0. WEAK : A TEXT, A WORD, A TOPIC Weakcity research starts from analysis of the word weak and, thinking through its factorisation and transposition, delineates a theoretical-practical approach for a renovated urban design. The purpose of the research is to experiment with how, inside the ‘construction’ of contemporary cities, a weak approach is able to defy the object/architectonic events and established methodologies of urban studies, going beyond the designative value of architecture. Through a weak language, in a weak context, with recycled and innovative materials, Weakcity identifies decoration as able to transform urban scenarios, privileging relational and open spaces more than built ones. The notion of ecology and of an ecological system, as intended by Landscape Urbanism, is the infrastructure of the method, in which ecology is Technonature – an evolution of nature in artificial terms, focussed on trans-disciplinarity, crucial in transforming codes and instruments of urban design. Operatively and transversally, the term ‘weak’ undergoes variations according to the following steps: 1 as theoretical method : relational, complex, rhizomatic, trans-disciplinary, baroque 2 as noun : for the multiple variations that it generates from a paradoxical etymology 3 as verb : (urban strategy) becoming a performative and active process 4 as adjective : (operational tools) as devices 5 as territory : in a conceptual sense before a formal one
urbanism | a necessary paradigm shift by elisa cattaneo
0. WEAKCITY a text, a word, a topic
This is the reason for the term weak architecture. It allows a diagonal and oblique cut. Not exactly chronological and not generational. Its purpose, in situations apparently different, is to reveal the constant that, in my opinion, lights in a particular way contemporary conditions. 1 — Ignasi De Solà-Morales
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1 Ignasi De Solà Morales, ‘Weak city’, in Differences . Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996
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