisely its plurality, in a human palimpsest before events, capital of cosmopolitanism that renews the pact of migration that has always characterized our planet.

Palermo is sublime counterpoint, a polyphonic city that superimposes note against note (punctum contra punctum) in an idea of polyglot and multiform city generated by the skilful use of spatial and cultural, social and economic, tangible and intangible, aesthetic and ethical counterpoints (not without counterpoints made of crime and exploitation, now also cosmopolitan6).

And the dark years of the city, when the rapacious plundering of its qualities and identity prevailed, when space was only nourishment of a voracious alliance between mafia and citizenship, were precisely those in which the city had lost its cosmopolitanism, its polyphony reduced to a monotonous score played by cement and asphalt, bustle and traffic.

We must not disperse the richness of counterpoint, but we must also be able to find new “agreements” to generate a new harmony in the city. Because, as in music the chord between two sounds produces the interval that is itself a sound, in the city too we must find new chords between living spaces that in turn produce new types of space, intervals of functions, vegetal, cultural or social intervals that enrich urban polyphony, between chords and counterpoints. Designing a cosmopolitan city Palermo or others that resemble it - is therefore an opportunity to discuss and design a model for the future that includes the history and memory of crossings, hybridizations, mixtures, metamorphoses in an overall project that involves living and meeting, producing and creating, historical centres and suburbs (roots and wings, again). Cities that are mineral but also made up of landscapes that are once again agrarian - still agreements defeating the corporatism and slavery that have accompanied them in recent years. Today, in the time of forced migrations, driven by the drama of climate change, by political, economic and social emergencies, we must offer not only compassion, but relationship and contamination, daughters of far-sightedness, because cosmopolis is our past that becomes our future.

Palermo heavenly garden The unused spaces that administrations are unable to rethink and reuse are multiplying in the cities, and Palermo, along with many other experiences, are being taken care of by citizens, who restore them, recycle buildings and materials and reuse them, opening them up to creative urban communities. It is the citizen-craftsmen of a city who increasingly accompany development strategies with maintenance, repair and recycling tactics. And there is a phenomenon that is taking on the characteristics of a real revolution: together with the new urban spaces managed by associations and sustainable mobility practices

of the archipelago of plants and buildings that was Palermo, in a fertile confrontation between plant and architectural diversity, generating new urban landscapes, manufacturing skills, food and lifestyles, in a continuous cosmopolitan metamorphosis of people and plants.

Then came the destruction of the Conca d’Oro during the Sixties, the theft of beauty during the years of the “sack of Palermo” generated by the dastardly pact between mafia, administration, business and professionals. A theft of beauty that also overwhelmed the Nativity of Caravaggio of the Oratory of San Lorenzo, stolen in 1969 and not yet found (perhaps it was sold in pieces), a symbol of the depredation of cultural heritage that will not stop for many years. A pact of connivance like the one recounted with violent cruelty by Francesco Rosi in the film Le mani sulla città (Hands over the city) in 1963, which described a pathology that was not only of those cruel years but, like an eternal present, the infection of bad urban planning contaminated by the mafia and the business generated by income and profit has not been eradicated. As Dan Franck still recounts today in the TV series Marseille with an extraordinary Gérard Depardieu in the role of mayor-father-master during the years when the regeneration of the port area was launched.

After the cement blasphemy of the 1970s and 1980s, launched against the plant paradise that surrounded Palermo and beautified its interstices, today it is through urban landscape designers and horticulturists that nature once again becomes the material of the city project, a component of future design. Starting with the first shared urban gardens run by Codifas (Consortium for the Defence of Sicilian Agriculture), in Ciaculli and Zen, urban and peri-urban agricultural areas have multiplied every day, organising eco-markets and courses on urban agriculture and responsible and shared consumption to extend the audience of the citizens involved. In Ciaculli the Oasi degli

INTRODUCTION

from below, numerous vegetable gardens are sprouting in the cities, less and less just a delight for those who love gardening and more and more multifunctional agriculture capable of holding up the organic market for zero km products, producer certification and product quality against junk food. Detroit, San Diego, London, Munich and Paris have made it the basis of their urban strategies, New York is the city with the highest rate of urban gardens per inhabitant, just to mention a few experiences.

Even in Palermo, with great fertility and emulative capacity, the experiences of the powerful return of agriculture to the aesthetics and productivity of the city are multiplying, so much so that a young architect colleague of mine, Angelica Agnello, one of the pioneers of urban agriculture, calls it “all vegetable garden”, paraphrasing her Greek epithet of Panormos “all port”. «Three hundred generations of farmers - she always reminds me of my friend and colleague Giuseppe Barbera, one of the greatest experts on the agricultural landscape of Palermo - have adapted orchards into gardens, protected by a crown of mountains that preserve the climate and that lead Fernand Braudel to use the adjective “paradise” to describe the landscape of Palermo»7. In Palermo the agrarian landscape has a powerful cultural dimension, modulating the resources available to give nature a form in which the olive tree grows in the middle of pastures and the vine dots the orchards: “a perennial laboratory of biological diversity, an archetype of a way of civilisation”. As I have already said, Palermo is the perfect synecdoche of what Gilles Clément calls “planetary garden” in which vegetable diversity is the food of cultural diversity, «a guarantee of future for humanity»8. Over the centuries the arrival of dwarf palms, dates and pomegranates has been welcomed in a city that redesigns space through trees and plantations. The Conca d’oro - Barbera always reminds us - is not only an agricultural landscape, but is the most powerful manifesto

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Orti combines an ethical approach and productive interests, and two other pioneering shared gardens, one at the Giardino Daniele and another at Villa Spina, promoted by the Orti delle Fate cultural association, are dedicated to the promotion of organic farming and practice.

Inside the Ibervillea plant nursery in the former Psychiatric Hospital, a space has been set up by the Orto Storto association dedicated to the design and creation of a small garden whose products are intended for self-consumption and sharing in convivial moments, with the aim of creating a therapeutic garden in which you can find the confidence to let a living organism live, grow and cure it. In Bonagia, in an agricultural area along the river Oreto, banana cultivation brings back exotic flavours and reactivates ancient methods of cultivation, generating profits. Furthermore, the Orto Capovolto Social Cooperative of Angelica Agnello was founded with the aim of contributing to the creation of a widespread system of gardens not only through awareness raising but also through the design and creation of urban gardens at different scales with different orientations: community gardens, school and company gardens, therapeutic gardens. Among the various projects, “Orto(in)Colto” is the most fertile one, dedicated to school gardens and educational activities in schools in the province of Palermo, involving hundreds of children and young people. Or, again, the “GalloGarden” project dedicated to street agriculture: a process of active citizenship to create a new green space in Ballarò and involving, beyond Orto Capovolto, the Rotaract Club Palermo Est, Cooperazione Senza Frontiere, the SOS Ballarò network, the Cooperativa Terradamare, the Arrupe institute and the Catalan high school.

To these examples are added every day new ones, sometimes generated by the first, sometimes independent, in an extraordinary flowering of thousands of seeds of a renewed urban civilization that returns to care and creativity, rather than

degradation and consumption. The Manifesta 12 collective, thanks to the work of Gilles Clément with Mariangela Di Gangi of Zen Insieme, Miguel Georgieff of the Collettivo Coloco, Angelica Agnello of Orto Capovolto and the children of Zen with their parents, has also created a new garden in a degraded area transformed into a vegetal public space that demineralises the residential “insulas” to propose itself as a community space.

And then there is Danisinni, an old neighbourhood nestled between the old town and the countryside, still a city but no longer a city, where Fra Mauro (the pastor), has rebuilt the community through the gardens and vegetable gardens surrounding the parish, fed by the waters of the qanat coming from the Gabriele springs. A green enclave on the riverbed of the Papireto river generated by the first expansion outside the walls, an atoll hidden by the fog of indifference that the stormy flows of the building metastasis did not cross, leaving it a little out of time. And therefore, saving it. Today, shyly re-emerging from the folds of history, the neighbourhood also wants to be the protagonist of the cultural and social rebirth of Palermo, island of the vegetal and cultural archipelago, through an experiment of artistic and social revolution called “Rambla Papireto”, conceived by the Academy of Fine Arts, under the skilful hands of Valentina Console and Enzo Patti, and carried out with the support of the Municipality together with the CaravanSerai, Circ’All and NEU associations, who have been entrusted with the running of street art workshops and the social circus for young people in the neighbourhood. The aim is not only to bring beauty to the neighbourhood but above all to awaken a sense of the common good and belonging through art, agriculture and care of the places. The project has brought art, the circus, even opera to the neighbourhood thanks to the visionary sensitivity of Superintendent Francesco Giambrone who opened the Teatro Massimo to the city, bringing it to the different communities as

human archipelago. A city that renews the alliance between natural and artificial, between mineral and vegetable, also endowing itself with a regulation on urban agriculture that assigns normative status to practices. A city that, as Ibn Gubayr described it in 1184, «make proud between squares and plains that are all a garden [...] the king’s palaces surround his neck as the jewels encircle the necks of girls with full breasts». In the city of the future, nature will no longer be antagonistic to architecture, but will once again become the plant material of urban design, before the Anthropocene drove it out. In the Neoanthropocene, on the other hand, nature will also be «increased and fully functional to the expression of the urban, created to make our cities liveable: ecological corridors, vegetation, animal species, climate, renewable energy sources, will give shape to a new urban infrastructure: a infrastruttura naturans», as vigorously argues Zeila Tesoriere, my colleague and member of the Palermo Lab. The XXII Triennale di Milano is dedicated to the renewed relationship between the city and nature, between man and the environment, with the title Broken Nature, curated by Paola Antonelli, through examples of architecture and design as repair and construction of connections between natural cycles, in a fruitful collaboration between design, life sciences and social sciences. It is no coincidence that Madrid has created a temporary garden of 3500 square metres to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Plaza Mayor, designed by artist SpY: for four days Madrid residents and tourists have used one of the most beautiful squares in the world, one of the most mineral and rectangular for the previous four centuries, in a different way, vegetable and circular. The new relationship between the city and nature, however, must not be circumscribed and parcelled out, almost as if nature were an object to be exhibited in a crystal case while mineral life unfolds indifferently around it, but we must encourage a continuous integrated mosaic,

INTRODUCTION

a catalyst for urban regeneration. And then even tourists and AirBnB arrived. The natural depression of Piazza Danisinni has been transformed into social gardens and community farm: ten thousand hectares of land donated on loan to the Parish of Sant’Agnese, thanks to the loving care and aggregative power of Fra Mauro, are an incubator of cultural and artistic community, but also a job opportunity for young people in the neighbourhood. On the occasion of Manifesta 12, then, with the group directed by Sara Kamalvand from HydroCity, together with Renzo Lecardane from PalermoLab of the University of Palermo and with the extraordinary expertise and passion of Pietro Todaro, the greatest connoisseur of the subsoil in Palermo, we created the workshop “Ingruttati”, dedicated to Danisinni’s subsoil, involving students and professionals from all over the world together with the community to plan a further step on the path of the future for the neighbourhood, but also as a prototype for other parts of the city. We have added to the already extraordinary project for Danisinni its chthonic dimension, restoring importance, dignity and opportunity to the subsoil, to the Arab qanat, extraordinary works of hydraulic engineering, to the canals, to the caves and to the water that from the clear springs of the Gabriele river passing through the ancient Papireto riverbed flows under the fields, giving it the fertility that we reuse today. Because Palermo has to go back to making air and underground dialogue, it has to plan that network of stone and vegetable, porous and liquid places, which have been for centuries the lymphatic system of the city, making it fertile, happy and industrious.

A vegetable garden satisfies the spirit, ten urban gardens improve a neighbourhood, a thousand urban gardens transform a city that wants to go back to being “Aziz”, the splendid - as the Arabs called it - but this time for the collective action of its inhabitants/farmers in a green urban and

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in which we almost don’t distinguish stone tiles from vegetable ones. We must not fall back into that conflict admirably synthesised in 1988 by the Talking Heads in (Nothing but) Flowers, in which they sing with irony and bewilderment of an overpopulated world where the boundaries between city and nature have collapsed with the expansion of a hypertrophic humanity that has transformed highways and car parks into agricultural fields and supermarkets and factories into mountains and rivers in order to be fed. Human space, in order to allow mankind to survive, has been reconquered by plants and animals, dissolving the signs of human progress.

In a jubilation of beasts and vegetables, fruit trees and animals to hunt, however, the protagonist of the song cannot hide his melancholy for the happy time when the signs of progress were the shops, cars and chimneys, because the beauty of nature was in its being confined outside and being able to be enjoyed on command. “Where, where is the town?”, he cries with melancholy, regretting a Pizza Hut, a 7-Eleven and junk food. With sublime synthesis, the song confronts us with the current dilemma of the planetary garden, the choice between fenced-in park and interconnected nature, between natural islands and rur-urban archipelagos. Without going as far as the paroxysm sung by the Talking Heads, we need greater urban biodiversity in structural forms, in which parks, gardens and vegetable gardens form a vegetal mosaic capable of contaminating the urban grid by grafting itself between the buildings, creating communicating ecological corridors, to allow the gene flow to exchange between the different populations (human, animal and vegetal) and making the cities permeable to the external nature, bringing it inside in its truest and most vital form, allowing pollinators to move and seeds to travel.

Let us not forget that plant nature was one of the most powerful forces that shaped the planet.

Plants, as Emanuele Coccia admirably writes, «through photosynthesis, have made it possible to change the statute of matter that covers the earth’s crust, transforming it into a centre for the accumulation of solar energy. And above all, they have irreversibly transformed our atmosphere.

Let’s not delude ourselves: far from being just any element of the earth’s landscape, plants chisel and incessantly sculpt the face of our world»9. A new vegetal metaphysics not only requires an effective biopolitics, but demands a renewed bio-urbanism able to recompose the alliance between vegetal, animal and anthropic, reshaping the geography of their coexistence.

I have already mentioned that Italo Calvino stressed the importance of a city’s ability to provide answers to the questions of its inhabitants.

And the answer to these questions is increasingly collective through the active involvement of artisan citizens, horticulturalists, craftsmen and repairers, sustainable city producers, but also plants and animals that return to nourish the urban ecosystem.

Palermo archipelago of cultural diversity Remaining in the garden, in 2013 a seed was planted in Palermo: the city’s candidacy as European Capital of Culture 2019. The dossier was carefully prepared through a long process of involvement of citizens and internal experts - including myself for the urban vision, together with Giuseppe Marsala and Roberto Albergoni - and external experts, numerous institutions, entrepreneurs, associations, students and with important testimonials, Moni Ovadia among them. The candidature did not even pass the first selection, to the great disappointment of all of us who took part and of the citizens who believed in it. The reasons for the rejection are handed over to the small historiography of the event: it is said that the verdict changed on the last night with a stroke of the hand, but the truth is not known.

have a close link with the theme of sacredness, which manifests itself through the universal theme of the “door”.

I am convinced that this is also the fruit of that seed, apparently sterile, but instead only premature, which needed to change the soil before germinating, which required care and nourishment, sharing and participation to become first a shrub, then a leafy tree and give juicy fruit.

In a book on the future design of cities and communities, the micro-history of relations between Palermo and Manifesta can give valuable indications for other cities that choose the path of a different present based on art, culture and creativity, participation and cultural welfare, urban and human regeneration. Here I want to use Manifesta 12 to talk about the complex relationship between cities and major cultural events, the relationship with urban identity and social and economic heritage. Because Manifesta Palermo has been a useful laboratory to experiment with the territorialisation of cultural policies. A laboratory that has revealed valuable opportunities but also revealed inevitable critical aspects of an innovative experiment.

The meeting with Palermo, in fact, changed Manifesta into a metamorphosis of which people and culture are the catalysts. Manifesta’s relationship with Palermo, with the Municipality and the University, with scholars and young talents, with artists and activists, with associations and citizens, has been disruptive for an innovative Biennial like the one invented by Hedwig Fijen twenty-four years ago and which has made nomadism and fluidity its political and social figure before art. She was seduced by the plural, creative, conflictual, polychrome fluidity of Palermo and she took the opportunity to review both her vision and her relationship with the host city: useful address for other nomadic cultural events. Nomadism has not been reduced but its character has changed, it has become urban. It is

INTRODUCTION

Some thought, and said, that the seed was of bad quality, infertile, poorly selected and even worse sown. It was not so, as it happens also in agriculture that seed had found a hard soil (the criticalities of the city not yet solved) that had compressed its ability to germinate. But the seed was good, strong, luxuriant and, slowly, it broke the soil, shattering its resistance, producing the necessary cracks from which the water and light necessary for its sprouting could filter. That seed contained a strong and generous DNA, the germ of participation, the core of long-term vision and the energy of cultural policies as food for urban regeneration. That seed spoke of the youth and the sea of Palermo, used human rights as a molecule of development and redesigned a city without fences and separations. That seed, stubborn, sprouted and bore fruit afterwards. From that seed, from that method and from that vision of a city were born other projects recognized as valid and which allowed Palermo to be included in the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2015 for its Arab-Norman heritage (together with Monreale and Cefalù)10, to become the Italian Youth Capital in 2017, Italian Capital of Culture in 2018 and, at the same time, to host the twelfth edition of Manifesta, the nomadic international contemporary art biennial, thus becoming a world epicentre of contemporary culture, a place that attracts art and generates creativity, a cultural magnet for the world’s creative community.

The programme schedule of the IItalian Capital of Culture is intertwined in a powerful cultural fabric with the second edition of BIAS (International Biennial of Sacred Contemporary Art of the Religions of Humanity), a transnational exhibition invented by the extraordinary and versatile woman Chiara Donà delle Rose, open to all visual and performing artists, architects and designers, in the world and organised in the historic centre of Palermo, but also in other places in Sicily, as an urban itinerary of places and communities that

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no longer the lightness of the temporary passage in search of new energy that guides the way, but the willingness to plough the soil and sow seeds to make the city flourish. Manifesta - synecdoche of other urban art initiatives - no longer has the neutrality of the grafting of contemporary art but has the responsibility of triggering evolutionary processes generated by contemporary art.

Manifesta did not propose a precompiled programme, but stimulated visitors to be the coders that generate, in an open-source jubilation, a personal geography of places that recomposes the three main sections in countless ways: Garden of Flows, which explores environmental toxicity, Out of Control Room, which investigates the power of global control, and City on Stage, dedicated to urban regeneration, along the 21 places and 60 installations of the general programme and the 90 collateral events, interwoven with further initiatives that have sprung up in emulation, in contrast, in harmony, in a choral score where the whole of Palermo resonates - with diversified results - of the coexistence that contemporary art generates.

With its numerous installations and performances articulated along a wide urban geography Manifesta 12 has demanded a three-pronged approach: on the one hand, the works of art stimulated a critical and militant reflection on the problems of climate change, migration, control and rights; on the other hand, the chosen places, some open to the public for the first time, demanded attention and aroused amazement for their painful but still vital beauty; finally, the city became the co-star of our wonder, showing itself from the windows, courtyards and terraces, often completing the sense of the works with the evidence of a city that lives on the skin of the community and on the stones of the buildings the themes of the Biennale. Thus, Manifesta has become a little less aerial and more tectonic, has generated bradyseism in the communities with

which it has come into contact, has acted as an evident catalyst in its manifestation, willing to disappear once the catalysis has generated a new urban, cultural, social, economic and, why not, political substance. Yes, because politics is this new life of Manifesta, born from the maternal loins of Palermo, between Santa Rosalia and San Benedetto il Moro, and which has set sail for Marseilles where in 2020 the fruits sown in Palermo will sprout, probably resolving the critical issues discovered in the new and complex relationship between curate, artistic message and place.

And that a new ethic has animated Hedwig Fijen and the Board, and then the Manifesta 12 Foundation, is evident in the first act of the Biennale: to begin, from the previous year, the construction of the event with an urban study entrusted to the wise hands of OMA and in particular to the sensitivity, respect and creativity of Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli and his team. The first outcome of almost six months of intense exploration of the city, the archaeology of its communities and the interpretation of diversity was Palermo Atlas11. An atlas that recounts, without pretensions of exhaustiveness but with stimuli of complexity, the many Palermo that today coexist in a deep palimpsest of values and visions and in an intricate network of perceived spaces, conceived spaces and lived spaces, all together constituting that heterotopia of space and society that has always been Palermo. An ÂŤinstrument of sustainable development to guide and root the legacy of Manifesta 12 for the coming yearsÂť, Hedwig Fijen defines it. Together with other documents/tools elaborated over the years by the University of Palermo, cultural associations, scholars and professionals - I add.

A hyper-atlas I like to define it, an atlas of atlases, a tale of tales, a map of maps, a portrait of people and spaces, a picture gallery of architecture and landscapes. Ippolito Pestellini, who is also one of

contradictions, it shows us places in recovery but also communities waiting, it shows us how to create a new city. And not because I find information there that I didn’t know - yes, there is also that - but because Palermo Atlas is a powerful lie detector, it reveals Palermo to us through its riches and contradictions, it shows us places in recovery but also communities waiting, it shows us how we were in the past and how we would be in a different present able to activate a different possible future. We need to see with new eyes the beauty and daily richness that surround us and that we have the responsibility to enrich and pass on: talents at work, schools of resistance, resilient landscapes, creative divestments punctuate the city offering us urban planners powerful points of support for an ascent without useless frills, using mind and hand, towards the new level of a Palermo that manifests itself.

The Atlas is full of maps and data, images and diagrams, and every time you leaf through it reveals new directions, as if every time you close it the Genius of Palermo enjoyed moving the pages and adding new ones. But there is a map that is emblematic for me of what must be done to reactivate the future, and it is the map of Palermo made up of many pieces of other maps, with different languages, from different periods, a palimpsest of cartographic images, analyses and projects, which reveals to us the deep archaeology of knowledge of which this city is made a thousand times drawn and a thousand times imagined: a city of urban islands that want to be archipelago again.

It is a precious map because it imposes a challenge on us: reconnecting without homologating, recomposing without reducing its richness, telling without simplifying. We future designers design Palermo working on identity without cancelling differences, finding new balances but also more solid equity, imagining harmonies without falling into homologation, reconnecting the parts by diversifying them. Projects that investigate

INTRODUCTION

the Creative Mediators of Manifesta 12, expressly states this in his introduction: «there is no single way to approach Palermo, because the city cannot be reduced to a single identity or precise definitions: it - and we know it well - is a vital and dynamic mosaic of fragments and identities that emerge from the palimpsest of encounters and exchanges of different cultures that have made the city intrinsically cosmopolitan and syncretic.

