#19 Aequòpolis

2006

We’d better get used to the idea: people have become an integral part of the world’s cities. Stepmother cities, rather than mother cities. Cities that dominate, restrict; increasingly improvised jumbles of building styles and concrete eyesores. But the more we question the inevitability of living immersed in the smog and traffic that leave us short of breath and destroy our nervous systems, the more this situation drives us to look for fair and balanced solutions to save the human race. A kind of blanket “mea culpa” that will allow us to look towards the future with a pro-active eye, rather than remaining passive victims.... Read More

by

Milan’s Polytechnic was chosen in 1993 as the location for Italy's first-ever degree course in Industrial Design. The history of the Industrial Design degree (at the Faculty of Design since June 2000) has been marked by a sustained interest in trying out new and innovative course structures, as a response to the real needs of the contemporary mar...

  • 606 Views
  • 1 Comments
  • 5 Faves

Separatism in the North is mainly felt in the provinces. I was much more aware of the Balkan war starting in the provinces than I was in the capitals with their embassies.  I received an accurate impression of many of the changes of the past twenty years in these outlying areas, rather than in the cities. We have large cities like Bratislava, Prag...

  • 278 Views
  • 0 Comments
  • 0 Faves

Today, in 2007 (yes, 2007 is fast approaching), for the first time in the history of mankind, more than 50% of the population lives in cities. Just a century ago, when our great-grandparents or grandparents were alive, a few generations back, 90% lived in the countryside, and only 10% in cities. A transformation on a global scale. On an astronomica...

  • 408 Views
  • 0 Comments
  • 0 Faves

There is a famous story bandied about by the world’s leading historians. They say that, at a certain point in Babylon, part of the city was occupied by invaders and enemies, and the other parts knew nothing about it. In other words, there was no communication between the various parts of the city (...). The problem I’ve been feeling as a maj...

  • 2043 Views
  • 0 Comments
  • 2 Faves

I’d only been at the Architecture Biennale for seven seconds when I saw a red number appear regarding my city: while every city in the world was growing by 25, 50 or 172 inhabitants each hour, the only one with a minus 1 was Milan. There and then, my pride was hurt, as it makes you think “We’re disappearing!” One less person, one less every...

  • 224 Views
  • 0 Comments
  • 5 Faves

The attraction of large urban areas and developing countries in particular obviously still exerts a very strong influence. Yet perhaps we can now assert that even at this stage, we have to rethink the concept of the megalopolis as being linked to the familiar phenomena of overpopulation and overcrowding.  Obviously, density has both positive and n...

  • 727 Views
  • 0 Comments
  • 0 Faves

A thousand futures, each one unique. In my view, the big mistake that is currently insinuating itself is the idea that every kind of growth is parallel to another kind. This is part of a semantic confusion affecting all languages nowadays. Today, there is no single language which has the courage to re-evaluate itself completely. Town planning is...

  • 238 Views
  • 0 Comments
  • 0 Faves

Over time, I have learned to observe with the eye of a detective, or someone who wants to gather documentary evidence, avoiding a critical spatial dimension.  This means that my impressions are highly subjective, the same as any curious person's. Curiosity about places, different landscapes, far-flung destinations, what I saw as a child, the wonde...

  • 685 Views
  • 1 Comments
  • 5 Faves

Obviously, the imagination feeds on knowledge. You need to know things before you can imagine them. This is where it comes in handy to read books about that concentrated mass of human history: cities. In Europe, large cities are usually unsuitable, even to accommodate modernity.  Even in a metropolis like London or Paris, where large avenues were ...

  • 298 Views
  • 0 Comments
  • 5 Faves

The pre-industrial city was one in which classes mingled, where the aristocrats were on one floor, the middle class on another, and the working class on yet another, all in the same building. With the advent of the industrialised society, there was a shift in the functions of each social class. This led to the working class ghettos, upper class ...

  • 234 Views
  • 0 Comments
  • 0 Faves

A city is like a life: it needs a soul. A city’s soul is its inhabitants, its recollections, its memory... and also a certain element of mystery.  A city without mystery is a dry city...loveless, emotionless. I think of a city as a face, like someone you want to see again, someone you want to love. Someone we might not get on with all the tim...

  • 284 Views
  • 0 Comments
  • 0 Faves

In the words of economist Jeremy Rifkin: “In 2007 more than half of the world’s population will live in cities”. I would add that there is no alternative. More than just large dormitories, mega-cities are places which attract the greatest investments in order to create and maintain the structures that guarantee the fundamental aspects of thei...

  • 294 Views
  • 0 Comments
  • 0 Faves

Images

  • THE POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY

  • Daniele Sandri

    Aequòpolis should not be a place that pollutes and strips natural resources down to the bone, but it should blend into them, becoming an integral part of them.

