What, then, do we mean with the word ‘place’? Obviously, we mean something more than abstract location. We mean a totality made up of concrete things having material substance, shape, texture, and colour. Together these things determine an ‘environmental character’ which is the essence of place. In general, a place is given as such a character or ‘atmosphere.’ A place…
01. Architecture, City and Landscape as a Total Environment I conclude this series of three articles focused on place, architecture and urban planning. While in The Place of Architecture The Architecture of Place – Part I: The Identity of Places I have spoken about the identity of places, proposing that the identity of a place should be understood in holistic…
This article is a critical response to a conventional mode of interpreting architecture, which goes back to the XIX century and which takes ‘space’ as the most relevant interpretative key for the discipline.[1] This long-established traditional vision overshadows the not-often recognized fact that for any space to exist (either architectural, sociocultural, or pseudo-physical) place must be already on the stage.…
In the article The Identity of a Place: Place-Based Interventions Between Land and Society, I argued for the necessity of a place-based document or report that could assist practitioners who work with places (e.g., architects, planners, politicians, social scientists, etc.) in making decisions, whenever they are concerned with understanding the character of a place from a holistic or, as I…
This article is about a distinction we often tend to overlook: the difference between ‘place’ and ‘site’. Even if the two terms are both used to denote a territory or a piece of land, I hold – as others have done before me –[1] there is a reduction of meaning in the passage from ‘place’ to ‘site’: a reduction which…