More than a city, Palermo is the hub of an enlarged geography of flows [...], a cross-pollination laboratory and an incubator of global conditions.

Palermo is the paradigm of the new world».

Starting the curatorial project of a contemporary art biennial with an urban study is an important contribution to future design, because it does not only mean that the vision and mission of the event has changed, but it also means accepting the challenge of compromising with the transition of a city towards the contemporary, accepting the battle to contribute to a different possible present.

Manifesta, with the strength of its communication, revealed to everyone Palermo as «an archipelago of the global, not a globalised city, but rather an incubator of different global conditions that make the city the most seductive and powerful fresco of Europe and the Mediterranean of a different present», a city - well known to many of us - of unfinished and never realised, but also of cults and cultures, a daily epiphany of archaeological, architectural and artistic beauty but also a treasure chest of the world’s visual and cinematographic imagination. The Atlas is already a concrete legacy, a fertile legacy, because it is a precious source of knowledge and inspiration for the city, of analysis and denunciation. But it is especially so for me, an urban planner who has been committed for years to understanding, designing and transforming the city. And not because I find information there that I didn’t know - yes, there is also that - but because Palermo Atlas is a powerful lie detector, it reveals Palermo to us through its riches and

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Palermo as a centre of cultural production, and its relationship with cultural events, that model urban nature as a model for the development of new forms of coexistence, that govern the role of digital and social innovation in the design of resilient cities12.

How to design the future of a contemporary city that has made coexistence, hybridisation and multiplicity its distinctive character? This question is one of Manifesta’s legacies, because it obliges us to give an unconventional answer.

Palermo must return to being a city that looks to the Mediterranean and to the world, to the flows and networks that cross us, to be a generous metropolis with the cities that surround it, to use a holistic approach but to know how to implement practices, to act for acupunctures that know how to spread their effects. Palermo -as I have already argued- can no longer have a single centre, because the different centres have multiplied, the new epicentres of sociality of the metropolitan and progressively polycentric city. And from the suburbs today there are powerful signs of social innovation, civic rebellion, new ways of living and working. Precious reserves for the resilience of the city.

This is the most seductive challenge: reimagining Palermo after Palermo reinterpreted its role as the Capital of Culture, rethought the places with Bias and recoded the role of a nomadic Biennial of contemporary art dedicated to the “cultivation of coexistence”. We must, in my opinion, stimulate the germination of consistency, in the admirable sense with which Italo Calvino proposed it, unfortunately without completing the argument, in his Lezioni Americane, in an epistemological oscillation between solidity and coherence, between identity and openness. And the most precious fruit of consistency is the ethical dimension of our action.

To make Palermo’s consistency sprout we must start from the epicentres of contemporary art (Palazzo Butera, the GAM, the Rice Museum, the Cantieri

Culturali alla Zisa, the Garibaldi Theatre), from the cultural institutions that are opening up to the contemporary (the Steri, the Botanical Garden, the Diocesan Museum, the Federico II Foundation, the Sant’Elia Foundation, Palazzo Branciforte and Villa Zito, the Salinas Museum, Palazzo Abatellis), the places of redemption (the Zen, the Favara di Maredolce, the South Coast), the reopening of the city to the sea (the archaeological park of the Castello a Mare, the Cala, Sant’Erasmo and the new cruise area) and then the palaces, galleries, artist studios, cultural centres, squares and gardens, to redesign the city as a whole. In order not to stop at intentions we need experimentation! Like the “Kalsa Project” which I, Massimo Valsecchi and Marco Giammona wrote with the contribution of many people and which was born from the collaboration between University of Palermo and the Valsecchi Foundation. Son of a far-sighted and multidisciplinary vision, the Kalsa project for urban and human regeneration has a powerful innovative power as it simultaneously acts on urban, social, cultural and economic innovation, reactivating the latent but still vital cycles of one of the most culturally intense neighbourhoods in the historic centre of Palermo, fuelled by the presence of the University of Palermo and its Monumental and Museum complex of Steri and the Botanical Garden, Palazzo Butera as a cultural and creative engine between memory and contemporaneity open to the city and the Office of the Historical Centre as an institutional laboratory of urban policies. The project acts on all the cultural excellences already present in the area, bringing them into line with the lively social, artistic and community life that has made the neighbourhood vibrant with creativity in recent years. The result is a “cultural archipelago” of public spaces, porous and passable places, museums and workshops, factories and theatres, residences and ateliers, institutions and associations that act in synergy to experiment in this important part of the city a

vegetable garden and all art at the same time.

It is not just a linguistic game, but the synthesis of the three identities - indeed re-identities that can define, accelerate and focus the great metamorphosis of the city of the different present that regenerates the future starting from its best past. Starting from the love relationship with the sea, the symbiosis with nature and the creative energy of art. It means reopening the Gate of the Sun which, through the new cruise port, the linear coastal park and the Old Harbour (Cala), illuminates the city with its global flows that penetrate it from the east. It means bringing the Conca d’Oro back to life and reviving it by means of vegetable gardens and vegetable gardens to revitalise disused railways, courtyards and peri-urban agricultural areas. It means activating the urban dimension of contemporary art spaces, starting from the historic galleria Arte al Borgo I have already told you about (still existing and in search of new battles), and the other galleries, independent cultural centres and artist studios created in recent years, such as Francesco Pantaleone’s gallery, the Rizzuto Gallery by Giovanni Rizzuto and Eva Oliveri, the Caffè internazionale by Stefania Galegati Shines, or the Ascensore by Albertò Laganà and Gianluca Concialdi, or the artist studios by Andrea Kantos, Ignazio Mortellaro, Michele Tiberio, Linda Randazzo, Francesco Cuttitta, Gabriele Massaro, Dimitri Agnello, Luca Cutrufelli, just to name a few.

We have to start from that light and committed spirit at the same time, contaminating museums, exhibition spaces, theatres, bookshops, studios, residences and galleries in order to make Palermo become again an avant-garde of experimentation, vitality and inventiveness. We can start again from our excellence in visual and performing arts often forgotten or ignored, but never erased or dormant, still vibrant under the rubble of the false modernity of the blind present, ready to be the push of the new city.

To make Palermo flourish again, to make it the

INTRODUCTION

new urban model based on the generation of value from culture and new lifestyles linked to it.

Palermo archipelago claims to recompose conflicts without abolishing diversity, mending the relationship between centre and suburbs, between city and sea, between mineral and vegetable, even between underground and aeroplane, because Palermo can be reached in the qanat, in the tunnels of the Blessed Pauls, in the anti-aircraft shelters and in the underground cisterns of Pier Luigi Nervi, like Paris, but also from the terraces, roofs and towers, like Istanbul.

Cultivating coexistence to make consistency sprout is an opportunity to generate creative effects of urban and human regeneration around the places affected by the events, reactivating their vitality through hybrid and shared uses. It is time to complete the restitution of urban space to citizens and not to cars: «forget the damn car and build cities for lovers and friends», wrote Lewis Mumford in 1979. It is time to find new cultural and productive functions for abandoned spaces through innovative and profitable forms of publicprivate partnership. It is the cue to rethink the role of libraries, museums and theatres as places of knowledge. It is the time to cultivate the collective action of the cultural and creative fabric that is the fertile ground on which the lasting fruits of the Vie dei Tesori, the Week of Cultures, the Festival of Migrant Literature, the Ballarò Buskers Festival, and other initiatives must sprout, in a fertile contamination that nourishes and stabilizes the cultural ecosystem.

Palermo was founded as “all port” and the sea gave it its vitality for centuries, then it became “all vegetable garden”, heavenly garden of botanical diversity and nature gave it the vitality of its vegetal beauty, and it was also “all art”, always a place of sublime artists, artistic currents and avant-garde, often authoritative in the international panorama, even of contemporary art.

Today it can be reborn from being all port, all

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shining Aziz, city of water, nature and art, it is not a great event that we need, but many events - that is, an emerging future - to be built together drawing on the versatility of Palermo, which is always different depending on who is looking at it. And Palermo port, garden and art demands an idea of the city and invokes urban planning that changes according to the questions of its inhabitants rather than providing a predefined answer, often only utopian, in the sense of being unable to take place.

From Whl Unesco, Manifesta, the Italian Capital of Culture, or other similar occasions, I do not expect the city of the future to be born, but I demand that the city of a different present be activated, unveiled by the hermeneutic power of the visual and performing arts, designed by architecture and planned by urban planning, regenerated by their ability to investigate deeply into the spatial and human tissues of contemporary life to recombine its genetic code.

The cities of the diverse present, however, are not only made up of vibrant centres of creativity, reacting places and effervescent communities, they are not only possible utopias, they are composed of plurality, they are made up of fertile heterotopia, of margins that become centres, of suburbs that return to the city.

Notes: 1. See L. Mumford, The Highway and the City, New York, Harcourt, Brace & World, 1963.

2. See W. Benjamin, Charles Baudelaire. Un poeta lirico nell’età del capitalismo avanzato, Vicenza, Neri Pozza, 2012.

3. The precious book by Valerio Calzolaio and Telmo Pievani, Freedom to migrate, is dedicated to the evolutionary value of human migrations.

Why we have always moved and it is good to do so (Torino, Einaudi, 2016), in which it is explained with clarity and great deductive argumentation why and how human beings have evolved also thanks to the migrations of Homo Sapiens, whose

brain has grown and with it flexibility along with migratory ability.

4. The Palermo Charter, promoted in 2015 by the Municipality together with the Consulta delle Culture, is a very disruptive declaration of intent regarding the issues of integration and citizenship.

Its main concept is the right to international mobility, providing indications to address the regulation of migration flows in a completely new way, proposing the abolition of residence permits in favour of a radical adoption of citizenship as a tool for inclusion and participation in public life.

5. The topic of Manifesta 12 “Planetary Garden.

Cultivating coexistence” develops the idea of a garden theorized by Gilles Clement in 1997, exploring its ability to aggregate differences and generate life from all movements and migratory flows. Palermo-garden is a place where different forms of life mix and adapt to coexist, a physical, cultural and social space where cross-pollination occurs through encounter. See G. Clement, Il giardiniere planetario, Milano 22publishing, 2008.

6- To understand the dark side of the presence of migrants in the historical centre of Palermo, the dastardly pact between the Sicilian and Nigerian mafia, the cruelties, but also the urban forms, the exploitation of prostitution and the drug market, see the extraordinary photographs of Francesco Bellina and read the chronicles of Lorenzo Tondo on Ballarò.

7. For Giuseppe Barbera, the Conca d’oro is a fertile concept: aura concha, that of the basin, the shell and the womb has fertility and sensuality. Not just a place but a unitary idea, lasting hundreds of generations, capable of producing many other ideas in the hands and minds. See G. Barbera, Conca d’oro, Palermo, Sellerio, 2012.

8. See G. Clément, Il giardiniere planetario, Milano, 22publishing, 2008.

9. See E. Coccia, La vita delle piante. Metafisica della mescolanza, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2018.

10. The candidacy dossier was also a collective

INTRODUCTION

work of analysis, interpretation and vision coordinated by Aurelio Angelini, in collaboration with Barbara Lino for the urban planning part and the definition of the buffer zones.

11. See OMA, Manifesta 12. Palermo Atlas, Milano, Humboldt Books, 2018.

12. To explore the project for the future based on the different present, in October 2017 Manifesta 12 Research Studios was launched, a project curated by Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli and myself that brings together four architecture research centres (Palermo Lab of the University of Palermo, AA Museum Lab of the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London, Complex Project of Delft University of Technology and ADS8 of the Royal College of Art in London). Over the course of two semesters, the four international university studios worked with students to propose new futures for the city, starting with the interpretative traces contained in OMA’s Palermo Atlas and the Palermo Portraits of the Future dossier drawn up by the PalermoLab of the Department of Architecture of the University of Palermo (Maurizio Carta, Alessandra Badami, Renzo Lecardane, Marco Picone, Filippo Schilleci and Zeila Tesoriere). The results of the project generated the exhibition of the same name held at the former mill of the Sant’Antonino Complex.

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// PALERMO: FLOW OF CULTURES, ENERGIES, IDEAS AND COSMOPOLITAN SPACES

The city of Palermo lies in the heart of the Mediterranean Sea. Sicily has always been considered the navel of the world. Many cultures, communities, flows have followed one another in the Sicilian spaces, shaping the human behaviours, architectures, streets, squares and making this place an open habitat. This paper aims to observe the multi-cultural characteristics of the city of Palermo and to describe how these human flows have given rise to its cosmopolitan urban nature. Through a qualitative methodology, with dialogic surveys in the Zisa and Cuba/ Calatafimi neighbourhoods and the historical centre, the article looks at how urban contexts can be places where fragmentation, neglect and socio-economic issues meet innovation and creativity. The research starting from the following questions investigates how a city can restore and regenerate its places thanks to local energies, resources, talents and urban openness. How do people live the urban spaces? How can local resources be activators of social awareness? How can a city reinvent itself?

To answer these questions, it is important to find out how Palermo has become the city seen today, studying its historical development, in order to highlight how this city has overcome colonisation, drawing from each of them the resilient energy of change. According to Ola Söderström (2009), Palermo has been the centre of many flows: flows of people, ideas, capitals. Every single object of these flows has changed and influenced open spaces, people’s minds, urban structure and architectural forms (De Carlo, 1999). This multilevel stratification is visible in many elements of the Sicilian capital. It is possible to observe it in the intangible and tangible heritage, crossing the streets, enjoying a pièce de théâtre of the Sicilian puppets, tasting the traditional food, getting

carried away by the smells of the city of the Tamils cuisine or by the sounds of the local markets, that make you feel in an Arabic Souq. Palermo has been flow and centre of cultures, energies and ideas for thousands of centuries. This multicultural heterogeneity builds the nature of Palermo, reveals the real soul of the city, explains the reasons why people have been living its spaces as open habitats.

The dynamic culture of Palermo is subjected to ongoing changes that influence progressively its identity and the urban context. According to François Jullien (2016), there is no culture that is not transformed by others, there is no society with a primordial unchanged culture that endures changes. To face to the homogenisation of territorial spaces, Jullien recommends starting using the term resources instead cultural identity, because the identity of a place can be influenced by the globalisation. There are many cases of urban identity affected by the actions of global firms and international architects, that shape contemporary cities with validated architectures that change the human perception of the place with new conformed landmarks. It is necessary to reflect and observe territorial resources, those spaces that need to be preserved, protected and enhanced. Palermo, in this sense, is rich in resources. Palermo is a mixture of cosmopolitan resources, some coming directly from the past and others as a result of the contemporary intersections of socio-cultural elements, digital and analogue networks, multi-cultural exchanges and migratory flows. The urban layers of the city of Palermo are rich of heterogeneity, conflicts and strengths (Lima, 1997). Behind the touristic streets - like the baroque Via Maqueda or the Punic street Cassaro - where movida, restaurants and souvenirs shops sell the perfect image and experience of

INTRODUCTION

Federica Scaffidi

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the “real” Sicilian life, there is another reality, maybe much more colourful, folkloristic and harsh to be accepted - where messiness and social issues are combined to “undesigned” spaces and neglected resources that need to be reactivated.

This urban contradiction characterises many of the contemporary cities and it is a fundamental feature of Palermo, visible in many other parts of the city, like the Danisinni district.

All these resources make the city of Palermo a vibrant place with unconventional spaces and human creativity. The study confirms that these characteristics create a fertile ground for urban transformation and it further argues that they are the key roles for the development of open habitats. Through unconventional surveys with bicycle tours of these spaces and exploratory surveys, the research analyses the neighbourhood of Zisa, where there is the homonymous Unesco Arab-Norman castle and the Cantieri Culturali - a former furniture factory – and the Cuba/ Calatafimi neighbourhood where lie the Danisinni community, the University of Palermo, the Cuba and Royal Unesco palaces. Through the analyses, explorations and observations of these areas next to the historical centre of Palermo, the study investigates the ongoing urban development of the city across centuries and how it affected the urban spaces and its vigour.

Flows from the past: Palermo across centuries Palermo was built around the 8th century BC on a small hill located within a narrow peninsula, the Phoenician foot, lapped by the Kemonia and Papireto (the Danisinni stream) rivers (Leone, 2004). The Phoenician foot was developed around a single primordial road, a Phoenician-Roman cardo called al Qasr by the Arabs, Marmorea

street, Via Toledo, Cassaro and today Corso Vittorio Emanuele. This axis connected Paleopolis, the first inhabited area, with Neapolis, the current Corso Calatafimi, which keep having a central role in the urban and socio-cultural development of the city (Leone, 2004). For several centuries, the two rivers surrounded this strip of land that was the first settlement of the city of Palermo. During the Roman and Byzantine periods the urban body was almost unchanged with the addition of some infrastructural and defensive works. Following the Arab conquest of 831 the city experienced a great period of expansion and cultural renovation.

The influence of this domination is still visible in the intrinsic behaviour of local population, in the dialect and urban settlement, such as the windy alleys of the historical centre and local public markets. The first Arabs settled in the oldest part of the pre-existing city, which they called alqasr (fortified place), hence the name of Cassaro.

When in 1072 the Normans conquered the citadel of Kalsa, a new period began, made of cultural integration and arts flourishing. They chose the Royal Palace as governmental building which was fortified and embellished with the Palatine Chapel.

Thanks to the knowledge in the agricultural field inherited from the Arabs, during this period many noble residences and gardens arose beyond the city walls, like the Zisa and the Cuba, which contributed to the denomination of the area with the name of Conca d’Oro (Bellafiore, 1956).

In just over two centuries the city passed from the Swabian to the Aragonese dominion, passing through the Angevin and Chiaramontan ones. The reign of Emperor Frederick II of Swabia (Federico Roger Constantine of Hohenstaufen, grandson of Frederick I Barbarossa) was a prosperous period for the city of Palermo, characterised by artistic

or Monte di PietĂ (Cathedral and Capo market); La Loggia or Castellammare (Castello a mare fortress); Kalsa or Tribunali (Palazzo Chiaramonte/ Steri). These flows of people, cultures, energies and ideas contributed to build the image and the essence of the contemporary Palermo. Today the city indeed is keeping its heterogeneity in its urban fabric and these resources became places of cultural renovation and cosmopolitanism. During the years, its peculiarities have been recognised by international organisations. In 2015, the Arab-Norman monuments were included in the Unesco sites for their international prestige and in 2018 Palermo was nominated Italian Capital of Culture and hosted the traveling European Nomadic Biennial of Contemporary Art Manifesta (Manifesta12) which brought new tourist flows and numerous artistic and cultural events throughout the year, creating positive effects also in today‘s life of the city.

INTRODUCTION

and cultural innovation. He played an important role in promoting letters through the poetry of the Sicilian school. His reign was characterized by a strong activity aimed at unifying the lands and people. His Sicilian royal court in Palermo saw one of the first literary uses of a Romance language (after the Provençal experience), the Sicilian. In 1412, Sicily became Spanish dominion.

In this period, the affirmation of the Baroque style, and the Counter-Reformation created the right conditions to focus attention on the city and its need for renewal and urbanization. The significant turning point came with the cutting of the Via Maqueda, which took its name from the Spanish viceroy Bernardino di Cardines, Duke of Maqueda, at whose crossroads the Quattro Canti of Piazza Vigliena were created. This road became the second main axis of the city which, cutting the Cassaro perpendicularly, divided the historic centre into four districts: Albergheria or Palazzo Reale (Paleapolis and Palazzo dei Normanni); Seralcadio

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Contemporary flows in the city of Palermo In once there were the Neapolis of Palermo and flourished lands lapped by the Danisinni stream, today exists a homonymous district where unemployment, low schooling rates and economic issues characterise this place. Danisinni lies in the southwest part of Palermo, on an 8 metres lower plateau where morphological inhomogeneity make this site isolated and in such a way protected as a fortress by its walls. This irregular topographic depression is the result of the intense human activity of the calcarenite exploitation (Todaro, 1988, 2003). Danisinni was indeed the city’s biggest open-pit mine and its calcareous rock was used for the construction of Palazzo dei Normanni (Unesco Norman Palace) and the city opera, Teatro Massimo (Battaglia et Al., 2018).

Despite its social and economic issues, it is also a socio-cultural and natural oasis of the city, close to the historical centre, indeed it hides these assets as local treasure in its urban fabric. Coming from Palazzo dei Normanni and crossing the central square of Piazza Indipendenza, a heavenly panorama appears, where cultivated lands contrast the dense structure of the urban construction.

Mostly of these areas are private. Public spaces in Danisinni do not exist, the public space coincides with the resulting space. Those open areas where kids meet to play football, take a ride on the motor-scooter or chat (Figure 4, p. 97) are the place where the revving engines, the shouts and neomelodica music blend with the silence of huge empty and neglected spaces. These undesigned urban areas, as it often happens in other underdeveloped parts of the city, are characterised by a lack of public furniture, landmarks and services for the local inhabitants. Beside this dearth, the implicit and intrinsic legacy of the

previous cultural “contaminations� of Palermo are hidden. These anonymous places become fields of creativity, where kids reinvent these sites with their imagination, where unemployed people reconvert these places as areas of their own businesses, where local artists or common people can refurbish their own district with new colours, as testified by the murales scattered in the neighbourhood. Behind the common vision and the statistical trends about this site, there is an unconventional image and idea that tell to its public a new story, rich of new energies and cosmopolitan vibes. Nowadays, Danisinni is a place of renaissance, a starting and regenerative intervention that intends to shake the minds of its inhabitants and the people who visit Palermo and this area. Despite the lack of high schooling level, job positions and the high unemployment rate, there is a community that innovates this place with social and cultural activities. Behind the churchyard, lies a vast vegetable garden where animal cries echo through the whole neighbourhood, where food is produced for the local community and by the local community, where the church promotes solidarity and involve local associations, artists, researchers with the main ambition to develop the socio-cultural condition of this place. Contemporary flows influence the local perception of the city, establish new horizons, develop new ways of living. New ideas and interactions reshape the human mind.

Danisinni was one of the site chose for Manifesta12, the European Biennial of Contemporary Art. These flows of international artists, researchers, students, national and international tourists and local visitors contributed to a new awareness of this place by the local inhabitants and creating new pathways for cultural and socio-economic

languages and movies. This site is a cultural place itself for its history and the accurate and refined artistic production. It is a place of internationalization and networking, where artistic events and exhibitions invite people and artists from all over the world, where cooperation is built among translocal organizations and social enterprises. It hosts many entities that contribute to this development, like the Goethe Institute, Cre.Zi Plus, the Z.A.C. gallery or the C.S.C. (Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia). Cantieri Culturali is one of the activators of urban contemporary flows, a new cosmopolitan space of Palermo.

In conclusion, the natural location of Palermo, its aptitude to urban resilience and to foster the creative interaction among cultures and populations, created an ideal condition for the development of socio-cultural vibrancy, cosmopolitan moods and creative urban habitats.

Bibliography OMA (2018) Palermo Atlas. Milano: Humboldt Books.

Battaglia F., Cugusi G., La Rosa S., Missaglia O. (2018) XRivista, n.4.

Palermo: Officine Grafiche.

Bellafiore S. (1956) Palermo. Guida della città e dintorni. Novara: De Agostini.

De Carlo G. (1999) Io e la Sicilia. Catania: Maimone Editore.

Jullien F. (2016) Il n’y a pas d’identité culturelle. Paris: Éd. de l’Herne.

Lima A. I. (1997) Palermo. Strutture dinamiche. Torino: Testo&Immagine.

Leone N. G. (2004) Elementi della città e dell’urbanistica. Palermo: G.B. Palumbo & C. Editore.

Söderstrom O. (2010) “Forms and Flows in the Contemporary Transformations of Palermo’s City Centre”. In: M Guggenheim, O Söderström (eds.) Re-Shaping the City. How mobility shapes architecture and urban form. pp. 189-209.

Todaro P. (2003) Guida di Palermo sotterranea. Palermo: L’Epos.

Todaro P. (1988) Il sottosuolo di Palermo. Palermo: Flaccovio Editrice.

INTRODUCTION

initiatives for the whole city. The cultural influence of contemporary flows was already one of the main resources of Palermo’s innovative development. One of the site par excellence is the University campus, as a place of academic intersections, where international projects, publications, traineeships, exchanges make this place a fertile ground for cosmopolitanism.

Many other sites of the city of Palermo prove the presence of contemporary flows, it is visible in many urban districts that show the Bangladeshi, Tamil, Ganese or Chinese culture (Figure 4, p. 49), that host the waves of migrants of the 70’s, 80’s and of the present day (OMA 2018); it is shown in the activity of the socio-cultural associations like Centro Astalli or Santa Chiara, in the new entrepreneurial initiatives such as Moltivolti and in the cultural scenario of Cantieri Culturali. The latter can be itself a heritage of contemporary flows, starting as the Ducrot furniture factory - a relevant mark during the art nouveau along the years its activity changed, producing seaplanes and aircraft parts, passing from closure, abandonment and becoming what is today a cultural centre of the city. Cantieri Culturali is a place that has been strongly desired by its citizens.

Many people, inhabitants, students of Accademia di Belle Arti struggled against its demolition and the regeneration of this neglected place of Palermo. It lies in the Zisa neighbourhood, nearby the Unesco Zisa Castle. It is a matryoshka space, where cinematography, sculpture, photography and other artistic flows blend with the new socioentrepreneurial activities based on the promotion of local and international “contamination”.

The core of Cantieri Culturali is culture. Culture in many of its forms, as educative tool, as innovative path for new projects related to music, european

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Fig. 1. Process of creating a storyline for the production of movies, Palermo 2019

Fig. 2. Movie screenshots “Where is the water?”, Palermo 2019

Fig. 3. Movie screenshots “Discovering Dannisini”, Palermo 2019

// CREATING PERSPECTIVES ON PALERMO

For the Master´s studio “Palermo Open City” the Manifesta that had taken place one year beforehand in November 2018 was an important starting point for the students to approach and understand the city of Palermo. For the first time in Manifesta history the artistic and culturally relevant event had been connected to an urban discourse, presented through the deep analysis and collected ideas, concepts, projects and stories of the city, brought together as an interdisciplinary inventory and Atlas of Palermo by OMA. It shows the special dimension of topics relevant to the city context, not presented as an historical timeline of development, but as a broad collection of relations of political, sociological, urban, spatial and historical aspects and changes that led the city to become what it is today. During the Manifesta the idea had been not to enact big institutions, but to look at smaller places representative for the heterogeneity of the city and connect them to a global perspective – an idea that was also reflected during the design studio. The making of an atlas as urban research tool is also reflected

by Boeri as a new way of studying correlations of spatial elements and society that brings together observations of a territory from different viewpoints at once (Boeri 2001, p. 366) The task of the design studio was not only to work with mappings, observations and the creation of a new spatial design idea, but to pose an own research question, do an intensive analysis and research work focussing on the previously defined conceptual topics, finding a possible intervention area and connecting the for one site developed thoughts, imaginations and programs to a bigger context – a larger scale of the city network or even a view towards locally important topics of

the area or global references. How could the topic of the Open City be addressed within the design and to which already existing structures, social, ecological or cultural networks of the city could it be related? In which way would the research need to take place to discover local connections, develop an insight view to the everyday life taking place on site and at the same time maintain a professional and reflexive distance, being able to evaluate the own imagined proceedings? Finding answers and possible design solutions to these questions would also produce different perspectives on the city and produce another Atlas of the city focussing on more punctual situations.

To gain a first perspective the main analysis phase was intended to already let the students approach the city and surrounding area as good as possible from the outside – while still being in Hanover.

They were instructed to produce informative mappings and diagrams to understand the city and its elements before being in place. Following the cartographer Dennis Wood, mapping is seen as an act of creating and imagining space and can therefore be understood as a powerful tool for the production of space (2010). Moreover cartography is a tool of epistemology and acquisition of knowledge - not describing urbanity as object, but conceiving the urban as process (v. Brandis in Wolfrum 2015, p. 68). The presentation and reflection on theoretical ideas connected to urban, cultural and philosophical topics and the study of global reference projects for urban design drew the outline for further discussions and allowed the students to connect their first conceptual ideas for selected parts of Palermo to a more theoretical background. This research part was intended to situate first ideas already as relevant contributions

INTRODUCTION

Riccarda Cappeller

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that could then be developed in its different layers and be connected to a specific site or expanded to a network idea for the city of Palermo. An important output was on the demography and migration flows of Palermo, showing not only the population density in Sicily, the employment rate of Italians and foreigners and the location of first arrivals of migrants in South Italy, but also the areas of their origins and their connection points in Palermo. This research later led to a catalogue of conceptual ideas, fostering places of encounter that would connect education, employment possibilities with new city networks, the cultural exchange, spirituality and culture as mean of exchange.

This first and very intensive research part, where already a lot of material was produced, allowed a larger overview on the city and was followed by the creation of a more subjective and explorative perspective – a narration of everyday-experiences through film, produced on the excursion to Palermo.

During the two-days workshop “Cosmopolitan Palermo” students from both universities, Leibniz University Hanover and Universitá degli Studi di Palermo had to work together in groups of five to produce a short, conceptual three minute movie that would create an urban design understanding or projection of one district of the city in a creative way. For this exercise a close observation of social and spatial relations as well as people´s movements and the discovery of important public places were important to capture “the Soul of the city” its spatial dynamics and potentials.

Theoretically this idea was based on first filmic approaches to space by Dsega Wertov, observation practices by the sociologist William H. Whyte, modes of watching everyday life by George Perec (1974) and the introduction of film as possible

design tool by Francois Penz (2017, p. 222).

The students were encouraged to experience and perceive cosmopolitan elements of the city, combining activities and skills of urban exploration, spatial thinking, arts, interactive communication, and urban design in order to enhance new approaches for urbanism. For the beginning, a sensitisation of the atmospheres around, it was recommended to leave the camera aside, collect observations in a script, stroll around the area according to the concept of serendipity – find something you haven’t searched for. The second part of the exploration would then focus on the found topics and their examination – producing film sequences documenting, performing or enacting the sites and further discuss their presentation to then make last decisions on how to communicate the findings and finish the film.

The Narratives should be produced in terms of making sense of the hybrid character of today’s spaces. The eight produced films were viewed and discussed in public.

Among others there was a film connecting the character of a clown as part of the everyday life within the historic city centre to the circus in the neighbourhood of Danisinni, following his way through the traffic, people and homes to reach the place he belongs to and experience the rural character of it within the city. Another film focused on the topic of water, its appearance in various places of Palermo, the connection to the seaside and the port and the future possibility of reactivating the Giardino della Zisa and the water running through it as a design idea.

A last and closer perspective on Palermo and the possible intervention sites was done with a more in depth field research thought to make a

For all three perspectives addressed during the design studio – the objective one from the outside, the narrative one made from direct impressions and the reflexive field researchers one during the examination of the intervention sites – the city was thought as a laboratory which implied the understanding of the existing, social and built relations, motilities, flows, connecting elements, intertwining layers and atmospheres – leading to an active creation and projection of ideas as well as to their communication in a playful way. The selected intervention areas were very different from each other as well as the design ideas produced for them. From changing car and parking spaces to more liveable areas and active zones of creation and exchange, to the idea of a school of experimentation for recycling connected to one

spot in the Danisinni neighbourhood which would change various aspects in the surrounding and work as a model for other parts of the city, to small intervention ideas for the expansion of the cultural context of Cantieri Culturali or a very conceptual idea for the formation of new encounter spaces that was based on the analysis presented above.

Overall bringing together these perspectives in the end happened unconsciously as the focus of the students was to create a design idea responding to the real spaces. Nevertheless they show possible intersection points for bringing architecture and urban design together with other disciplines – learning from their approaches and connecting the spatial conceptions much more to the observation of what is already there, the social and spatial qualities and their transformations through the users.

Bibliography OMA (2018) Palermo Atlas. Milano: Humboldt Books.

Boeri, S. (2001) “Multiplicities”, in: Koolhaas, R: Mutations. Barcelona: Actar Wood, D. (2010) Rethinking the power of maps. New York and London: The Guilford Press.

Nilsson, F. (2013) „Knowledge in the Making. On Production and Communication of Knowledge in the Material Practices of Architecture“. FormAkademisk - forskningstidsskrift for design og designdidaktikk 6 (2), p. 1-13. https://doi.org/10.7577/formakademisk.569 (accessed 2.3.2020) Penz, F. (2017): Cinematic Aided Design: An Everyday Life Approach to Architecture , Abingdon: Taylor & Francis Ltd Perec, G. (1974) Species of spaces and other pieces. Penguin Classics V. Brandis, N. (2015) “Relational Space – Perception and Analysis”, in: Wolfrum, S. Peformative Urbanism. Jovis:Berlin, p. 67-72

INTRODUCTION

proof of reality, collecting images, talk to people and try to get to know the selected areas much better. Creating different formats for architectural knowledge production and to deepen the mappings from the first research phase with information not able to gather without being on site, helped to formulate new spatial understandings, design ideas and possible formats of presentation. “The learning of skills to produce material and visual artefacts, and to use them to communicate, is [...] important in the education of architects and designers.” (Nilsson 2013, p. 1) Also the students were now able to reflect on the first conceptual ideas they had made, change them and highlight the most important aspects following their own questions from the beginning of the design studio. Often these first ideas appear to already contain the essence of the projects that needs to be connected to the findings to create a good storytelling for the design project.

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METHODOLOGY

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The study project PALERMO OPEN CITY focuses on the urban area around the so-called Danisinni district, a context of cultural and socio-economic interest on the edge of the historical centre of Palermo. The studio area includes the Unesco World Heritage site Zisa Castle, the Cantieri Culturali alla Zisa (a former factory) and the University, with linkages to the near historic centre and the Sea as well as across the highway towards the mountains. Starting from its potentialities and resources, the urban design studio has the purpose to find innovative solutions for the place through the analysis of the following main topics: OPENNESS and INTEGRATIVITY, towards migrants and as general cultural, social, and economic idea, focus on the analysis of the diversity of Palermo’s social realities, especially emerging communities - like Danisinni. This thematic analysis, therefore, aims to observe local communities, who is living the place and how; FRAGMENTATION focuses on built structures, infrastructures, topography, that on one hand offer chances for novelties in boundaries and periphery, on the other hand is expression of a cultural and social richness. The topic of boundaries and barriers is expressed on its many levels that separate these sites from the most historic and cultural ones; HERITAGE in different expressions - from World Heritage sites to recent or intangible heritage, in a diffuse and polycentric sense and driven by different initiatives. Interpreted as Creative Heritage, it can be strongly referred to the ideas of openness, migration, and internationality;

COLLABORATIVE CITY in activating elements, energies and networks – observes processes of urban transformation that could also be linked to a new material productivity, in crafts, know-how, digital production and intangible collaborations. In the design approach, the collaborative aspect of a city is emphasized by new technological tools and open, public and sharing spaces. This topic is also connected to the UNESCO Network of Learning Cities in which Palermo is part since 2019.

The impact of a vision of OPEN CITY is targeted towards an innovative and cosmopolitan city enabling economies, resources and communities.

For the urban design project, this concept leads to several connected objectives: 1. Analysing the selected metropolitan area with an urbanistic and architectural approach, exploring potentialities and limitations, local creative heritage and neglected sites; 2. Exploring creative-cultural economies in conjunction with spatial and social capital with the purpose to enhance the local productivity and talents, reshaping centralities and contributing to redefining the Urban branding of the selected site; 3. Developing design in architectural, urbanistic scales as active factor to develop liveable space and reduce spatial fragmentation; 4. Formulating pathways and innovative strategies towards an Open City: social inclusive initiatives, cultural networks, sharing and collaborative spaces and tools, redefinitioning role, programme and target.

METHODOLOGY

// CONCEPT AND OBJECTIVES

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// METHODLOGY

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TOPICS AND REFERENCES The Topics and References phase is about discovering four topics (openness and integrativity, fragmentation, heritage and collaborative city) through the analysis of some international cases, books, evocative pictures and movies, in which these characteristics are observed. The selected topics will produce interesting analysis and will lead to new creative and place-based design solutions. They are aimed to serve as transversal guiding topic through the whole project.

The idea is to analyse the urban body and its socio-economic and cultural development observing and studying good practices and how the city image is told and illustrated by cinematography.

Theoretical texts 1.

Maurizio Carta (2017) Augmented City.

A Paradigm Shift. Trento-Barcelona, List Lab. 2.

François Jullien (2016) Il n’y a pas d’iden tité culturelle. Paris, Éd. de l’Herne, 2016.

3.

Richard Sennett (2013) The Open City.

Lecture at GSD Harvard 19.9.2013.

4.

Jörg Schröder, Maurizio Carta, Sarah

Hartmann eds. (2018) Creative Heritage.

Berlin, Jovis.

5.

Civic Systems Lab (2017) Designed to

Scale. Mass participation to build resil ient neighbourhoods.

6.

Ola Söderstrom (2010) “Forms and Flows

in the Contemporary Transformations of

Palermo’s City Centre”. In: M. Guggen-

heim, O. Söderström eds. (2010) Re-Shap ing the City. How mobility shapes arch itecture and urban form. pp. 189-209.

Fig. 1. Studio area of the city of Palermo: Danisinni, Unesco World Heritage site Zisa Castle, Cuba, the Cantieri Culturali alla Zisa

Reference projects 1.

Braga_GeNeRation Lab // Saint Étienne_

Cité du design 2.

Favara_Farm Cultural Park 3.

Limerick_Draw out // Zaragoza_Este no

es un solar 4.

Palermo_Palermo Atlas and Manifesta 5.

Paris_Magasins généraux, La Villette and

Pantin areas Paris, Re-inventer Paris 6.

London_Livesey exchange Movies / documentation films 1.

Cityzen, Ruggero Gabbai, 2015 2.

“Detropia”, Heidi Ewing, Rachel Grady, 2012 3.

La mia Battaglia, Franco Maresco, 2016 4.

Idea di un’isola, Roberto Rossellini, 1967 5.

Angela, Roberta Torre, 2002 6.

Shooting Palermo, Wim Wenders, 2002.

Zoom phenomena Inside of 2 x 2 km focus phenomena - information graphics, observing characters of element, pattern, relationality

Leading questions - boundaries analyses (mainly focused on physical limits such as walls, separations caused by topography, infrastructures mainly used by cars, and intangible separations made by “social stratifications� or demography).

- human flows (flows of cars, bikers and pedestrians in different times of the day, in order to observe the way in which this place is lived and crossed) - creative flows (to observe the concentration or the lack of associations, artisans and cultural initiatives).

Palermo Pecha Kucha 1.

Phoenician, Greek, Roman Traces 2.

Arabic Traces 3.

Norman Traces

Mapping / layers 1.

Settlements and Urban fabric 2.

Public space and Infrastructures 3.

Economy and production 4.

Tourism and Heritage 5.

Social structure, demography & migration 6.

Culture, research, and education

Overall aim: identify dynamics, boundaries, flows 1.

Danisinni community 2.

Cantieri Culturali alla Zisa 3.

University Campus 4.

World Heritage Sites: Castello alla Zisa,

Palazzo Normanni, overall WH polycen-

tric site 5.

Different urban quarters (mainly

housing), community analyses 6.

Adjoining historic centre: main poles

4.

Spanish Traces, Quattro Canti 5.

Railways/station in 19th century 6.

Historistic period, teatro Massimo,

Politeama area 7.

Art nouveau 8.

Fascism period 9.

Sacco di Palermo 10. ZEN 11.

Historic centre renewal 12.

Palermo civic renaissance since 1990ies 13. Harbours 14.

Conca d‘oro, gardens, Botanic garden 15.

Beaches and mountains 16.

Metropolitan range model 1:2000

METHODOLOGY

MAPS AND DIAGRAMS This phase is about exploring the context in Palermo through mapping techniques that are innovative compared to traditional thematic cartography in the way to visualise information and to georeference it. This step foresees a mapping of relevant layers to understand territorial dynamics and potentials. The aim is to understand and illustrate interrelations of social, cultural, and spatial dynamics in the area. In a second step, a conceptual and evocative representation of identified phenomena as motors and accelerators of urban energies will be created with diagrams, sketches, collages, photos, etc., in order to incite technical and creative mindsets and skills.

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EXCURSION AND WORKSHOP In a third step, the background of existing initiatives, living and working models, talents located in Palermo are targeted, promoting local innovation and urban openness. With the excursion and the exploratory survey, topics and places for the urban design projects are selected and examined. During the excursion some local actors will be met and interviewed. This step will be focused on the elaboration of new design solutions for the district of Danisinni and the other selected areas, in cooperation with the Department of Architecture of the University of Palermo (UNIPA). The workshop phase will be shared with the students of the Urban Design Lab of Prof. Maurizio Carta, which purpose is to define innovative design ideas and discuss about the characteristics of the city of Palermo.

Interviews, photography, descriptions, and drawing are combined for the field survey.

Timeline 4.12. travel and city tour (evening) 5.12. workshop with UniPa 6.12. workshop with UniPa 7.12. explorations and meetings, travel

DESIGN ACTIVATORS This design activators phase starts from ideas for interventions that contribute to the urban renaissance, connecting architecural scale with the urban one. In this phase urban design solutions to activate and develop creative projects are examined, deriving from the research and topics in phase 1. With this step, the role of projects and images of spatial change for planning is discussed.

With plans, sections, axonometries, sketches, and perspectives, the interventions are redrawn and reevaluated. design concept: condensators / connectors connecting architectural scale (elements) with urban design scale (patterns) DESIGN NETWORKS The design networks phase starts from territorial scenarios that display possible pathways of spatial changes, derived from maps and diagrams in phase 2. The design networks are detailed in spatial and programmatic concept, the selection of the focus area, and discussed in terms of relevance and innovation. Then, upscaling of the core interventions is targeted in regard to process and networks, elaborated with maps and diagrams. With plans, sections, axonometries, sketches, and perspectives, the interventions are redrawn and reevaluated. design concept: linkages / upscaling connection urban design scale (structures) with urban planning dimension, also beyond the area

// TIMELINE

23.10. Introduction: Jörg Schröder Programme: Federica Scaffidi

MAPS AND DIAGRAMS 06.11. Mapping - layers, and short inputs

about Palermo Lecture: The urban development of the

city of Palermo, Federica Scaffidi 13.11. Phenomena - information graphics 20.11. (mentoring day for Masters’ students) 27.11. Colloquium 1 - Mapping and Pheno- mena, with first conceptual outlook (idea model/graphics) EXCURSION AND WORKSHOP 04.-07.12 Excursion 1. City tour 2. Workshop together with UniPA 3. Fieldwork in the area DESIGN ACTIVATORS 11.12. Corrections 18.12. Colloquium 2 - Design Activators DESIGN NETWORKS 08.01. Corrections 15.01. Colloquium 3 - Design Networks 22.01. Corrections 29.01. (Thesis presentations, no courses) 05.02. Presentation ___________ 11.02. hand-in documentations

METHODOLOGY

RESEARCH AND TOPICS 30.10 Topics - reports of texts, reference projects, and film screening

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RESEARCH REPORTS These outputs aim at encouraging in-depth analysis, to argue and describe technical and artistic topics, and to promote creative representations in elaborating images. The argumentations should emphasize the four topics of the urban design studios: openness and integrativity, fragmentation, heritage and collaborative city. The reports must contain pictures, sketches, infographics and collages.

Presentation (report: 5 pages; beamer: max. 14 slides, 7 minutes), discussion, documentation

PROJECT REPORTS Contribution related to the „phase 3: excursion and workshop“ , „phase 4: design activators“ and „phase 5: design networks“.

This output aims to describe and well argue the project idea and visions, the process, the spatial development and their connections to the four topics of the urban design studios: openness and integrativity, fragmentation, heritage and collaborative city.

The reports must contain photos, field trip sketches, infographics, collages, plans, sections, axonometries, perspectives, field trip sketches.

MAPPING AND DIAGRAMS The purpose is to produce conceptual maps about the city of Palermo and the selected area, starting from the analysis of the four studio topics.

Presentation (8 pages, 5 minutes), discussion, documentation NB: pictures and images with copyright. Caption with short description, author‘s name and period.

Context interpretation: Conceptual and evocative maps Format A1 Portrait (59.8 x 84.0 cm) or own layout, with abstract text (6000 characters)

MODEL Selected Focus area (Inside of 2 x 2 km) Phenomena - information graphics, observing characters of element, pattern, relationality Model 1:2000

METHODOLOGY

// OUTPUT

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URBAN DESIGN PROJECT 1. Design activators: spatial and programmatic concept, focus area selection, relevance and innovation (1:500–1:200) 2. Design networks: upscaling process and net- works, maps, diagrams, field trip sketches (1:2.000) 3. Vision: images, plans, sections, axonometries, perspectives, field trip sketches Format A1 Portrait or own layout, with abstract text (6000 characters)

PRESENTATION Presentation (10 slides, 10 minutes), discussion, documentation

RESEARCH

THEORETICAL TEXTS

// IL N’Y PAS D’IDENTITÉ CULTURELLE - FRANÇOIS JULLIEN Randa Harani

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In the context of the return of nationalism and intensified anti-globalisation tendencies, the well-known French sinologist and philosopher François Jullien decided to write a brief essay choosing a provocative title that takes a clear stand by articulating his positions concerning current cultural policy debates. It is a response to globalism and the wide spread fear of a global uniformization or flattering of cultures, that is generally symbolized by the famous biblical analogy of the Tower of Babel (Fig.1). Methodically, Jullien chooses to clarify familiar terms such as the universal, the common, the difference, the identity, and the dialogue, which he reinterprets in favour of a dynamic identity and openness to other cultures. The ‘universal’ is based on reason and operates independently of space and time. It is not relative but absolute in its validity. Universal laws are to be discovered and to be expanded, which Jullien refers to as the ‘regulative universal’. The ‘uniform’, on the other hand, is bound by standards and stereotypes and is simultaneously subject to an economic logic which makes it essentially a perversion of the universal. It does not result from a necessity, but out of comfort. It is defined through repetition and is therefore a form of simplifying standardised production. The ‘common’, in turn, refers to ‘everything that is shared’ and has primarily political meaning. The equation or even assimilation of all things is strictly rejected, since it leads to the impoverishment of the meaning of the ‘common’. In addition, the notion of diversity is being postulated as a richness, since everything that is common, but not the same is considered extremely valuable. Furthermore, Jullien briefly discusses the threefold historical origins of the universal: in Greek philosophy, in Roman law (in

the context of civil rights), and in connection with the concept of salvation in Christianity, where all human beings are to be understood equal in front of God. The Western civilization is a reinterpretation of the universal, which has taken on different forms over the course of time.

The claim of universalism being essentially a facet of absolutism and global dominance is something the author retorts with the above mentioned concept of a regulative universal, that can never reach perfection, but finds itself in a continuous spiral of auto-correction and evolvement leading to a convergence towards the truth. In a next step, Jullien replaces the notion of differences by the term distances (French: écarts). The difference operates in a classifying, almost judgemental way and therefore prohibits the open and mutual approach. In contrast, the notion of distance introduces a mode of exploration and discovery and opens up a state of constant interdependence and openness towards one another, that could lead to a creative and beneficial outcome. The author himself admits that this small shift of definition seems undeniably abstract, yet it already causes a profound change in conventional thinking pattern.

From this perspective, there cannot be any cultural identity - as the title of the book already suggests - because there has never been a common identity or a single culture from which the different cultures have unfolded. Jullien refuses to speak of a cultural identity because the identity has a static, a self-contained immutability. However, any existing culture finds itself in an ongoing dynamic and is subjected to constant change in relation of distance and tension to other cultures. According to Jullien, there is no such thing as a unified culture from which different cultures have immerged.

enter into a reflective and also exploring dialogue.

This intermediate space is about the discovery and reflection of one’s self, but also about the other, and could lead to new and refreshing ideas and perspectives. It is therefore neither about assimilation nor about integration, but about inter-cultural discourse, -that magical space ‘inbetween’- that opens up unknown territories and stimulates and expands our creative potential (Fig.2).

RESEARCH | THEORETICAL TEXTS

There is no society with determined and complete cultural characteristics that have remained unchangeable since the beginning of their formation. In consequence, the author proposes to replace the term of cultural identity with ‘resources’. These resources are a conglomeration of diverse knowledge that can be considered as a tool or inventory available to everyone. Resources are not property - not owned by anyone - but everyone can access them at any given time without any restrictions. To demonstrate this thought, Jullien chooses the analogy of a library, that contains a huge amount of knowledge free of charge and without its content claimed to be in somebody’s possession.

There is no necessity to defend a resource, since it is nobody’s property, but on the other hand it has to be subjected to care, maintenance and active usage in order to be kept alive. The application of this particular idea results in a redefinition of familiar terminology. There cannot be such a thing as European or French culture, but rather European or French (or any other) resources, since these two elements have developed out of completely different and almost opposing historical periods.

They emerged out of the distance and interaction with the resources of Christianity and the resources of Secularism and cannot be seen as one unified monolithic block. Accordingly, not identity is exposed to the danger of standardisation through globalization but the resources are. The importance lays in the confrontation of those resources without the objective of creating a comparison or even a hierarchy.

It is preferable to take a productive distance (écarts) in which an intellectual intermediate space would arise and in which all parties can

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Sources 1. Francois Jullien: Es gibt keine kulturelle Identität, Suhrkamp Verlag, 2018 2. polylog.net/fileadmin/docs/polylog/40/40_rez_Diaconu_Jullien. pdf 3. polylog.net/?id=272

// FORMS AND FLOWS IN THE CONTEMPORARY TRANSFORMATION OF PALERMO‘S CITY CENTER - OLA SÖDERSTRÖM Ann Katrin Loewe THE AUTHOR Ola Söderström is a professor of social geography and he analysed the classical urban regime.

He separates the material dimension from the immaterial dimension of societies. Thereby he focused on changes and correlations in urban forms and flows in the latest transformation of Palermo within the last 15 years. This method allows the comparison to other historically shaped systems of action and cities.

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“FORMS AND FLOWS” In general the term “form” summarizes building forms and the design of urban public spaces. The author defines the mobility of people, capital flow and new ideas as “flow”. “Forms” are the product of a complex intersection of “flows” such as money, images and people. The resulting form can only be justified by looking for the trigger which causes the certain conditions.

CONTEMPORARY CHANGES IN PALERMO In Palermo the interconnections of “forms” and “flows” melt under local circumstances according to historically situated power struggles. Ola Söderström, particularly examines how much Palermo is receptive to trans local influences and how it developed after regime changes. He compares these influences to the following changes in architectural form and the resulting identity of the city.

Professor Söderström noticed that the agenda of a political local government is mirrored in the urban structure.

PALERMO’S DEVELOPMENT Can be divided into three Phases: The first Phase started after World War II. Then, Palermo had been a widespread destroyed city which developed from the capital of an autonomous Italian region and international capital of the Mafia to the administrative centre of Sicilian Region. This caused flows of migrants and the reorientation of the Mafia towards the building sector which became a more and more promising investment. They got a hold of the city council and oversaw of issuing binding permits which led to favouritism of Mafia related building firms and more important the uncontrolled urban sprawls which led to the destruction of architectural heritage. This time can be summarized as high profit hegemony. The Mafia had been the cause and consequence of economic depression. The second phase was initiated by the change in local politics which was caused by the murder of anti-mafia judges. The civic and political reactions led to new elections an anti-mafia political movement. With the start of it, they passed new planning regulations which based on an open economy. This included the interworking of public and private actors which led to visible changes in local development. Despite the first one being characterized by secrecy and closure the second phase was shaped by integration of external actors, ideas and capital. The third and still lasting phase started with the election of a new mayor who had a different understanding of ruling . This caused the end of the urban policy renewal. The regime started to focus on the most profitable parts which led to the development of an active pro-gentrification policy. The city got back to a high profit hegemony.

REPURPOSING -2nd GENERATION Architectural heritage is the main resource of Palermo. The Teatro Montevergini is the most religious building. It is restructured and segmented in new parts. Despite the changes the old structure got preserved. The new use is put into the old structure and stages the heritage. Due to a yearly event for kids the appreciation and awareness of architectural heritage slowly increases. It’s a form of renewal of social life.

Cities, like Palermo, have always been influenced by flows, especially by regime changes and therefore they contain different species of buildings.

The architecture and urban built form is shaped by globally circulating models and mobility. The connection of human and non-human elements is irreversible (tourism, mobility, subsidies). It concludes in urban dynamics and identity.

Sources

GLOBALISATION OF URBAN PRACTICES The conversion of the Foro Italico waterfront is slowly blurring the line between port and city.

Thereby the public area resembles the waterfront of big cities such as LA or Barcelona. Practice follows form.

COMERCIAL GENTRIFICATION The Cosco Café is a new design space which captures trends, activities and architectural style.

Traditional forms can be avoided because the interior design is only temporary and can easily be changed. There is a fine line between reproduction and original style.

1. „Forms and Flows in the Contemporary Trasformation of Palermo‘s City Center“, Ola Söderström, 2010

Fig. 1. Foro Italico - Waterfront Source. floornature.com

RESEARCH | REFERENCE PROJECTS

THE 5 CATEGORIES OF CHANGE focus on: concentration; the reuse of urban wasteland, rehabilitation of heritage buildings, open spaces; the creation or transformation of public spaces, tourism, regional and cultural awareness; misfortunes and potential. These goals should be achieved by mechanisms of action such as enhancing mobility -especially for students- and their contribution of new ideas, general regime change and the mindset of being more cosmopolitan. These flows led to new architectural and urban forms. The overall goal of Sicily and Palermo is globalisation. This should enhance the city’s image, increase the population and lead to a property boom which could cause urban change. To accomplish that the regime tries to increase the flows which result by higher awareness of the activities, the cultural and architectural heritage and their attractivity.

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// DESIGNED TO SCALE - CIVIC SYSTEMS LAB Jan Zobel

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The Book “Designed to Scale” is a collaborative report about “The Open Works Project”. The research project was a prototype approach to a new type of “participation culture” in West Norwood, Lambeth, London. The aim was to discover if a high density of this type of micro participation activities, would be able to improve neighbourhoods for their residences. The actors were the Civic Systems Lab who conducted the research, the Lankelly Chase foundation who funded the research and the Lambeth City Council. From the 15th of February 2014 to the 15th of February 2015 a total of 20 practical projects were created in West Norwood with up to 2000 participants each. The projects were focused on sustainability, sharing of knowledge and goods and a new participatory approach to urban development to create resilient neighbourhoods.

The project was designed to assess the scalability of this approach. The new approach differs form other forms of development by being only peerto-peer. This means there is no hierarchy inside the system, so everyone is on an equal level. Whoever participates can share his or her knowledge and learn from everyone else. In this approach sex, age, ethnicity or wealth do not matter, as anyone can join in at any time they want to or just take a look if they are interested. All activities had to be easily accessible and low commitment. The main idea behind the project is to find new strategies that should emphasise on getting the resources more efficiently to the people, who need them the most and creative solutions for a future proof society and environment. These new tactics need to be reliable and on a large scale to create resilient communities. The analysis of the project led to multiple key findings. The most important one was that the combination of the new participation

model, re-designed infrastructure and a platform approach has the potential to scale participation beyond current limitations. It takes three years to build a fully developed prototype of high levels of micro participation that could be the key to creating resilient neighbourhoods. But for the system to work the threshold of 10-15 percent of residents must participate in these events regularly (about three times a week). There should be different types of activities with varying amount of commitment needed to create a fully developed ecology. The approach has the potential to create a new level of collaboration between citizens, government and other institutions which causes this approach to be very cost effective. The benefits of this projects are vast and can help individual people and their neighbourhood in general. The main advantages for individuals are saving money because they do not need to buy everything and can instead lend things to each other or buy in bulk.

Mental and physical health are improved due to learning, outdoor activities and social integration.

The neighbourhood becomes much more attractive as a place to live as well as more secure. Many informed citizens are engaged in decision making and commissioning. Communities become more cohesive and allow more equality of opportunity.

The book gives a great overview over the project and a potential future for neighbourhoods. The participatory approach allows equal standings in the information era which will lead to more engagement within communities. For city planners the project shows a new way of thinking and many examples that can lead to stronger communities.

Sources Designed to Scale, Civic Systems Lab Fig. 1-2: Designed to Scale, Civic Systems Lab

RESEARCH | THEORETICAL TEXTS 57

Fig 1. Vision

Fig. 2 The Participatory Approach

REFERENCE PROJECTS

// GNRATION, BRAGA Mara Piel

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The GNRation project is located in Braga in Portugal, which is the European Youth Capital and is also known as the religious centre of Portugal with its many churches (Figure 1). The GNRation Lab is a result of the Braga 2012 - Euopean Youth Capital as it is a centre for cultural and creative dynamics. The building also deals with the topic of heritage due to its history as former GNR (“Guarda Nacional Republicana”) building, which was the military police. The new programme and architecture should be an indifferent piece in the city puzzle to show what it is - a space that lives from dynamics. The new interventions in the architecture underline these dynamics. In its former use the building was very closed to the street and introverted. The structure got opened up as the long wall got replaced by a fence, which allows people to see what happens inside and outside and allows a kind of communication.

What is more the facade also allows more visual connection between the city and the building by opening it with windows and cutting out the edge at the entrance to mark it. Connecting the building further to its surrounding through design the floor in the courtyard extends to the sidewalk so it functions as a kind of highlight (Figure 2).

These modifications were planned by the architect Carvalho Araujo. The main motif the architects worked with was the occupation, which is visible in the patios. It was the mission to explore the boundary between the existing structure and new connections, which should take over special places like the facade. For this Carvalho Araujo designed a structure of frames to build on the existing facade to put plants on it (Figure 3). In order to make the patios more perceptible and better usable for the outdoor cinema, that has amongst other

RESEA

things it’s place there, the floor is in some parts topographically raised. All in this building should create a controversy and deal with the dynamic and changing spirit of the youth.

“GNRation is a structure of creative research, a space dedicated to the creation, production and consumption of artistic and creative, inspiring and attracting talent, strengthening the position of Braga in the Creative Industries Cluster. Permeable to the multiple identities of the arts and public, will grow as a body of creation, according to the rhythms and languages of its users.“ Sources https://www.dezeen.com/2013/09/07/gnration-by-carvalho-araujo/ http://www.gnration.pt/informacao/#gnration-o-que-e https://www.carvalhoaraujo.com/en/portfolio/gnration-i/ http://bragapophostel.blogspot.com/2013/04/?view=classic

Bairro das Fontainhas

Bairro das Andorinhas

São João do Souto

Sé

centro de Braga

Fig. 1. Localisation / Braga Source: Elaboration of Google Earth data

RESEARCH | REFERENCE PROJECTS

SEARCH

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Fig. 2. Interventions // Opening and connecting Source: dezeen.com

"a structure of creative research, a space dedicated to the creation, production and consumption of artistic and creative, inspiring and attracting talent, strengthening the position of Braga in the Creative Industries Cluster. Permeable to the multiple identities of the arts and public, will grow as a body of creation, according to the rhythms and languages of its users."

Fig. 3. “Occupation“ of framework Source: author‘s elaboration, bragapophostel.blogspot.com

// CITÉ DU DESIGN - SAINT ETIENNE Mara Piel

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The complex called Cité du Design is located in Saint-Etienne in France. The city is known as city of design and is part of the UNESCO-Creative Cities Network. The surrounding neighbourhood has various programmatic components like education with the university and laboratory in the north and south, living and services in the west and sports and culture in the east (Figure 1.). The Cité du Design is on the site of the former munitions factory called ”National Manufacture d’Armees”.

Most of these old buildings got renovated for accommodating the School of Art and Design of Saint-Etienne (École supérieure d’Art et Design de Saint-Étienne). It was an aim to reuse these buildings and work with the industrial heritage, which nowadays co-habits with contemporary architectural constructions. One of these new constructions is the observation tower, which gives with its 32 metres height a good view all over city and its surrounding as it also works as a kind of landmark (Figure 3). The other intervention is the so called Platine which contains more programme and functions as a connector between the city and the rest of the complex especially because of the position at the tram station. As it acts as a switchboard that links communication and facilities the Platine enables a collaborative city (Figure 1). It can also be called a Monospace with the flexibility it opens up not only functions but also in its facade. The partly translucent skin regulates climate an lightning however it is needed in the particular occasion. Concerning the programme there are two multifunctional rooms for various exhibitions, a foyer, seminar rooms for the students and for public workshops, an auditorium, a greenhouse and a media and material library (Figure 4). So this whole complex

is a platform of higher education, research, economic development and promotion of art and design with the mission of raising awareness in terms of these issues to create an openness and integrativity.

Sources https://www.world-architects.com/en/lin-architects-urbanists-berlin/project/cite-du-design https://archello.com/project/cite-du-design https://www.lin-a.com/gallery/arms-manufacture-design-lin-project-orta-platine-saint-etienne/cite-du-design

La Terrasse-BergsonCarnot

Crêt de Roc

Jacquard Préfecture centre ville

Fig. 1. Localisation Source: Elaboration of Google Earth

Fig. 2. Cité du Design Source: designcities.net

RESEARCH | REFERENCE PROJECTS

Fig. 3. Restauration and new buildings // Heritage and connector Source: Elaboration of biennale2010.citedudesign.com data

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ry

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ouse greenh

materi

foyer

rium

audito

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Fig. 4. Programme Platine Source: detail.de

s

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library

// THE LIMERICK DRAWOUT Jacob Pennington

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The Limerick DrawOut was founded by Catherine O´Halloway who is a Youthworker and Paul Fowly a member of the Limerick City Council. In their own Words, it is an urban regeneration initiative that transformed the cities landscape since 2012.

The Projects Vision is to imagine a City that uses Space by seeing beyond limitations of function by creating pieces of contemporary Urban Art. To get there the project invited a number of international Artist to transform some of the cities derelict sites.

By including the community it legitimises the project as a local initiative. DrawOut facilitates discussions, masterclasses and provides volunteer opportunities for anyone who wants to participate.

The main Goal is to mark Limerick as a focal point on the global map of urban art. The Artist Maser for example transformed a run down gas station into a pop art installation. Throughout the city Murals by urban artists can be found.

Photo 1. Limerick Gas Station

Photo 2. Limerick Gas Station - Maser

Sources Limerick Draw Out https://drawout.openpoint.ie/ https://www.limerick.ie/discover/whats-on/festivals/draw-outurban-art-festival-2019 https://www.limerick.ie/discover/eat-see-do/arts-culture/artgalleries/draw-out-urban-exhibitionist https://www.ilovelimerick.ie/draw-limerick-urban-art/ https://www.breakingnews.ie/discover/urban-eyesore-in-limericktransformed-by-famous-artist-maser-619154.html

RESEARCH | REFERENCE PROJECTS 65

Photo 3. Rise by SEK 2

Photo 4. Rise by SEK 2

// ESTE NO ES UN SOLAR Jacob Pennington

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Esto es no es un solar (This is not a plot / This is not an empty site) is a project in Zaragoza that started in 2009 to clean up the historic center and reduce the unemployment rate. In collaboration with citicens, community groups and the municipality the architects Patricia di Monte and Ignacio Gravalos Lacambra worked on ideas to reanimate spaces through out the old town of Zaragoza.

The name „Esto no es un solar“ encourages people to imagine what can happen in each space, proposing new projects and creating places that they care about. In the recent years the project has since expanded beyond the historic city centre to 28 sites beyond the historic city centre. In total it makes 42.000m² of transformed space. Projects include community gardens, resting places and even small forests.

The project focuses on three stages.

1. find the places 2. clean it up 3. design a concept and start building

Sources: Zaragoza estonoesunsolar https://www.archdaily.mx/mx/02-349303/esto-no-es-un-solarreconvirtiendo-parcelas-vacias-en-espacio-publico-parte-ii https://www.thepolisblog.org/2013/02/esto-no-es-un-solar.html https://www.collaborative.city/item/zaragoza-esto-no-es-un-solar/ http://www.estonoesunsolar.es/

Photo 1. Este es un solar

RESEARCH | REFERENCE PROJECTS 67

Photo 2. Este es un solar

Fig. 1. Scheme

PALERMO ATLAS + MANIFESTA 12 Marie-Sophie Waldminghaus

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As preparation for Manifesta 12, an urban study of the city of Palermo was made and published as a book: the Palermo Atlas. Manifesta is a nomadic biennial in Europe, that changes its location every two years (Figure 3). The host locations are typically unexpected ones, reflecting Europe and its current challenges. Each Manifesta has a threemonth long exhibition, but various connected activities are done in a period of about two years.

In 2018, the twelfth Manifesta took place in Palermo, a city with a complex anatomy and history, selected for its representation of two current main topics in Europe: migration and climate change. The preparative urban study was done by the architectural office OMA. As foundation, stories of the city and its residents were gathered and supported by data. Its outcome, the Palermo Atlas, ought to build the theoretical framework for the Manifesta and mediate between it and the city. It identifies the challenges, needs and expectations as well as the objectives and wants to ensure that the biennial achieves a sustainable impact. As ‘atlas’, the book wants to offer a system of techniques to be able to read the city while leaving space for different interpretive approaches. Manifesta 12 ran under the slogan ‘The Planetary Garden: Cultivating Coexistence’. It ought to work as an incubator supporting the city to develop and revitalise its identity by cultural interventions. It took place in gardens, historical, sacred, modern and abandoned places all over the city, but mostly in the city centre (Figure 1).

The programme was structured in three main sections: ‘Garden of Flows’, ‘Out of Control Room’ and ‘City on Stage’. The Garden of Flows explored the concept of gardens as places of adaptation and coexistence of different types of life, where

nature and culture cooperate, traces of migration become visible and difference and diversity is a strength. This topic was inspired by the painting ‘Veduta di Palermo’ (View of Palermo) (Figure 2), created 1875 by the palermitan painter Francesco Lojacono, which seems to show a typical and entirely Sicilian scenery but is actually made up of plants from all over the world. The Out of Control Room gave an insight and analysis of power in the present system of global flows. Therefore, data were made accessible and invisible networks visible. Within the framework of City on Stage, different aspects of contemporary urban living were observed and existing, but not realised, projects and plans were developed, aiming to expand into sustainable long-term initiatives.

The Palermo Atlas consists of different chapters forming three sections. The first section contains Chapter 1 - 5 and shows the narrative of Palermo, its historical role and developments. Chapter 6 8 form the second section, where the bonds at various levels between the city and its history are explored and shown through media, architectural evidences and memories. The third section is made of the ninth chapter ‘Journey’. It gives a detailed report of the work done for the research and identifies representative stories and sites. It also gave a preselection for sites, routes and projects for the Manifesta. The displayed information resulted from four months of fieldwork and several meetings and conversations with citizens and are presented in data, diagrams, maps, stories and pictures (Figure 4). As shown in the Palermo Atlas, the city can be called open and integrative.

Palermo was repeatedly further developed and redefined by the waves of migration from the Ancient Greeks, the Arabs and the Normans, to the

wide-ranging biennial programme Through various exhibitions, performances, events and interactive projects, it tried to respond to the needs of the city and form the basis of a long-term transformation.

Palermo Atlas gives an overview and summary over the city, that enables a better understanding of the city’s characteristics and its background and contextualizes these. Overall, it becomes apparent, that Palermo must face several issues as well as the current global challenges, but also contains various potentials. As all the influences of the past formed its unique structure, new inputs and influences dealing with the presented issues could develop the city further while keeping its identity.

Sources Manifesta 12: PALERMO ATLAS (Humboldt Books) https://oma.eu/projects/manifesta-12-palermohttps://oma.eu/news/oma-unveils-palermo-atlas-an-interdisciplinary-urban-study-of-palermo-commissioned-by-manifesta-12 https://oma.eu/publications/palermo-atlas https://manifesta.org/2015/11/m12-to-be-hosted-in-palermo/ https://manifesta.org/biennials/about-the-biennials/ http://m12.manifesta.org/planetary-garden http://m12.manifesta.org/why-palermo/

RESEARCH | REFERENCE PROJECTS

recent arrivals from Northern Africa, Southeast Asia and the Middle East. The city has always been a laboratory of diversity. Its nature, culture, architecture and streets are the product of the synthesis of these various influences and cultures. The variety of influences led to a fragmentation of the city. Out of centuries of encounters and exchanges between civilizations, a complex mosaic of fragments and identities emerged. Therefore, the city of today can be considered as an ‘archipelago of the global’.

It is not a fully globalized city but contains diverse global conditions next to each other.

Additionally, there are many abandoned places within the city, standing there as fragments of the past. An interesting example are the ruins of bombings from the second world war, which might appear somehow impressive at first glance, but are an integral part of the city for the Palermitans. All these fragments and the diverse historical influences compose the city’s heritage. There is a high range of World heritage sites in Palermo with its highest density in the historic city centre. The UNESCO describes parts of the Arab-Norman Palermo as a ‘representative example of coexistence, interaction and interchange between different cultural components of heterogeneous historical and geographical origin’. Unlike the World heritage sites, the bombed ruins are involuntary monuments. The Italian writer Giorgio Vasta regards them as a kind of memorial to everything that has not happened in recent years. The Manifesta 12 was a collaborative project for the city. It worked in a truly interdisciplinary way with local communities and transformed the outcome the Palermo Atlas in an accessible and

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Fig. 1. Main venues Manifesta 12 Palermo.

Source: author‘s elaborations with data from https://oma.eu/projects/manifesta-12-palermo

Fig. 2. Veduta di Palermo. Francesco Lojacono (1875)

RESEARCH | REFERENCE PROJECTS

Fig. 3. Locations of Manifesta biennial.

Source: author‘s ellaboration with data from https://manifesta.org/biennials/about-the-biennials/

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Fig. 4. Map of communities, Palermo Atlas, OMA. Source: https://www.archdaily.com/875036/

Fig. 5. Manifesta 12, Quattro Canti Palermo.

Source: https://oma.eu/projects/manifesta-12-palermo

// MAGASINS GÉNÉRAUX Leona Schubert

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Magasins Généraux is a creative hub close to Paris, in the little city of Pantin, at the Canal de l’Ourcq.

(Fig. 1). It is based in an old industrial building.

Before the building got transformed for its current use, it had a long history. In 1931 the building opened as a warehouse to store alcohol and foodstuffs from French colonies, mainly grain and flour which is why it got its nickname “Breadbasket of Paris”. In 1958 it operated at full capacity, with more than 120 employees. The goods were brought in by lorry and barge, which is why the location right at the canal was so important. Between the 1970s and 1990s the building became unsuitable for the modern way of storing goods. Additionally the close location to the city didn’t seem right anymore. (Fig. 2, 3) Thus the activities stopped in the beginning of the 2000s. The building was completely abandoned and became a playground for graffiti artists. The special architecture with many construction details, like big concrete pillars, which get thinner with each level of the building, in combination with the graffiti soon gave the building a new reputation. (Fig. 4) In 2016 the ad agency BETC opened Magasins Généraux, after renovating the whole structure. The spirit of the building, from its former life as a warehouse and a canvas for artists, was kept. Most of the structural elements are still on show and used to create a special industrial environment. (Fig. 5, 9) The big former storing spaces offer a perfect surrounding for art and culture events of any kind. Furthermore the cultural heritage and character of the house as a graffiti hub was kept by photographing the whole building from different perspectives before the renovations and recreating it in 3D to make it virtually experiencable on graffitigeneral.com.

Additionally the website of the creative hub links

to that time by including graffiti elements.

With the renovation, the building got a second life as a creative hub, workplace and space for the public. Now the venue is home for many residents who all offer something unique to its life and programming. The main resident is BETC advertising agency who have the goal to help brands moving with the times while cementing their reality in a constantly evolving world. Another resident are Le Média Lab 93, a cooperative incubator that helps the next generation to express itself with various forms of media. Next is cneai = a national centre for contemporary art which provides an open platform for communities to form and offers a helping hand to artists. Le Poste General, a podcast factory, makes podcast about everyday life from a unique point of view. Artagon acts as a springboard for young artists. They organise an international encounter for art school students.

Lastly the record label The Farting Bear makes and produces albums and musical events for kids and their parents. All those residents of magasins généraux set out to design a creative, artistic and evolving space which brings people together. The leitmotif is to push against boundaries in order to explore the matters that move modern society.

Under this concept different festivals, exhibitions, talks, workshops, publications and more are being showcased by the residents using different types of art and expression. These happenings are marked by different artistic seasons which generally go on for two to three months and are free of charge for everyone. The building in divided into two main parts, the upper floors which are used as offices by the residents for their everyday business and the groundfloor which is open to the public and hosts distinct spaces for different events.

commissioned photography was invited to exhibit the work of its 2018 winners. Another exhibition held this year was “ARTAGON.IV - Heading East!” which showcased works of international art school students. Furthermore the book “Cantine Général” was published under the roof of Magasins Généraux. It is about eating culture, from primary school refectories to corporate restaurants and tries to decrypt them. Magasins Généraux acts as a catalyst for encounters between artists and the public. It contributes to the emerging area of Pantin in Greater Paris as the local residents can use this space for creative inspiration.

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The first area is the Welcome Hall and Newsstand.

It is the initial space visitors and residents encounter and it is used as a gateway to the other parts of the building. Additionally publications of Magasins Généraux and the current programme are being sold in the newsstand. (Fig. 6) The second space is Dock B which invites to mingle, get creative and enjoy art and good food. It consists of a coffee shop, food stalls and many tables and chairs which can be used as workplaces in a sense of a functional office as well as a place for a social coffee break do create new ideas. (Fig. 7) The third space is the Grand Salle which is the biggest area in the building and used for cultural programming like exhibitions and events. It is overlooking the Canal de l’Ourcq as well as the street and connects those two areas surrounding the building. Additionally this prominent position in the building makes it visible on the outside and lets passers see some of the happenings inside, especially by night. (Fig. 8) The fourth and last space thus far is Les Petite Magasins, an open air market at the canal. It is intended to make people aware of food and its production, logistics and pricing. This year’s programme included in the first season an exhibition and festival called “Par amour du jeu 1998-2018” which was a joint celebration of the 20th anniversary of France’s World Cup in Russia. Artists explored the links between creativity, football and society over the period of 1998 2018. The second season introduced the exhibition and festival “Future of Love” which considers the possible development of love and sexuality linked to new technology, scientific advances and the evolution of practises, customs and ideas.

Additionally the Ooshot Award was showcased at Magasins Généraux. The first price dedicated to

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Sources magasinsgeneraux.com graffitigeneral.com dezeen.com

Fig. 1. Location of Magasins Généraux, close to Paris Source: authors‘ elaborations with data from Google maps

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Fig. 2. Magasins Généraux as warehouse (n.y.)

Fig. 3. Magasins Généraux with employees (n.y.)

Source: https://magasinsgeneraux.com/en/history

Source: https://magasinsgeneraux.com/en/history

Fig. 4. Magasins Généraux as graffitii hub Source: Herve Abbadie, https://www.dezeen.com

Fig. 6. Magasins Généraux Welcome Hall

Source: Phillipe Garcia, https://www.dezeen.com

Source: Dorian Prost, https://magasinsgeneraux.com

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Fig. 5. Magasins Généraux rooftop garden

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Fig. 7. Magasins Généraux Dock B

Fig. 8. Magasins Généraux La Grande Salle

Source: bobosvoientdouble , http://my-best-shopping.net

Source: Dorian Prost, https://magasinsgeneraux.com

Caption

Fig. 9. Magasins Généraux after renovations Source: Herve Abbadie, https://www.dezeen.com

// LONDON_LIVESEY EXCHANGE Benjamin Beil

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This reference project is situated in the Southeast of London where sixty vacate garages on the Ledbury Estate, formed by three tower blocks of social housing on Old Kent Road, were planned to be transformed into the so called „Livesey Exchange“. From 2015 and ongoing the project is being developed by residents from the Unwin and Friary Estate - Nicholas Okwulu, director of social enterprise Pempeople in collaboration with Ulrike Steven, director of architecture practice what if: projects. The Pempeople team have led similar transformative locally-focused employment schemes already in Brixton. For the start of this undertaking the financial strategy was the crowdsourcing of capital funding to first renovate the garages in the extent of making them safe for public access and use, installing sanitary objects and adding signage. Further steps were securing more funding for the construction of workshops, studios, training kitchens and roof repairs. The funding was mainly supported by the GLA Mayor of London pledge, Spacehive crowdfunding, Airbnb, Southwark Tenant Fund but also by many neighbouring residents. About 1300 square meters of neglected space were to become a vibrant community hub with a programme of activities for everyone in the neighbouring surroundings.

An Arcade of workshops, studios, multifunctional spaces and a training kitchen linked to a sports pitch. A multifunctional space and café form the main entrance front he Old Kent Road providing desk space for flexible working, meetings, events, and socialising. Livesey Exchange addresses the lack of community spaces in the area and the need thereof. It seeks to create a dynamic space for people of diverse backgrounds come together informally through organised programmes. As

more housing projects are being realised in the vicinity Livesey Exchange will back local businesses and residents by providing a place where people can socialise, learn new skills and have access to advice and training in an area with high youth unemployment and low levels of educational attainment. The importance of the involvement of local communities in the development of such an area as it evolves is crucial in the aspect of effective participation and benefits from coming changes. Networks of operating manufacturers on Old Kent Road will be newly formed and/ or strengthened. The Feminist Library will move there with part of their collection and will present a complimentary educational programme. The unusually sculpted podium of the Ledbury Estate forms the roof to the unused garages below connecting three tower blocks and providing great views across to the historic gasometers on Old Kent Road. It is a public space linked to a sports pitch opposite Camelot School and populated by hexagonal and triangular roof-lights that used to illuminate the garages below but are now covered.

This sculptural urban landscape with dramatic views is void of the many people who live here.

The garages below as well as the external shared spaces could become an asset to residents of the estate and to the wider community. However, after the catastrophic Grenfell Fire in 2017 and due to similar building hazards on the Ledbury Estate, there has been a change of plan concerning the site of „LEX“. Construction works couldn’t commence in the garages and an alternative site on Old Kent Road was found. Still in close proximity to the Ledbury Estate the new location on the corner of Jame’s Street provides a plot for a temporary building that can accommodate the

RESEARCH | REFERENCE PROJECTS Fig. 1. Axonometric. Source: Author‘s elaborations on whatifprojects.com

Fig. 2. Map of the Old Kent Road area. Source: author‘s elaboration on whatifprojects.com

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Livesey Exchange Programme for approximately another 10-15 years. The focus of the Livesey Exchange on skill building and creating space for local communities to come together continues to drive the project and translates into the proposed construction method and processes that allows for the participation of non experienced people into the making on site. With regard to the first design studio topic - openness and integrativity - the Livesey Exchange functions as an excellent example with its focus on social engagement of the local communities, the economic idea behind the strengthening of local manufacturers and businesses and the overall impact it brings to the social fabric of the area. The people that live the place are encouraged to participate and take part in an expanding programme of acquiring new skills to which they otherwise would not have any other or better access to. Thus, the Livesey Exchange actively counteracts the low levels of educational attainment and high levels of youth unemployment.

The second design studio topic - fragmentation expresses itself in the Southwark area on Old Kent Road in the clear boundaries between housing quarters and industrial space. The weakness of the area is the lack of commercial spaces which should stir up the housing areas to a beneficial degree so that local businesses would settle in the area and counteract the social and economic problems of the communities. The positive aspect of the Livesey exchange is the renovation and use of an existing built structure to accommodate the creative energies that come together in this place.

Prior to this social enterprise, the garages were totally void of the people that lived in the adjacent three tower blocks. Architecturally speaking, the structural or formal prepositions were laid out already by the old built site.

Referring to the idea of Creative Heritage, the Livesey Exchange offers a huge amount of intangible heritage by bringing and forming the local communities together with the skillset attainment of many local manufacturers, trainers and educational services. This strongly references back to the idea of openness and integrativity.

Collaborative City as an idea construct of activating elements, energies and networks applies to the Livesey Exchange in the urban transformative nature and the intangible sharing spaces for the local communities that essential make up the immediate city that they live in.

Sources http://www.liveseyexchange.com http://www.what-if.info/livesey-exchange/ http://www.spacehive.com/OKRstudios http://www.designcurial.com/news/community-led-regeneration http://www.volunteerpeckham.org.uk/livesey-exchange

Source: liveseyexchange.com

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Fig. 3. example of a workshop with access to power tools.

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Fig. 4. example of a motorbike repairshop.

Source: liveseyexchange.com

Fig. 5. vacant garages prior to renovation.

Source: liveseyexchange.com

MAPPING AND DIAGRAMS

// SETTLEMENTS AND URBAN FABRIC Benjamin Beil, Eduard Mica

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The urban fabric of our cities defines the image of the social development along the time and create the frames of our interaction in the public space. In order to get a deeper understanding of the urban fabric, we chose to make a direct comparison with the textile fabrics. The textile fabric reflects the style and the aesthetics of our clothes and the quality of our environment. The variety of saw types and the density of stiches transmit a unique feeling and set us in a certain mood. Like the structure of the textile fabric, we understood the urban fabric as a witness of the history that shows the different stages of our social culture. The white “holes” on the urban figure plan represent spaces of exchange, where people live, interact and collect experiences. The holes are not just a sequence of rhythms in order to create a pattern, they create a complex system of relations that reflect the way the place is used and the types of social activities that are taking place there. Firstly, in order to understand or to identify the different stages of development we try to find recurrent regular patterns in the city structure of Palermo and then to analyse every category of theme.

The old town is defined by the big density of the buildings and the small streets between theme.

The organic shaped streets structure reflects the development along of many thousands of years and the pragmatic functionality of the spaces dedicated for social activities. The rounded streets inspire the feeling of continuous movement and force the passengers to “interact” with the facade of the buildings on the both sides of the street.

This new perspective of the buildings that are not in front of you but seems to be, create the atmosphere of community and set de frame for a

solid social identity.

Secondly, we leave the old town and try to find different or similar patterns that complete the mosaic of the urban fabric. We identify same new structures that are inspired by the old town density but on a more regular basis of lines. A nowadays well-known pattern is the modern grid that represent the footprint of the latest stage of development and reflect the pragmatic structure of the functionality. The most visible areas on the plan are the borders between the patterns that introduce a new typology, like a synthesis of the two stages. The borders look like a new composition of random elements coming from different patterns that mark points of incoherence in the urban fabric and create undefined spaces (like holes). Most of these holes represent cultural or social attraction points, but their strong borders to the environment diminished their meaning in the fabric and isolate them from interaction with the different social structures of the city. Another very significant typology are the big holes created from “strong” functions (education, hospitals, army, administration, shopping centres etc.) of the city. These big holes are an oversized modern interpretation of the urban spaces within the old town, where the places create a coherent system of street that connects the functions and optimise the efficiency between theme. The borders of the new holes are very strong and the building inside theme look like unorganised fragments of an old pattern that no longer exists. On the one hand these functions get a privileged position in the fabric and set a clear statement in the local identity, but on the other hand they set a barrier between the city life and their functional

people interaction, that in the past did not have the opportunity to communicate, are new social activities that create new bonds between theme on a larger scale and creates new economic opportunities. A place that did not belong to someone, but to everyone, is a place of unformal communication and a place where new social values are developed. When people have a platform where they feel comfortable within the community, their become more social active and identify themselves with the community.

RESEARCH | MAPPING AND DIAGRAMS

importance in the fabric.

Unlike the spaces in the old town, this new pattern establishes also a new scale of fragmentation.

The dispersion of the holes in the urban fabric did not just break the graphic interaction of pattern but create a physical barrier between the patterns around theme. The interaction between the different patterns is limited and the exchange of perspectives took place on a very formal way.

The building processes of the new hybrid are now impossible. Unlike the points of incoherence where the neighbourhoods could find a middle ground in order to create this new hybrid form of social structure, in these isolated holes of the fabric the different parts need to sacrifice a bit of their space or to open the borders/boundaries in order to create new connections. We find the hybrid zones very interesting because of their ability to adapt to the different needs of the users and of their power to create a mediation stage between the different perspectives of the neighbourhoods.

The hybrid zones are working like open systems and are defined by diversity and communication.

Unfortunately, on a bigger zoom on the plan we can recognise that in many cases this place (for exchange) is isolated like a fortification. The accessibility is a main problem in many structures of the city of Palermo. Very high walls and other barriers divide the hybrid zone in many slices that are considered part of one neighbourhood which isolated theme from the rest. Every neighbourhood have one slice as an extension of their space, not as a common ground to interact, to exchange and at the end to collaborate. The main potential that we saw in the hybrid zones is the function of refreshing the social activities. The products of

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Sources https://www.google.de/maps/place/Palermo,+Italien/

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Fig. 1. Urban patterns

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Fig. 2. Palazzo della Zisa and Cantieri Culturali Source: https://www.google.de/maps/place/Palermo,+Italien/

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Fig. 3. University Campus Source: https://www.google.de/maps/place/Palermo,+Italien/

Fig. 4. 46 Reggimento Trasmissioni and Polizia Stradale Source: https://www.google.de/maps/place/Palermo,+Italien/

// INFRASTRUCTURES + PUBLIC SPACES Mara Piel, Felicitas Mundt, Marie-Sophie Waldminghaus

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The city of Palermo is located in the west of the northern cost of Sicily in the plain called Conca d’Oro. It stretches along the shore and is bounded by the nature reserves Capo Gallo and Monte Pellegrino in the North of the city and Monte Catalfano in its East. Palermo’s city centre, the old town, is situated relatively central at the seaside.

Its area has the highest density of buildings. The region of Palermo has about one million habitants.

The harbour is located in the northern part of the centre. For long-distance travel, ferries offer connections to Tunis, Cagliari, Civitavecchia and Naples here (Figure 5). The other option for long-distance traffic is the international airport Aeroporto Internazionale di Palermo Punta Raisi ‘Falcone e Borsellino’ (PMO), which is actually not within city boundary, but located north-western.

The highway E90 goes through Palermo and surrounds its centre. It is a European route, that is part of the international e-road network. It connects the city with the airport in the east and continues along the coast to the western direction.

Several state highways (SS: strade statali) and provincial roads (SP: strada provinciale) lead radially from the city to the inland. Another state highway, the SS113, runs along the whole coast line of Palermo and further (Figure 4). There are two principal streets and main axes in the city that are crossing at Quattro Canti in the centre of the old town. One, the Via Vittorio Emanuele, is going from the coast in the south of the harbour southwestwards to the inland and changes at the edge of the old town into the state highway SS186.

The second axis consists of Via Maqueda and its extensions. It runs at right angles in northwestsoutheast direction (Figure 2). Additionally to

these main roads, the city has a narrow network of small roads, which are mainly used by private transport. In Palermo, a car is stuck in traffic at least 40 minutes per day. With almost 400.000 cars, the city has one of the highest car densities compared to its inhabitants in the whole country.

It is the most popular vehicle in Palermo. The local public transport mainly consists of busses. The bus network, which goes through the whole city, has 24 lines, In comparison, there are just four tram lines. of which three (L2,L3,L4) share parts of their route and the other (L1) is not even connected to them (Figure 1). Due to unreliable timetables and the busses being stuck in traffic a lot, they are not used to well. But also the new and well equipped tram is no taken by that many people.

Its network is not seen as an effective way to get around Palermo. The lines are only connecting parts of the city centre and some eastern parts of the city. Only the L1 is connected to the main station, but as final stop, it is only going south from there. In addition to these public transports, there are the national railway and Metropolitana, which is a kind of underground railway. Both connect the centre of Palermo with the periphery in the northeast and southwest as well as with the airport while running along the same path (Figure 3). According to a report from the beginning of 2019, there are plans for an expansion of the tram network during the next years, which would increase its value enormously. Planned are six new lines (L5-L10) connecting the existing ones with each other and going further to the northern and southern parts of the city. The new trams are intended to be quite innovative and eco-friendly.

For now, the high amount of public transport is

south of the city.

In conclusion, there must be something done against the issue of the quantity of private transport in Palermo. Even though there are some good approaches for traffic calming, these ambitions are not enough. The public transport has to be developed further to become attractive and offer a true alternative to get around the city.

If the plans for the extended tram network will be realised, it could be a large step in the right direction. It would have positive effects on the environment as well as the road safety. Less traffic would even have a positive influence on the public spaces. It would enhance the quality of those situated next to traffic routes and release new spaces to the citizens.

Sources https://www.maredolce.com/2019/03/22/come-cambiera-palermocon-il-tram-ecco-la-linea-a-stazione-stadio/ https://wearepalermo.com/getting-around-palermo/ https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palermo https://www.ilsicilia.it/nuovi-tram-a-palermo-ecco-come-cambiera-la-viabilita-le-date-foto-video/ https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/ausland/europa/wie-italiener-ordnung-ins-verkehrschaos-bringen/story/21189462 https://www.cct-seecity.com/en/2019/06/il-giardino-palermitano/ https://mobilitasostenibile.comune.palermo.it/maps.php?tp=34 https://moovitapp.com/index/de/%C3%96PNV-Piazza_Danisinni-Palermo-site_34208305-2804

RESEARCH | MAPPING AND DIAGRAMS

a big issue for the city. In 1990, there was the opening of the urban railway traffic in occasion of the football world cup, but after several expansions throughout the following years, the network got closed in 1997. During the next years, the city tried to reduce the car traffic by initiating car-free Sundays. In the past few years, this subject got enhanced by building a new low-floor tram, a bicycle route of 39 km through Palermo and a so-called ‘paywall’ around the city centre, which enabled traffic calming by establishing a fee for entering it by car. Some streets have also been converted into pedestrian zones or are car-free on certain days. The public spaces in the centre of Palermo possess different qualities (Figure 9). The urban spaces are mainly designed squares and places, often used for markets, art or as outdoor spaces of cafes and restaurants. Some smaller designed areas are located in the street and surrounded by traffic. These often lose their usability and quality due to its surroundings. While this kind of places is common in the centre, it is rare in the outskirts (Figure 6). Additionally, there is a number of areas of different sizes that are unused or only used for parking. These zones often do not have clear boundaries and merge into one another. The streets, that are temporarily car-free, get a different public quality and urban usability for that time. Palermo has several public greens in and around the centre (Figure 7). The majority is limited by opening hours or even entrance fees, but there are also many that are freely accessible (Figure 10). The green area along the river Oreto is inaccessible given the fact that it is private property, factory terrain and agricultural area.

Along the coast there are public beaches in the

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busstations tram + planned tram train junctions

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Fig. 1. Public transports Source: author‘s elaborations with data from https://www.openstreetmap.org/

ringroad „paywall“ junctions Figure 2. Street network Source: author‘s elaborations with data from https://www.openstreetmap.org/

RESEARCH | MAPPING AND DIAGRAMS Fig. 3. Public transport Source: author‘s elaborations with data from https://www.openstreetmap.org/

Fig. 4. Street network Source: author‘s elaborations with data from https://www.openstreetmap.org/

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// TOURISM Ann Katrin Loewe, Jan Zobel UNESCO Palermo is rich on heritage sites. Since 2015 nine of them were added to the UNESCO World Heritage list. This boosted the number of Visitors and image of Palermo greatly. The axonometries show the seven world heritages which are located directly in the city of Palermo (Figure 1). There are two cathedrals that are outside the city in Cefalú and Monreale which are also part of the UNESCO world heritage.

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FLOWS The world heritages belong to Arab-Norman era of Palermo, while the others come from all ages, but even the Arab-Norman buildings have gone through changes during the centuries and are now a testimony to the fruitful coexistence of different origins and religions. A grid of connections is formed through the visitor flows between the different heritage sites. The intensity of them varies. The main junctions of flows appear between the Palazzo dei Normanni and the Palermo Cathedral. Another hot spot develops downtown.

The density of general heritage sides is the highest within the city centre of Palermo. The further you get away from the port and downtown the less heritage can be found. A lot of theatres like Teatro Massimo, churches and other places are just right next to each other and a lot of the important ones are connected with public transport (Figure 2).

DISTRIBUTION The city can be divided into “heritage area” and “no heritage” parts even though there are a few heritages which are in the “no heritage areas”.

Depending on the importance of the heritage the intensity and radius of the impact on the

surrounding neighbourhood or district and their busyness differs. Most of them are in a very densely developed area inside the older part of the city. Because of the several ethnic groups and their religious orientation 69.7 percent of all heritage sites in Palermo are religious buildings. Besides churches and cathedrals this number does include temples, mosques and synagogues. The second largest category of heritage includes different types of theatres (14.48 percent), followed by museums with 9.3 percent and a few monuments, memorials and archaeological sites. These sites all are from different times and are influenced by different cultures, designs and materials. This makes Palermo a very multifaceted city with a lot of intangible qualities.

BOUNDARIES Most times these buildings influence the culture and the people in general who surround them.

Almost every heritage is only accessible during the opening hours. As soon as they are closed, they become obstacles because of stone walls, fences or other kinds of barriers. This makes it hard for the people to see them as public spaces and cultural heritage. That does not help to raise social or spatial awareness. Often an area gets separated into different parts which causes diversions, longer distances between two places or new spaces which are used differently at different times. Because of stairs and other obstacles most heritages and even churches are not accessible for handicapped people (Figure 5-8). The streets around the heritage sites can also be seen as obstacles, because of traffic and non usable space for pedestrians, even though they are the general connecting element.

TOURISTS Over one million visitors visited the city in 2016 whereby 56 percent of them were domestic visitors (Figure 9). In fig. 10 the home countries of the international tourists which visited Palermo in 2015 are listed. Shown are only the countries from which more than 4500 people had the destination in Palermo. The main countries the visitors came from are France (85700 visitors) and Germany (65972 visitors). But Palermo is an international holiday destination because of its heritage sites and people from all over the world spent their vacation there. The highest number of visitors come from Europe but there even had been some from United States (32093 visitors), Australia (8672 visitors), Japan (8228 visitors) and 7530 visitors came from Argentina. The number of Chinese visitors is below 4500 and therefore not shown in figure 9. The numbers of tourists increased over the years. The interest increase was caused by the nomination of UNESCO world heritage in 2015. Tourists mainly arrive in Palermo at the port, less by cruise ship (33040 people) than by ferries (597000 people). 356000 tourists arrived by plane and just a low number of them take the car.

MAPPING Palermo has multiple large Hotels a few smaller ones. There a lot of apartments available for rent. All these options are in and around the city centre and become very sparse the further you get away from downtown. The main tourist areas are located downtown between the train station and the harbour. As you can see in figure 1 the heritage sites and the tourist accommodations, which includes hotels, “Airbnb’s”, and similar overlap even though the hotels spread from the north to the south of the centre. For tourist the harbour area is also important as a form of transportation, densely build hotels and a welcoming city archetype for tourists. The further you get away from the centre the less welcoming the city becomes. The poorer areas of Palermo are mostly avoided by tourists, which the mapping shows.

CONCLUSION Tourism is the main part of Palermo’s economy and therefore its heritage sites and hotels are woven together into the city fabric.

Sources Manifesta12: Palermo Atlas, OMA, 2018 Fig. 1-5: Authors own work Fig. 6-8: commons.wikimedia.org, 2019

RESEARCH | MAPPING AND DIAGRAMS

IMPACT The Heritage sites are very important to Palermo’s economic stability and identity. Palermo is a city of many regime changes and different ideologies and so a capital of multiculturalism in the modern era.

Palermo’s location and development are an example for the challenges modern cities face today. It became more cosmopolitan because of the refugee crisis and the UNESCO world heritage.

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Fig.1. Heritage concentration Source: authors’ elaborations with data from google.com/earth/

Fig. 2. Adjacencies Source: authors’ elaborations with data from google.com/earth/

Source: authors’ elaborations with data from google.com/earth/

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Fig. 3. Distribution

93 Fig. 4. Street Section Santa Maria dell’Ammiraglio . Source: authors’ elaborations with data from google.com/earth/

Fig. 5. Street Section Fontana Pretoria. Source: authors’ elaborations with data from google.com/earth/

Fig. 6. Street Section La Zisa. Source: authors’ elaborations with data from google.com/earth/

Fig .7. Street Section Palazzo dei Normanni. Source: authors’ elaborations with data from google.com/earth/

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Fig. 8. Destinations Source: authors’ elaborations with data from Manifesta12: Palermo Atlas, OMA, 2018

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Fig. 9. Orgins Source: authors’ elaborations with data from Manifesta12: Palermo Atlas, OMA, 2018

// DEMOGRAPHY, SOCIAL STRUCTURE + MIGRATION Randa Harani, Leona Schubert

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DEMOGRAPHY In the year 2018 the island of Sicily has 5.027.0001 inhabitants, most of which live in the bigger cities close to the ocean. Thus the inhabitant rate close to the sea is more dense than in land.2 This is also grounded on the mountainous topography of the island, which is more prominent in the center than along the coastline (Fig.1). Palermo is the capital of Sicily which leads to its high density of inhabitants with a total number of 673.735.3 This number changed over the years. Until 2011 Palermo had less inhabitants each year. Whereas the region of Palermo and Sicily as a whole gained population.

Because of the islands position right in the middle of the Mediterenean Sea, a lot of refugees used Sicily as a first arrival point to Europe, which lead to increasing numbers of people on the island.

This was a big change for Sicily but especially for Palermo, as a lot of migrants moved to the capital city. This change was mostly noticable in 2013 when the population of Palermo increaseed by almost 3%. This number might not seem as high in a grand sheme, but for a smaller city like Palermo it meant a big change in the environment and overall happenings of the city. As most of Europe, Palermos inhabitants are getting older with time. Until the 1960’s the age diagram of Palermo was a pyramid, now it evolves to an upside down pyramid with more older than younger people (Fig.2). This is mostly based on the natural movement of inhabitants which changed drastically in 2012 where the number of deaths was higher than the number of births. The gap between the two gets higher each year (Fig. 3).4

EMPLOYMENT In 2019 the unemployment rate in Italy is quite high and represents nearly 10%. In comparison: Germanys unemployment rate is 3,1% (2019).5 The high number has its origin in the financial crisis of 2008 and is mainly due to the unemployment in the south of Italy. The south is far away from the industrialised north of the country and from the political center of Rome which offer many more job opportunities (Fig.4). Sicily relies heavily on sectors like agriculture and tourism which are insuffisant to enable a significant occupation rate to the inhabitants of the island.6 The unemployment of young people between 15 and 34 is the most remarkable. Sicily’s young population struggles the most with unemployment, representing over 40% of the national level (Fig. 4).

Since Palermo is the capital of Sicily, it can offer more jobs than the countryside, but still has a problem with unemployment. With 19% the rate is twice as high as Italys. Within this the unemployment of young people is the biggest problem as well. Many young poeple have to move out of their home country to find an occupation.

MIGRATION Sicily is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea and because of that unique geographical position it has always been the intermediary of the different civilizations that it is surrounded by. The island finds itself encircled by three different continents - Europe, Asia and Africa - and has therefore a long and rich history of invasion and conquest from different civilizations within the Mediterranean Sea. All of these civilizations, from Greek, Roman, Norman to Arab, have left some

Therefore, the number of foreign born citizens can surely be assumed to be much higher then statistically recorded. In the year 2018, the total number of migrants recorded was around 36.381. The largest communities composing this number are represented by Romanians with 19.8%, followed by Bangladeshis with 15%, Indians (Sri Lanka) with 10% and the Ghanaians with approximately 8%.

Also Moroccans and Tunisians are both represented by 10.8% (Fig.5).10 For the most part, the migrants settle in and around the historic district of the Palermo city center and strongly shape the appearance and cohabitation of the Sicilian capital.

Sources 1

ec.europa.eu (Eurostat)

2

nerellocappuccio.com

3

istat.it

4

tuttitalia.it

5

ec.europa.eu (Eurostat)

6

istat.it

7

istat.it

8

Palermo Atlas

9

tuttitalia.it

10

tuttitalia.it

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kind of traces in Sicilian architecture, art, culture and also in the development of local dialects.

However because of today’s globalised world, immigration flows have gained global scope instead of being only restricted to the Mediterranean region, as it was most likely the case for Sicily in the past centuries. For the past 40 years, continuous migration from sub-Saharian Africa and SouthEast Asia has resulted in new communities playing an important role in the demographic composition of the island. Particularly the refugee crisis has largely marked the southern part of Italy from 2014 onwards. Many refugees arrive in large numbers through the sea route at the southern ports of Italy, where they are housed for a short period of time in initial reception centers (CAS). The ports of Augusta, Lampedusa, Regio Calabri, Pazzallo and Palermo, are affected the most by the arrival of ships that carry the refugees.8 The newcomers will subsequently be redistributed all around the Italian main land after their identification and registration. Consequently, these southern harbors are not necessarily the final destination of the migrants. They are the first point of contact with European soil, giving them hope to obtain a longer right of residence and aiming for the possibility to move to economically stronger regions of Northern Italy or other parts of Europe. However, many of the migrants are stuck in the reception centers and have no chance of receiving a positive asylum. The increasing influx of migrants and refugees has also shaped the cityscape of Palermo. In 2018, the proportion of foreigners in the city was about 2.9%.9 This rate does not include naturalised citizens or illegal migrants and refugees who are not registered in the municipal office of the city.

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Fig. 1. Population density Source: authors‘ elaboration with data from ec.europa.eu

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Fig. 2. Age distribution Source: authors‘ elaboration with data from tuttitalia.it

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Fig. 3. Rate of deaths and births Source: authors‘ elaboration with data from tuttitalia.it

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Palermo (Age 15-35)

Italy (Age 15-35)

Fig. 4. Unemployment rate in Palermo and Italy Source: authors‘ elaboration with data from istat.it

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Fig. 5. Global migration flows - countries of origin Source: authors‘ elaboration with data from tuttitalia.it

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RESEARCH | MAPPING AND DIAGRAMS

// DANISINNI Mara Piel, Felicitas Mundt, Marie-Sophie Waldminghaus

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Danisinni is an area located west of the old town of Palermo. Its first historical mention was in the Arabic Palermo. The name originated assumable in that period. One of the main assumptions is that it emerged from the governor of Palermo of the 10th century Emir Abu Sa’id, who built his house atop a Danisinni spring and naming it Ayn Sa’id (arabic for Said’s spring). Another possibility is that it has its origin in his daughter’s name Aynsyndi, who is subject in many legends of Palermo. In Danisinni, there are numerous water sources.

The Papireto, the northern of the two former rivers of Palermo’s city centre, originated here.

The rivers shaped the cityscape and delineated the boundaries of the Punic Palermo. Mainly as drinkable water and for irrigation, their water used to be an important resource for the city for at least a thousand years. The banks of Papireto had rich vegetation and papyrus was cultivated there. Due to strong pollution, the rivers had to be drained in the 15th century. They were relocated in an canal underground, so that the Papireto still runs under some streets in a depth of about eight meters.

As a result, the area of Danisinni became waste land with a lower level than the rest of the city.

The sandstone quarries of Danisinni formed the biggest open pit of the city. The calcareous rock was used for the construction of many buildings including Teatro Massimo, starting in 1875, and Palazzo dei Normanni, starting in 1898. The socalled ‘pirriatura’, the stone miners, used to have their small houses along the river. After the drainage of the river, people who were not able to afford to live inside of the city walls moved to Danisinni as well. The buildings, that were often just dug into caves of the old riverbanks, had a

weak quality. Despite being located close to the centre, the area was isolated from the rest of the city and was marked by a lack in infrastructure.

Laundresses continued using the various pools and springs of Danisinni after the drainage. In 1881, a public laundry was built. It was the first in the city and acted as a meeting point until it was closed in the 1940s. With the closing of the kindergarten and the family clinic in 2007, the last institutions of the neighbourhood were shut down, which caused a lack of education in the area. The already low schooling rates became lower and the high unemployment rates higher. The present Danisinni district is limited by the streets Via Cipressi, Via Colonna Rotta and Via Cappuccini.

It has about 2000 inhabitants. The self-sufficient Danisinni commune, which can be described as a social hotspot with its unemployment rate of almost 90 percent, is located in the centre of the district in the former riverbed. Therefore, it has a lower ground level with a difference of several meters compared to its neighbourhood.

This difference in height gets even more evident through the elevations of the buildings in- and outside the commune. While there are mainly two-storied houses within the community, the surrounding buildings are up to ten stories high.

In the commune of Danisinni are not many paths reaching into this inner part of the district. There is only one narrow street which leads into it by car. This street does not have a sidewalk and ends up in a dead end at the Piazza. The second access is an unmarked staircase that breaks through a building, whereby it is only accessible for pedestrians. Due to the height difference, there are some visual connections between the larger

programmatically connect Danisinni to other parts of Palermo. Since street art is also a big topic in Danisinni, they want to establish an open-air gallery with it. Artists from all over the world such as from Argentina and Brazil go there to be a part of that. The street art gallery is intended to build a new axis connecting La Zisa with the Palazzo dei Normanni over the area of Danisinni. The Danisinni commune is a place with several challenges and potentials just as the topographic boundaries, the social and infrastructural borders and the vacant kindergarden.

RESEARCH | MAPPING AND DIAGRAMS

Danisinni district and the commune. But still, the low amount of accesses and connection results in topographic and built boundaries. The next station of public transport is a bus station that is a ten minutes walk away, which is quite far compared to the dense bus network in the rest of the centre.

Although it is located quite close to some tourist attractions, there are no tourist accommodations in the area. There is only one B&B next to the one street leading into the commune and some in the surrounding area of the larger Danisinni district. In general, there are not many visitors here.

The local supply of groceries is also rather to find around than in the area. Inside the commune is the Piazza Danisinni, which is the meeting point of the people living there. They mostly come together there in the late afternoon because of the hot temperatures around noon. The outside places and squares, just as the streets, are a common ground that replaces a private living room. Lots of chairs are standing in front of the houses and children are playing on the streets. These places are universally usable. The church in Danisinni plays a central role, not just in case of religion, but even more for the development of the past few years. It was a kind of activator. The priest got fallow land beside the area of the commune for the people, which is used for the community farm ‚La Fattoria‘ and urban gardening. He also indicated some more projects like the Circus. Both gives the people of Danisinni a kind of employment and education in these fields and stregthens not only their community but also the exchange with third parties, like the students from the university, from the Accademia di Belle Arti di Palermo and the Teatro Biondo. So nowadays there are many different projects that

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Sources https://www.danisinni.it/danisinni-community/ XRIVISTA_Danisinni.pdf https://issuu.com/samieo/docs/00_analysis_booklet_ https://www.google.com/maps/place/Palermo

Teatro Massimo

people with low income public laundry meeting point

ial

ter

ma

g

movin

material

Palazzo dei Normanni

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Fig. 1. Historical Flows

Fig. 2. Present flows

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Fig. 3. Main axes

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Fig. 4. Public infrastructure

Fig. 5. Tourism

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Fig. 6. Physical and visual accesses

fallow land urban gardening

Museo sociale

Rambla Papireto open air gallery La Fattoria farming, circus, playground

Church of Saint Agnes activator

fallow land urban gardening

Fig. 7. Activator for new projects

Fig. 8. Challenges

La Zisa, Cantieri culturali

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Danisinni

107 Dan stre isinni et a rt Palazzo dei Normanni

Fig. 9. Potential

Fig. 10. Potential

// UNIVERSITY OF PALERMO Randa Harani, Leona Schubert

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The university of Palermo (UNIPA) used to be an Academy of Studies and became an official university in 1806. A great transformation of the system happened in 1860 as the university went away from a religious focus and included schools of engineering and architecture. Throughout all of its history a lot of research in different areas was conducted. Today the university of Palermo has 48.500 students and 1.521 lecturers and offers a variety of 125 course. Additionally there are 20 libraries, 3.000 reading places, 300 digital workspaces and a total stock of 1.500.000 books, CD’s and other media to use to gain knowledge.1 The university grounds consist of three main campuses and several singular buildings which hold the Schools of studies. (Fig. 1) One campus focuses on Computer Science and Mathematics which includes a number of buildings aligned along the street of Via Archirafi. The second campus is for Medicine and Surgery which is located directly opposite to the hospital. Moreover there is the School for Political Science, Literature and Philosophy, Juridical and Economic-Social Sciences, Portfifical Theological and the Italien Language School for Foreigners which are spread over the historic center of Palermo. The third and main campus is located right at the edge of the historic center and holds several schools.2 It is the biggest agglomeration of schools in Palermo and it is situated right in the focus area for the project “Palermo Open City”. That is why further information about this campus are in the paragraph “Typology”.

In Palermo there are no specific areas where most students live, they are spread all over the city. In order to understand the movements of students

through the city in their everyday life, student apartments can help. Most of the apartments from ERSU (an organisation which helps students with organising their studies and as part of that with housing) are located in the historic center of Palermo, only some are further out. (Fig. 2) This suggests that the students living at those dormitories do not have long distances to UNIPA and move mostly in and right around the city center, as their everyday life happens there.3 Public transport helps to move through the city.

In this particular case quite a few bus lines and the metro line A lead directly to the main campus.

(Fig. 3) The metro station Palazzo Reale-Orleans is at the top of the campus. As of recently a shuttle bus leads from the station through the campus and connects the buildings which makes them easily accesable for students and staff members. Additionally there are many bus stops on the main road called Via Ernesto Basile, which are named after the different Schools. There is no direct connection from the historic center to the campus, but the transfer between two buses makes it possible.4 The campus grounds are surrounded by four main roads, as mentioned before Via Ernesto Basile, Corso Calatafimi, Viale Regione Siciliana Sud Est and Corso ReRuggero. (Fig. 4) On the one hand, those streets are an additional connection to the city, especially to the districts outside of the city center. They can be used to arrive at university by car and motorbike, which are frequently used forms of transportation in Italy. On the other hand they form an enclave around the campus towards the city. The streets act as a barrier to the surrounding residential areas, as crossing the streets seems to

and canteens.7 (Fig. 7) The area has its own infrastructure - roads and parking spaces that make every corner of the campus easily accessible by car, and which is furthermore reinforced by the university-owned shuttle service. The insulation of the system is accentuated by the surrounding development.

The housing district to the south of the campus is primarily dominated by prefabricated buildings, which can have up to ten floors. A similar picture also extends to the north. Here however, the separate block settlements seem to be much larger in size and occupy considerably more space. (Fig. 6) The park in the south-west includes the university sports center on its western edge, with several football pitches running tracks, a swimming hall and training rooms for a variety of different sport disciplines.

Sources 1

unipa.it

2

unipa.it

3

ersusassari.it

4

moovitapp.com

5

balarm.it

6

nonsprecare.it

7

unipa.it

RESEARCH | MAPPING AND DIAGRAMS

be difficult. Another barrier is the ‘Parco Orleans’ in the north-west of the Campus, which enholds a public area at the northern tip that is known for exhibiting exotic birds.5 The area next to it is only accessible for members of the School of Agricultural Sciences, primarily used as a testing ground. The third area is in possession of private owners, mostly used for gardening purposes and is not accessible for others. To the south-west of the campus is a spacious park known as the ‘Parco Ninni Cassara’. It was completed in 2011, but was sealed off again in 2014, because of the discovery of a significant asbestos contamination.6 (Fig. 5) Thus most of the green areas are not usable, accessible or even crossable for anyone. The campus is drastically cut of from the surroundings which leads to detours around the whole campus.

All in all the campus is an island in the city of Palermo. This holds problems but also possibilities.

It can be a great value for the development on the inside.

The university campus of Palermo is quite different in its typology compared to the immediate neighbouring buildings. The campus itself consists of individual and freestanding urban structures whose positions were determined by a master plan that had been launched in a competition back in the 1960s. (Fig. 6) The campus functions like a selfcontained unit, isolated from the rest of the urban typology and is designed to work like a small city within the city of Palermo itself. In this area the vast majority of offered disciplines can be found: architecture, engineering, agricultural science, economics, biology, physics chemistry as well as pedagogy, literature and philosophy. The Campus also contains dormitories, student services (ERSU)

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Fig. 1. Overview: different Schools of the University of Palermo Source: authors‘ elaborations with data from google maps

Fig. 2. Student appartments (ERSU) Source: authors‘ elaboration with data from ersusassari.it

Fig. 3. Direct lines of public transport to the main camp Source: authors‘ elaborations with data from moovitapp.com

Fig. 4. Main roads surrounding the campus Source: authors‘ elaboration with data from google maps

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Caption

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Fig. 5. Barriers surrounding the campus Source: authors‘ elaborations with data from balarm.it, nonsprecare.it, google maps

Fig. 6. Urban typologies surrounding the campus Source: authors‘ elaboration with data from google maps

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Fig. 7. Main university campus and surroundings Source: authors‘ elaboration with data from unipa.it, google maps

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Photo: Ann Katrin Loewe, Jan Zobel

EXCURSION 117

Photo: Eduard Mica

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Photo: Federica Scaffidi

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Photo: Federica Scaffidi

EXCURSION 121

Photo: Riccarda Cappeller

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Photo: Leona Schubert

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Photo: Ann Katrin Loewe, Jan Zobel

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Photo: Federica Scaffidi

EXCURSION 125

Photo: Federica Scaffidi

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Photo: Federica Scaffidi

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Photo: Federica Scaffidi

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Photo: Ann Katrin Loewe, Jan Zobel

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Photo: Riccarda Cappeller

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Photo: Ann Katrin Loewe, Jan Zobel

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Photo: Ann Katrin Loewe, Jan Zobel

WORKSHOP

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COSMOPOLITAN PALERMO WORKSHOP 04. - 07. December 2019, University of Palermo

INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP

Cosmopolitan Habitat, Laboratori coordinati di Urbanistica 2 (UNIPA) Palermo Open City, Urban Design Studio (LUH)

Thursday 5.12.

09:00 -10:15 Introduction by Maurizio Carta and Jörg Schröder 10:15 -11:00 Presentation of Unipa students work by Alessandra Badami and Daniele Ronsivalle 11:00 -12:00 Micro-conference for DAAD „Cosmopolitan Habitat“

by Barbara Lino, Annalisa Contato (UNIPA), Emanuele Sommariva, Alissa Diesch (LUH) 12:00 -13:00 Workshop. Brief by Federica Scaffidi Input methodological instructions about the video

by Riccarda Cappeller Friday 6.12.

9:00-11:00 Tour of students for video + feedback rounds 11:00-17:30 Video making 18:00-20:00 Cosmopolitan Trailers Video Presentation

Fig. 1. Poster Workshop Cosmopolitan Palermo Image credits: Francesca Marchese

Arrival. Wednesday, 4.12.2019 20:00 First meeting + night trip through Palermo (Quattro Canti)

WORKSHOP DAY 1, 5.12.2019

WORKSHOP DAY 2, 6.12.2019

9:00 - Introduction by Maurizio Carta and 10:15 Jörg Schröder

9:00 - Tour of students for video + Feedback 11:00 rounds

10:15 - Presentation of Unipa students work 11:00 on “Cosmopolitan Palermo Atlas”

by Alessandra Badami and Daniele Ronsivalle

11:00 - Video making 17:30

11:00 - 12:00

Micro-conference for DAAD „Cosmopolitan Habitat“ 2 contributions UniPA: Barbara Lino, Annalisa Contato 2 contributions LUH: Emanuele Som- mariva, Alissa Diesch

12:00 - 13:00

Workshop “Cosmopolitan Trailers” Workshop Brief by Federica Scaffidi Input methodological instructions about the video by Riccarda Cappeller

Lunch Break 14:00 - Pecha Kucha with LUH students 15:00 15:00 - Tour of students for video 24:00

WORKSHOP

// TIMELINE WORKSHOP

135 18:00 - Cosmopolitan Trailers Video 20:00 Presentation FIELD TRIP SATURDAY, 7.12.2019 9:00 Cantieri Culturali alla Zisa 10:00 Cre.Zi Plus and Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia 13:00 Zisa Castle 14:30 Free explorations to project areas etc.

// COSMOPOLITAN HABITAT TRAILERS Riccarda Cappeller, Federica Scaffidi

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With the „Cosmopolitan Habitat“ we look at theoretical frameworks, conceptual models and urban projects of the open and inclusive city to sharpen our understanding of current innovations in urban policies and planning. Cosmopolitan (from the classic Greek kosmos: world and polis: city) Habitat (from Latin: living space) brings together inernational debates based on exchange among cultures and communities, places of civilisatory experience, processes supporting the culture of makers and the spatial dimension of migration. „How can cities become a new concrete place to invent, explore, test and live as open community able to face global challenges and enhance urban inclusiveness and economies“.

The workshop focuses on the performance and perception of urban spaces in a highly global, extremely specific and temporal city as Palermo. It combines activities and skills of urban exploration, spatial thinking, arts, interactive communication, and urban design in order to enhance new approaches in urbanism. Referring to the multiple ideas of „Open City“ by Richard Sennett and the framework of „Augmented City“ as a spatial, cultural, social, economic platform for enhancing our contemporary life by Maurizio Carta, spaces of urban change and innovation shall be looked at, focusing on in-transition processes, potentialities of places and narratives. Creative storytelling addresses spatial dynamics of change in relation to new networks and territories. We want to think of narratives to describe social, economic and ecological phenomena within a time and spatial frame, making sense of the hybrid character of todays spaces. Emerged in the 1960s and 1970s narrative approaches as realised by the Smithsons,

Kevin Lynch, Edmund Bacon etc. still are part of the academic discourse. (Havik, Notteboom und de Witt - Oase 98) The workshop is organised in collaboration with the Department of Architecture at the University of Palermo. International groups of students and their exchange of skills and positions are part of the workshop.

For this idea we use the city as a laboratory, which implies the understanding and mapping of the existing, social and built relations, mobilities, flows, connecting elements, intertwining layers and atmospheres; an active creation and projection of ideas aswell as their communication. Bringing these elements together for a conceptual idea of space and its „choreography of daily life“ (Jane Jacobs) nearly automatically leads us to the medium of film, which as architecture, uses movement and time for perception. It can be used as instrument and tool to critically read, interrogate and observe space in a different and playful way, creating a narrative through well selected sequences and situations while overlapping the documented with a personal mindscape (Bravo 2016).

Experiencing architecture and space through filmmaking is nothing new as already Dsega Wertows shows with „Man with a movie camera“ (1929) – a first approach to filming the city – or the experiments by some groups of the situanist internationals or the use of film as observation mode (Venturi+Scott Brown) s. Also there have been approaches to use film as a more research oriented way. For example the study of a public square by

With fieldwork and observation the city is approached from a different perspective and creates a new format for architectural knowledge and design interventions that is manifested and connected artistically. „Experimentalism is [...] constantly taking apart, putting together, contradicting, provoking languages and syntaxes that are nevertheless accepted as such“(Tafuri 1976) This is also the idea for Palermo.

WORKSHOP

William H. Whyte (1980) in „Small urban spaces“.

As Walter Benjamin, a german philosopher and cultural critic, states in „The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility“ that the revolutionary function of film is to connect art and research/sciences and to make it accessible for a wider audience. Filming, already for a longer period of time, has been an indicator for contemporary culture and the interconnection of art and global transformation processes. As such it gets a growing attention in architecture festivals like for example in London, Lisbon, Berlin or even at the Venice Biennale, where many entries in 2018 were connected to filmed spatial observations or interviews, but also are used for research around architecture and space. For example at the Bartlett School in London the participants of the doctoral network „Film + Place + Architecture“ use filmmaking as a research tool.

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COSMOPOLITAN HABITAT University of Palermo- Department of Architecture Urban Design II Studios: Creative City Lab, 10 ECTS, M.Sc. Architecture Winter 2019 TEACHING Prof. Arch. Maurizio Carta Prof. Arch. Alessandra Badami Prof. Arch. Daniele Ronsivalle

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MENTOR Barbara Lino, PhD TUTORS Annalisa Contato, PhD Carmelo Galati Tardanico, PhD Luca Torrisi, PhD candidate Cosimo Camarda, PhD candidate Dalila Sicomo, PhD candidate STUDENTS Emilia Abate Alessia Alvich Valentina Amato Alfredo Michele Amico Francesca Attanzio Lidia Badagliacca Ivan Alessandro Bonanno Giorgia Calandra Chiara Caprio Alessandro Canzoneri Alberto Cannizzaro Alessandro Cardullo Francesca Croce Davide Crupi Giovanni David Giuseppe Di Liberto

Gaia Fauci Gabriele Ferotti Massimo Gambino Rosa Maria Gelsi Elisabetta Guarraia Pietro Iraci Francesca La Mattina Loredana Lentini Vita Lucido Antonella Marchese Giuseppe Marchese Stefano Miranti Mariachiara Nastri Paolo Neglia Beatriz Morinho e Soares Rosaria Occhipinti

Alfredo Pensabene Maria Pia Papia Ginevra Reina Pedro Ribeiro Faneca Roberta Rinallo Chiara Rizzo Francesca Romano Alain Schimmenti Massimiliano Onofrio Triassi Debora Toscano Chiara Vitabile

CREATIVE CITYlab

PALERMO OPEN CITY Leibniz Universität Hannover - Faculty of Architecture and Landscape Urban Design Studio: Territories Research, 12 ECTS, M.Sc. Architecture and Urban Design Winter 2019

WORKSHOP

TEACHING Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Jörg Schröder Riccarda Cappeller M.Sc. M.A. Dipl.-Ing. Alissa Diesch Arch. Federica Scaffidi PhD Arch. Emanuele Sommariva PhD STUDENT TUTORS Anna Pape B.Sc. Rebekka Wandt B.Sc.

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STUDENTS Sevilay Akyürek Josephine Arfsten Benjamin Beil Marsha Dinse Imge Esmer Niels Fennen Lea Frenz Jonas Glücklich Randa Harani Ann Loewe Eduard Mica Anna Pape Jacob Pennington Mara Piel Anne Ruff Leona Schubert

Vanessa Schwarzkopf Julia Theis Marie-Sophie Waldminghaus Rebekka Wandt Jan Zobel

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Photo: „Video mobile“ from Masbedo in Palazzo Costantino, Wolfgang Träger

Photo: Cine-Scapes (book)_Prague. Filming on location for Mission Impossible IV.

// VIDEOMAKING WORKSHOP Riccarda Cappeller, Federica Scaffidi

ORGANIZATION Groups of italian and german students (4-5 people mixed) will create a short video following the concept of a trailer as „cover story“ for one idea, question or problem found and followed in the social networks and spatial patterns – the trails and secret routes of Palermo.

In trailer-making the idea is to impart an intriguing story that gets film audiences emotionally involved. Most trailers have a three-act structure similar to a feature-length film. They start with a beginning (act 1) that lays out the premise of the story. The middle (act 2) drives the story further and usually ends with a dramatic climax. Act 3 usually features a strong piece of „signature music“. This last act often consists of a visual montage of powerful and emotional moments of the film and may also contain a cast run if there are noteworthy stars that could help sell the movie.

The trailer - making shall help to structure the production of the film and is thought as a helping guide. Never the less the final format and way of storytelling is open to the students and can be alterated.

STEPS 1.The first part of the workshop is thought as a sensibilisation for the surrounding urban atmospheres and spaces. For this it might be helpful to leave the camera aside and try to capture first ideas, situations and moments in a written or sketched way (script). Also ideas to stroll around the city, discovering new places through walking left – left – right, following a person or discovering signs can be integrated and developed further.

Using the concept of serendipity –find something you haven´t searched for – can be astarting point to grasp something from the field. Here first topics, images, ideas or situations could be the outcome.

2. The second part focuses on the topics and their examination. Here producing film sequences through documenting, performing or enacting is one part and a first selection as well as ideas for new composition or connection of the sequences another. The found topic and selected material then will be further discussed and developed with a critical reflection known from architectural and urban design projects.

3. The third part is about the communication and finishing. The idea is brought to a conceptually developed and well formulated output –the movie, which is then presented and discussed in public.

WORKSHOP

IDEA During the workshop Palermo´s urban context shall be observed, catching, understanding and transmitting the soul of the city, its spatial dynamics and potentials. The main mission is to express the city image with a cinematographic point of view, emphasizing the human and creative flows in order to reveal how people live and shape the space.

The perception of space is here understood as a multidimensional, dynamic interaction between the recognizing subject, its surrounding and continuous process of change. Through a situative awareness of the present percieved environments, they are verbalized, requesitioned in interviews or soundwalks, interpret and transformed before taking the step of communication to other observers not involved in the process.

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Photo: Riccarda Cappeller

// PECHA KUCHA Riccarda Cappeller, Federica Scaffidi

METHODS 5. Howard Becker (2007) Telling about Society 6. Georges Perec (1974) Species of Spaces and Other Pieces 7. Francois Penz (2017) Cinematic aided Design. An everydaylife approach to architecture 8. Büscher, M., Urry, J. ,Witchger, K. (2010) Mobile Methods FILM (IN ARCHITECTURE) 9. White, William H. (1980) The social life of small urban spaces 10. „Living Architectures“ and the actors within documented architecture 11. Dawn, Lyon (2012): Doing Audio-Visual Montage to Explore Time and Space: The Everyday Rhythms of Billingsgate Fishmarket (for the video see references)

OUTPUT Videoworks: 2-3 minutes (trailers) video as creative tool for recognition of places, activities, people, and a tool to communicate insights and conceptual approaches.

Film cut: Freeware:

Audio: Camera:

Premiere Pro, Final Cut Windows Movie Maker, Imovie, Light Works, Davinci Resolve, Shortcut Audacity handy cameras, film cameras etc.

WORKSHOP

THEORY 1. Walter Benjamin (1935) The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility 2. Man with the Movie Camera – D. Vertrov 3. Richard Koeck (2013) Cine Scapes (Architecture + Urban Form as Cinematic Apparatus) 4. (OASE#98) Klaske Havik, Bruno Notteboom & Saskia de Wit (2017) Narrating Urban Landscapes

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// OUTPUT VIDEOMAKING

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>> Scan the QR-Code and discover the first three students projects!

// ZISA_WHERE IS THE WATER?

“Palermo città d’acqua/Palermo water city” is the opening slogan of the video made by the students Lucido, Marchese, Occhipinti, Papia, Schubert and Akyürek. The video is conceived as an investigative report that use irony to reveal the real situation of water in the city of Palermo.

The music and the first images of the Arab Norman Unesco castle in the Zisa neighbourhood, where a lush and fruitful oasis should remind an Arabic paradise, it shows a lack of water. So, where is the water? From this starting point, the video and its authors start a treasure hunt in the street of Palermo. Palermo is a water city, whose connection with the sea has been rebuilt in the last few years through the regeneration of the waterfront of the city, firstly with the reactivation of Foro Italico, later with the urban

Fig. 1. Video. Zisa_Where is the water?, Palermo 2019

regeneration of the city leisure harbour and the renovation of the Porticciolo Sant’Erasmo (the small harbour of Sant’Erasmo). The video shows how people live these spaces, running, walking, fishing and enjoying this part of the city.

What else? The city hides water in many parts of its urban spaces. You can find water in the city markets, in the many drinking fountains, in the urban parks, in the historical fountains of the city centre, behind beauty, architecture and folklore. The video’s authors illustrate the cultural and social capital of the city and the actual link between Palermo, its inhabitants and the water system and metaphorically imagining to pour water from other places of the city in the garden of the Zisa Castle and create a new liveable place for Palermo.

WORKSHOP

Riccarda Cappeller, Federica Scaffidi Videomaking by Unipa: Lucido Vita, Marchese Antonella, Occhipinti Rosaria, Papia Maria Pia LUH: Schubert Leona, Akyürek Sevilay

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// CAPO_BREAKDOWN THE WALL Riccarda Cappeller, Federica Scaffidi Videomaking by Unipa: Cannizzaro Alberto, Morinho e Soares Beatriz, Pensabene Alfredo, Ribeiro Faneca Pedro. LUH: Mica Eduard, Theis Julia

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“Breakdown the wall� is a video elaborated by Cannizzaro, Morinho e Soares, Pensabene, Ribeiro Faneca, Mica and Theis. The authors show an important aspect of the city of Palermo, starting from the night life in the main walking street of the city, Via Maqueda. In this part of the city, shops, restaurants and traditional food coexist and share this urban space with the many tourists coming to Palermo to visit the city and taste its delicious food. The video shows one of the most attractive place in the historical centre, with its picturesque yellow lights and the Teatro Massimo, the city Opera, where people, local inhabitants and tourists come together around a common and cultural space.

Nevertheless, the other side of this touristic development is the under developed and weak part

Fig. 3. Video: Capo_Breakdown the wall, Palermo 2019

of the city behind Via Maqueda, the neighbourhood Capo. With this shooting the authors emphasize the ambiguity and double aspect of most contemporary cities. In one side, you can happily eat your panini and tasty Sicilian food and in the other one, you can find another world, characterised by neglect and messiness.

However, the most important message that the authors want to give with this video is to discover your city, visit that places that are not positively affected by tourism and the urban agenda and to reflect about them.

STOP they say, the video aims to interrupt this form of living the spaces and invites people to discover the real city, walking around its hidden spaces and think about how to reactivate and regenerate them.

// DISCOVERING DANISINNI

Palermo is a mixture of layers, shapes, colours and sensations. How to explore the city? Abate, Alvich, David, Neglia, Piel and Frenz suggest to observe the socio-cultural scene of Palermo walking around the city. Stunning views, beautiful architectures and vivid atmospheres build the image of the city, this is what the video, in the first-hand show to its public. However, what the authors really want to reveal, are those hidden “treasures” of the city, urban spaces not know by the tourists, neither by many local inhabitants.

The authors use the image of the clown discovering the city, in order to provoke and make people curious about what it is happening around them. This is the main objective of the video.

How to attract people attention and shift the

Fig. 2. Video: Discovering Danisinni, Palermo 2019

visual weight in the urban space, in the architectural beauty, in the urban-agricultural context behind the observation object. The rhythmic and cheerful notes hide a provocative and ironic streak. What you looking at? Do you look at the finger or the moon? You, people look at the beauty of the city. Don’t be shocked by my image as a clown, but look with the same wonder what my eyes are looking around my city. Discover Danisinni, a socio-cultural and natural oasis in the condensed urban context, where creativity, community involvement and social cohesion make this place a real space of innovation. Enjoy the city, its spaces, its vivacity and vibrancy, its different layers and levels, appreciate and find out in a playful way what surrounds you.

WORKSHOP

Riccarda Cappeller, Federica Scaffidi Videomaking by Unipa: Abate Emilia, Alvich Alessia, David Giovanni, Neglia Paolo LUH: Piel Mara, Frenz Lea

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PROJECTS

// PARTICIPANTS

TEACHING Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Jörg Schröder Arch. Federica Scaffidi PhD Riccarda Cappeller M.Sc. M.A. STUDENTS 150 Benjamin Beil Jonas Glücklich Randa Harani Ann Loewe Eduard Mica Anna Pape Jacob Pennington Mara Piel Leona Schubert Marie-Sophie Waldminghaus Jan Zobel

CULTURE-UP! PALERMO

The Sicilian metropolis of Palermo, with its 663.401 inhabitants, is probably one of these cities, whose cultural make-up does not appear so unique anywhere else in the world. Due to its geographical position, the Mediterranean capital has been exposed to various influences of civilization from the very beginning of its historical record followed by the ongoing immigration of the last decades, which in return reflects itself in a strong and captivating cultural richness and human diversity. The interculturality of Palermo is one of its greatest and most authentic characteristics. This peculiarity attracts a large number of visitors each year, which has developed into a major economic pillar of the country. After agriculture, tourism is one of the city’s main sources of income. It is therefore all the more surprising to note that many cultural contact points in Palermo appear isolated in themselves, insufficient to provide a reasona-

Fig. 1. Invasion and conquest Source: authors’ elaboration from https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/ wissen/geschichte/Sanfte-Archaeologie-bringt-neue-Erkenntnisse-der-Besiedlung-Siziliens-/story/21645372

ble amount of information - in many cases even lacking any individual website. It is sometimes made impossible for tourists as well as for locals to seize the entire spectrum of the cultural offer and to make an individual selection about which interests can be pursued in which specific places.

It is also striking how deficiently many of these cultural anchor points come into communication with one another, despite the wide range of similarities that they exhibit and despite the incredible potential this might disclose. In this project, this grievance will be investigated and consequently proposals for solutions will be worked out, which should counteract this disadvantaged situation. As a first step, the most significant cultural hotspots throughout Palermo are filtered out and examined.

Through this deeper look, it is easier to determine which one of these existing instances can be arranged thematically and which one of those could achieve a maximum of mutual cooperation and opportunity. The aim is to create new platforms that will make it possible for these individual and segregated hotspots to come into more direct physical contact, which will enable them to exchange and enrich each other on a much stronger ground. The selected hotspots should still retain their primary location; the objective is to stretch their overall reach through the expansion of their territory. The hotspots group together according to their interest points and build a new platform working towards a superordinate subject matter.

The most important criteria for the selection of the locations of the platforms were sorted out as follows: Proximity to the city centre, sufficient urban planning dimensions to implement architectural design approaches, largely unused or vacant spaces and the new location should already offer

PROJECTS

Randa Harani, Leona Schubert

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Fig. 2. Existing hotspots

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Fig. 3. Existing hotspots connected through platforms

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Fig. 4. Danisinni site plan

Fig. 5. Danisinni surroundings

PROJECTS

cultural stimuli or impulses that the new project can build on. (Fig. 8) Various locations were considered: Firstly, Danisinni, with a focus on culture and social exchange, Parco Villa Filipina with a focus on art and culture, and La Cuba with a focus on language and culture. The example of Danisinni illustrates how the functionality and the real implementation of such a platform could look like and how it can work in the future. Danisinni is a small district in the southwest of Palermo that is characterized by very high unemployment rate, poverty, and a lack of schooling among its residents, which does not make it a very popular place to live. Its building structure is largely flat and narrow and is situated on a 8m lower plateau, which is encompassed by prefabricated building blocks.

As a result, the district appears completely isolated. Furthermore, there is an enormous number of inaccessible and mostly private green spaces that occupy a significant amount of space in the area.

No places of social gathering can be found, there is no existing social infrastructure, beside the district’s only church and the small ‘Chapito’ circus in the eastern part of the neighbourhood. With the new intervention of the platform, an attempt will be made to counteract these unfavourable living conditions and to bring about changes that affect both Danisinni and the whole of Palermo simultaneously. On the one hand, a new community garden will be created where organic fruits and vegetables can be cultivated. This will not only open up a new and solid source of income but can also develop into a place of social gathering. In addition, a new architecture is being introduced with the primary function to reinforce social interaction within the area. There is a co-working restaurant, a community kitchen where self-grown fruits and vegetables are processed free of charge and a community living room, where people can comfortably enjoy each other’s company. Also to solve the unfavourable labour market situation, a new information centre is being created, where both locals and migrants can get legal help and

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Fig. 6. Danisinni analysis

Fig. 7. Danisinni potential area

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advice to improve their job opportunities. Finally, the theme of circus tents is expanded, and similar structures with additional temporary music and art installations are set up to complete the picture.

Various actors will be involved in this platform: the Moltivolti, Arte Migrante, the Ballarรณ Market, Cledu and many more will create a strong network of active collaboration. Not only is the quality of life in the Danisinni district upgraded, but also a profound networking sphere is created through the incorporation of various parties. This partnership of the different hotspots in one platform, but also between the different platforms altogether, is also to be supported by a new website, which makes it possible to access all the necessary information on all related events and on all involved participants.

As an outcome of this intervention, the initial cultural hotspots are no longer segregated, but are connected both physically and virtually and span a strong network across the city, that makes it easier for locals, migrants and visitors, to have a better overview of the whole range of cultural experiences, that Palermo has to offer.

Fig. 10. Connecting platforms

Fig. 8. Forming platforms

PROJECTS Fig. 11. Danisinni ground floor plan

Fig. 12. Website with platform programme

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ISOLA DANISINNI Mara Piel, Marie-Sophie Waldminghaus

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Food waste is a major global issue and a substantial driver of environmental impacts these days. In Palermo, it is quite visible. Through leftovers of markets, careless handling and the malfunctioning waste collection, a lot of food waste is left behind.

But the root of this matter is a superior one: a non-sustainable economy along with unconscious consumption of goods. We got primarily linear economy nowadays, from which lots of waste results. To fight the cause, a sustainable transformation towards a circular economy and conscious consumption are necessary. The circular economy is not ending with the use of a product. Further usage of leftovers and recycling of those enables a circular use of resources without any waste or profusion (Figure 3). The objective of the project is to develop a strategy for an applied closed food cycle at a specific area, that is expandable and transferable at once.

In the urban fabric of Palermo, the commune of Danisinni stands out as suitable place for its spatial realisation. It is located quite central in the city and offers some of few private greens but is isolated due to its height difference and poor

Fig. 1. Perspective

accessibility. As an island in the city, it offers ideal conditions as testing ground and starting point for further developments (Figure 1). The commune is self-sufficient. Looking back in history, they always used the resources which were there. It is socially deprived and has an unemployment rate of 90 percent. Danisinni mainly consists of small residential buildings and open spaces. Some are used for farming or the domiciled circus, but there is also a lot of unused space like a large area of wasteland and a closed site with a vacant school building in the centre (Figure 5). There is no real community space. Based on the commune’s typical approach, we want to use what is there and work out and strengthen its potentials (Figure 2). The development proceeds in four phases, that build on each other and given resources.

In phase one, the conventional agriculture of food products gets extended through experimental cultivation and linked research of innovative foods and products that complement the food itself within different steps of its cycle in a sustainable way. An example would be microalgaes, whereas they can be cultivated in resource saving ways, not standing in competition with food production, and can be used in multiple ways. As superfood, sustainable packaging or even as energy producer.

Also, the processing with remains of the food production would be an important field of research.

For organic waste, a compost gets created.

In phase two, the vacant school building gets reactivated and labs placed inside. These labs work together with the farming and experimental cultivation and research towards innovative solutions and an improvement in the consumption of food and the handling of leftovers.

The implementation of additional interventions in Palermo forms new nodes and extends the citywide network of flows of knowledge, goods and people (Figure 4). In a global network with other pioneers in food products and zero waste, an exchange and support can drive the worldwide development forward.

PROJECTS

In Phase three, the area around the school gets shaped into the new Piazza. It functions as the spatial as well as thematical centre of the commune but also for the wider part of Danisinni and its surrounding. The different steps from farming to consuming are brought together and get supplemented here. Therefore, new functions will be added. A market for the distribution of goods and a neighbourhood kitchen and outdoor dining area as communal areas to bring back the social aspect of preparing and consuming food. In addition, there is space for art on the piazza to include the existing offer of the commune in there.

In phase four (Figure 6), further interventions are added. The neighbourhood living room offers community space for exchange and the cooking workshop shall raise awareness about the conscious handling with food and impart skills to prevent waste and profusion. Both interventions are placed at unused spaces on the border between the lower located commune and the surrounding district and form new spatial and programmatic connections. At these, the cultivation fields and the piazza, a recognisable structure is used to obtain an optical connection. It is adapted in size and type depending on space and use. Danisinni functions as a working organism. The different interventions interact with each other and operate together (Figure 3).

The circle is closed and as result, not just the food waste is fought. The effects are ecological, social and economical. Danisinni gets integrated in its surrounding, qualitative community space was created, education and employment enhanced and gains generated. This island works as a node and is in exchange with its surrounding.

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Fig. 2. Urban Fabric. Source: authors’ elaboration with data from https://www.openstreetmap.org/

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Fig. 2. Diagram: spaces

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Fig. 3. Organism

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Fig. 4. Citywide Network. Source: authors‘ elaboration with data from https://www.openstreetmap.org/

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Fig. 5. Perspective

PROJECTS Fig. 6. Current state Source: authors’ elaboration

Fig. 7. Phase 4 Source: authors‘ elaboration

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Fig. 8. Axonometry

// ZISA : CULTURALI Jonas GlĂźcklich, Jacob Pennington

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Fig. 1. Piazza Zisa

A short History of the Cantieri Culturali, the centre piece of our project ZISA : CULTURALI and for over 100 years present for the people of Zisa.

1900-1912 - In 1900 Vittorio Ducrot inherits a workshop from his stepfather. He renames it to Studio Ducrot. It is the beginning of a transformation to a company which was among the first in Europe to produce modernist and art nouveau on an industrial level. Ducrot later collaborates with famous architect Ernesto Basile, who is also named art director in 1902. The Duo will lead the company to international success!

1912-1937 - Between the 1910s and 1930s cities around the Mediterranean bear the mark of the Ducrot Studio, from parliaments and hotels to cruise ships and casinos. Ducrot employed 200 Workers in 1903. By 1913 the number was at 1000.

Between 1915 and 1918 Ducrot reconverted most of its equipment for the production of aircraft parts and seaplanes.

1937 - Between the first and second world war the factory employed 2500 workers. In 1937 the structures of the Ducrot workshops expanded to reach via Perpignano and the future via Polito.

1940s-1970s - In 1939 the company was sold to the Genovese Investment Company which was affiliated with the Partito Socialists Italiano, the party of Mussolini. In 1957 the workshops are still expanding towards Zisa. In 1969 around 100 workers started to self-manage the company and produced furniture for schools in the province of Palermo. Shortly after the Factory closed.

(Fig.1) After around 40 years of decay a number of cultural and educational institutions started to transform the old factory side to a cultural centre: The Cantieri Culturali. (Fig.2) Taking this as a headstart we use the existing infrastructure

global architectural approach which will attract tourists and visitors and of course give the inhabitants a place to live their daily life. Again smaller interventions will be used to underline the overall goal of our project. Installing garden sheds in public park areas could lead to the parks being cleaner and generally in a better state. If inhabitants volunteer they can profit by lowered prices for public transport and cultural events in the Cantieri Culturali. In the Future the people of Zisa will profit by the tourists and customers drawn to the district by the interesting cultural institutions and activities.

PROJECTS

and the potentials of space to introduce further cultural and scientific projects to strengthen the community of the Cantieri Culturali. These actions include creating spaces in the centre to promote room for discourse and connection of the inhabitants and visitors. It will promote talks and lectures by guests about various topics. Which are free for the inhabitants of Palermo. To attract artist speakers there will be ateliers and cheap housing. The art they make will be presented and sold in the Cantieri Culturali and Zisa to install a cultural image for the district. This step will hopefully attract people from other parts of town and especially tourists. In addition to the artists spaces there will be rooms for rehearsals and an open stage concept for the musicians of the region. Once a month there is an open stage event where everyone can go and play. Furthermore ideas like a Cleaning Day will be implemented. This day is for garbage collecting to make the quarter appeal cleaner. The inhabitants of Zisa should be mobilized to care for this part of town. An annual follow up event is probably necessary. The event could also raise awareness to the garbage disposal problem around Palermo. With this strengthen cultural centre the next step of the project is to use this main attraction and find potentials in the area of Zisa that will evolve and eventually bring cultural and in the end monetary benefits to the people of Zisa. This includes a social and sports centre located on the newly founded Piazza Emiri. Which for years was a place of decay. The centre will include a small football stadium and a basketball court. A market for local food. And spaces for social activities. The Piazza Zisa with its church located right next to the famous Zisa Castle will be completely redesigned to give it a

171 Zisa will become a thriving cultural and social hotspot for Palermo and a role model for communities around the world!

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Fig. 2. Attractions and profiteering locations in Zisa

Fig. 3. Masterplan of Zisa

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Fig. 4. Spacio Incolto Culture Venue

PALERMO - AN OPEN SYSTEM Benjamin Beil, Eduard Christian Mica

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Palermo is a city of contrast, the intersection point of many cultures and a place where the continental European perception of the urban space get new meanings. Along the time, the city was ruled by numerous different cultures that firstly had to accept and then to embrace the demographic diversity of the population. Out of need, they started to involve the “foreign” local population in the new social life of the city and create thereby the perfect opportunity for interaction. All the mixed social and urban results reflect the different transit periods and shaped a new common identity.

The history of over two thousand years created the perfect framework of an open system, a system that is not defined by the different cultures in power, but by the product of the interaction between the cultures in power and the indigenous population. A system whose main characteristic is not the ability to change, but the ability to adapt to the new conditions and create new ways to refresh their own identity without the risk of forgetting the past. Numerous of the touristic and social attractions of the city convey a common story of different historical events. The traces

Fig. 1. Concept sketch crossing city-nature, own elaboration

of the previous cultures are well preserved and formulate the basis of a future identity.

Nowadays, the system that mark and connect these places is the UNESCO World Heritage map. In order to understand de actual current function of such sites we identified four main characteristics (the ability of attracting tourists, religious importance, role in the local education flow and cultural meaning) of the sits and tried to create the network between theme. During the process, we find many other places that perform such functions and are not included in the UNESCO map. Such of theme are in the immediate neighbourhood of the UNESCO sites and represent undiscovered opportunities to create new tourist routes and to refresh the local identity.

In order to discover the periods of development of the city and their footprint in the urban structure, we decided to make an abstract approach of the urban fabric and compared theme with a textile fabric. At a first look we were able to identify some well-known patterns (organic, grid and hybrids) that create the structure of the city network.

Afterwards we identify more considerable large holes that breaks the patterns of the infrastructure.

On a closer look, many of these holes are the result of “strong” functions (education facilities, military, Hospitals, culture, etc.) that generate an intern complex system of infrastructure. The other type of holes is a result of the juxtaposition of different development moments that are not complementary. The area between these two zones is in most of the cases undefined and hard to understand. The incoherence of the functions and the isolated urban space reduce any urban quality to minimum and activate just de pragmatic part of the function (transit). The inhabitants of the

centre for the surroundings. A co-working place that serve as an open platform, accessible to all the education facilities and a place of exchange between the generations (primary school – University). The west side of the ring (the largest area of the buffer) works because of the numerous barriers (walls and parking) like an accelerated transit area. The small streets and the lack of a sidewalk create a very dangerous environment for the children that frequently transit the ring. Our initiative is to create a new social centre where the local communities and the flows that transit the zone (education and the new touristic flow) can interact and exchange: The tourists get more of the way of living in Palermo and the locals have a place to meet and participate to new activities together. On the north side, one dominant element of the urban composition is the hill that works like a strong barrier and divide the buffer in two areas. Because of the functional role of the hill (sound-barrier for the cemetery) we decided to open just the side facing the living area and create an urban green space that serve as a community space and introduce through the height difference a new urban dimension. On de east side, due to the high density of the buildings we kept the transit function in order to create new conditions of transit, where the pedestrians experience a relaxed city scenography.

Sources The Architecture of the City, Aldo Rossi, The MIT Press, 1982

PROJECTS

surrounding do not identify themselves with the place.... they just use it out of pure necessity.

We decided to concentrate us on the catacombs dei Cappuccini because of their position between La Zisa and La Cuba. This position has the potential to create a new cycle of interest in the city structure that is direct linked to the tourists and local centre (Old Town). Another interesting aspect is the structure of the buffer zone (that works like a ring) between the catacombs and the different functions of the surroundings. Despite the diversity of the functions in the neighbourhoods and the education flows that transit our site on a regular basis, the buffer zone became just a sum of unused isolated places. The identity of the place is unsure and create a strong contrast to both development moments. Because the people did not percept the space as their own, they do not use it and in time new barrier were created.

The transit infrastructure remains the only visible footprint of the local functions and define the life quality in the buffer zone. Like Aldo Rossi in “the architecture of city�, is the place between two moments of formation an amorphous zone, a place that did not have a structure or a rule of composition, a place of discontinuity in the urban fabric and incoherence in the social network. We find the status of amorphous zone not necessarily a bad aspect of the zone. Our intention is to create new flexible urban frames that serve as an urban catalyst and thereby to re-gain the interest of the inhabitants to find new ways to use the place.

Firstly, we started to define the new focus points of the buffer: Because of the intense flows of education and the entrances to the cultural facilities we decided to redefine the abandoned industry (on the south side) as a new education

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Fig. 2. Own representation of Aldo Rossi definition of amorphous zones

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Fig. 3. Define the area in the middle, own elaboration

Fig. 4. Activate the buffer zone, own elaboration

Fig. 5. Reate new ways of interactions, own elaboration

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PROJECTS

// DEFINING URBAN SPACES Ann Katrin Loewe, Jan Zobel

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At our first visit to Palermo the mass of cars and the undefined space in between the buildings attracted our attention.

First of all, we looked at urban spaces and the existing public transport of Palermo in general. After that we wanted to analyse the area of Castello de la Zisa which was built in the 12th century. It is an underused collective space which is composed of plazas, streets and a park which was renewed 2005 and neglected. Right now our focus area square can be divided into three separate parts which aren’t connected or at least not constantly open to public. These parts are “La Zisa” itself, the Parco Reale “Genoardo” located right in front of it but also detached by closed arcades in between these parts. The Plaza in front of the park is always open to public and separated from the park by a large fence. The existing physical constraints do not allow the direct exit to La Zisa. It makes it hard for tourists to find the long way around the square and the attached blocks of buildings. The square in front of La Zisa is completely oversized for the present use.

Fig. 1. Connections and Distances

It’s lost space for the inhabitants and visitors can be seen as residual space between the walls and the streets. We plan on strengthen the generation of links of identity between the city and the inhabitants by optimizing the physical configuration, raising the social status and increasing the economic and technical meaning as well as the awareness of the cultural and historical importance. This public space got a high potential for defining the quality of life of the people and the quality of citizenship of its inhabitants. For us it is important to step away from an anonymous and detached wide square which is only delimited by the “Facings” of buildings or walls and not by natural physical barriers. We want to generate communication, transit and social interaction within the city on a multifunctional base. For doing so we restructure the collective space by four elements. They will allow the development of various activities and the identification of the inhabitants with the space as well as the establishment of new guidelines within the neighbourhood and if possible also in the city.

1. Elements of movement and stay (trails, sidewalks, vehicular stream etc.)

2. Vegetation (trees, shrubs, grasses, ...)

3. Urban Furniture (seats, children’s games, planters etc.)

4. Infrastructure Elements (poles, luminaries, records) In addition, we want to reactivate and complete certain axis. This will lead to a better flow within the area, a direct link to La Zisa on the main axis, the reopened historic trade connection in front of La Zisa. In general, shorter ways without much detouring and a better orientation also given by the gesture of Portals at the entrances.

fruits and vegetables are processed free of charge and a community living room, where people can comfortably enjoy each other’s company. Also to solve the unfavourable labour market situation, a new information centre is being created, where both locals and migrants can get legal help and advice to improve their job opportunities. Finally, the theme of circus tents is expanded, and similar structures with additional temporary music and art installations are set up to complete the picture.

Various actors will be involved in this platform: the Moltivolti, Arte Migrante, the Ballaró Market, Cledu and many more will create a strong network of active collaboration. (Fig. 7, 11) Not only is the quality of life in the Danisinni district upgraded, but also a profound networking sphere is created through the incorporation of various parties.

This partnership of the different hotspots in one platform, but also between the different platforms altogether, is also to be supported by a new website, which makes it possible to access all the necessary information on all related events and on all involved participants.

As an outcome of this intervention, the initial cultural hotspots are no longer segregated, but are connected both physically and virtually and span a strong network across the city, that makes it easier for locals, migrants and visitors, to have a better overview of the whole range of cultural experiences, that Palermo has to offer. (Fig. 10,12)

PROJECTS

ready offer cultural stimuli or impulses that the new project can build on. (Fig. 8) Various locations were considered: Firstly, Danisinni, with a focus on culture and social exchange, Parco Villa Filipina with a focus on art and culture, and La Cuba with a focus on language and culture. The example of Danisinni illustrates how the functionality and the real implementation of such a platform could look like and how it can work in the future. Danisinni is a small district in the southwest of Palermo that is characterized by very high unemployment rate, poverty, and a lack of schooling among its residents, which does not make it a very popular place to live. Its building structure is largely flat and narrow and is situated on a 8 m lower plateau, which is encompassed by prefabricated building blocks.

As a result, the district appears completely isolated. Furthermore, there is an enormous number of inaccessible and mostly private green spaces that occupy a significant amount of space in the area.

No places of social gathering can be found, there is no existing social infrastructure, beside the district’s only church and the small ‘Chapito’ circus in the eastern part of the neighbourhood. (Fig. 5, 6, 7) With the new intervention of the platform, an attempt will be made to counteract these unfavourable living conditions and to bring about changes that affect both Danisinni and the whole of Palermo simultaneously. On the one hand, a new community garden will be created where organic fruits and vegetables can be cultivated. This will not only open up a new and solid source of income but can also develop into a place of social gathering. In addition, a new architecture is being introduced with the primary function to reinforce social interaction within the area. There is a co-working restaurant, a community kitchen where self-grown

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Fig. 4. Zisa current state

Fig. 5. Section

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Fig. 5. Zisa phases

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The development of tourism in the area can revitalize the vacant stores in the ground zone of the adjoining buildings as well as the empty unused buildings in the south of the park. A possible use could be an open music school or a youth centre with a public sports garden and a play area.

There is no existing playground in this dense area.

The plaza in front of the park becomes one uniformly paved square with additional urban seats and shady trees. The goal is to invite people of all ages, cultures and different social backgrounds to encounter, recreate and interact in different ways.

The restructured square is zoned into areas for different needs. In the north the former parking lot becomes the community square which includes sitting areas, a BBQ area and an open playground.

The southern square can be used for the everyday market which was located at the main corner and which blocked the view to La Zisa from the main pedestrian connection to the city centre. As shown in the public transport map the area is well connected and it is possible to reduce the number cars and caused pollution by extending the “No traffic zone�. The former areas which had been packed with cars now get a different use. The main square in front of the park becomes multifunctional. It can be used for weekly markets, events, etc. It also leads the way to the representative entrance to La Zisa through the replanted prosperous park which includes different uses on the side. The space has been modified for the shifted needs and demands of the inhabitants and visitors to suit their new uses and activities. The elements of previous generation have been highlighted and included into the new structure. It is a space for meeting, recreation and being. It conducts the sense of community and ownership among inhabitants.

Fig. 2. Connecting hub

Fig. 3. Pedestrian zones

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PROJECTS

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PALERMO OPEN CITY Cosmopolitan Habitat - Urban Design Studio Edited by Jörg Schröder and Federica Scaffidi Regionales Bauen und Siedlungsplanung Leibniz Universität Hannover In collaboration with the Department of Architecture, University of Palermo, for the Cosmopolitan Habitat framework and the workshop in Palermo Based on study projects at the Faculty of Architecture and Landscape, Leibniz Universität Hannover and the workshop at the Department of Architecture, University of Palermo

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ISBN: 978-3-946296-32-4 Published by: Regionales Bauen und Siedlungsplanung Leibniz Universität Hannover Herrenhäuserstraße 8, D-30419 Hannover www.staedtebau.uni-hannover.de Design and Layout: Federica Scaffidi, Marie Schwarz, Julia Hermanns Cover: Julia Hermanns based on the project by Mara Piel and Marie-Sophie Waldminghaus

University Dialogue Southern Europe 2020, funded by the German Academic Exchange Service, financed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

©2020 Regionales Bauen und Siedlungsplanung LUH Text by kind permission of the authors, pictures by the kind permission of the photographers/ holders of the picture rights.

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