  • Silvia Amaduzzi

    Utopolis. Today, a just city is a Utopia; an emerald City to be built from the errors of unsustainable development in the modern megalopolis.

  • Domenico D'Alessio

    Aequòpolis, the city that gives a natural aspect to urbanisation. A city that allows you to feel as though you were someone in a sea of nobodies, to find an equilibrium in which you can feel alive.

  • Guido Tamino

    The reality portrayed is a perceived, fleeting, rapid and confused one. It is the reality that we intercept, perceive and experience, as we walk.

  • Andrea Cadorin

    The artificial installation has become naturalised, and Nature has become urbanised. A selective process.

  • Francesca Pasini

    Cities give great chances, from a perfect stranger you can become someone. This is the reason why many people live in a big city.

  • Katja Onjukka

    People need more open, green spaces where they can relax, breathe fresh air, smell the grass. We have to discover the secret of greenery.

  • Mario Ruggiero

    Starting with the observations of Daverio, "is the growth of cities a question of numbers?" and Branzi "a city has to offer opportunities" I’ve seen a growing, seeping form of random development, mainly driven by the market. A development that risks isolating the individual.

  • Fabrizio Luca

    Modern cities compress, draw in and heap together any kind of shape, like a funnel. Yet Nature tries to adapt itself to this city.

  • Simone Trotti

    This is Bangkok, a city of angels and temples. Bangkok, unrecognisable. It overruns all boundaries and keeps expanding. Insatiable.

  • Ilaria Di Emidio

    A liveable city, a possible city. Not destroying what exists, but redesigning it, changing the perspective: today, cities are not wrong, just interpreted badly.

  • Ilaria Di Emidio

    A liveable city, a possible city. Not destroying what exists, but redesigning it, changing the perspective: today, cities are not wrong, just interpreted badly.

  • Giorgio Caviglia

    The city is created and grows fed by its diversity. All attempts at planning should be aimed at making the most of its peculiarities.

  • Susanna Ferraro

    Vertical development as an objective; the text becomes part of the metropolitan fabric, integrating and elevating it towards an aequòpolis.

  • Cristina Venanzetti

    You can see the city because the eye of a 20th century human being can distinguish more than 100 different shades of grey. There has also been a physiological adaptation to cities that are ever greyer.

  • Maria Rosaria Delle Cave

    Outside of the conurbations, towards the provinces, losing yourself in the unexplored footpaths to find yourself.

  • Katja Onjukka

    People need more open, green spaces where they can relax, breathe fresh air, smell the grass. We have to discover the secret of greenery.

  • Stefano Cremisini

    An idealised space where nothing is stronger. Everything is on the same level, there is no dimension, no above and no below. A utopian cohabitation of different shapes.

  • Domenico D'Alessio

    Aequòpolis, the city that gives a natural aspect to urbanisation. A city that allows you to feel as though you were someone in a sea of nobodies, to find an equilibrium in which you can feel alive.

  • Tommaso Colombo

    The city is a cohesion of different realities. The basic idea is to transpose this variety of aspects which make up the city through a type of “aequòpolis” composed of different features.

  • Vincenzo Lodigiani

    While preserving the inevitable, oppressive and negative aspects of the great modern metropolis, the new city has the ability to transform itself, offering its inhabitants escape routes towards refuges where they can find their own equilibrium, on a personal or group level.

  • Paola Slongo

    Metropolitan suburbs like giant Tetris blocks: anonymous masses suffocating the sky; indeterminate pieces of solitude fixed in a precarious equilibrium.

  • Beatrice Cesana

    Large cities are like Leopardi’s hedge. A barrier to be overcome with the help of the planners’ imagination.

  • Ilaria Comello

    In some cities, going home is not something that everybody wants to do: architecture and good government can make sure that it is.

  • Sabrina Grillo

    “A famous story says that in Babylon, part of the city was occupied by enemy invaders and the other parts knew nothing about it. The city was not communicating with itself.” Predrag Matvejevic

  • Paola Busnelli

    Sustainable city... to live or to lie? Man is at the heart of the question. Man is responsible for the answer: Live or lie? Act or submit?

  • "Where I am, makes me what I am"

    Anonymous at Galleria illy London

  • “The time is always right to do the right thing”

    Martin Luther King

  • "Liberty is about our rights to question everything".

    Ai Wei Wei

Headline & Editorial

Headline & Editorial

Last Issue: #31 The Journey

Twenty thousand leagues under the sea by Jules Verne (1825-1905). This book is the answer to my thoughts on travel. It certainly anticipated the saga...
Read more
People

People

For several years, the magazine has published dialogues, opinions and points of view on themes dear to a company living in the contemporary world.  Topics have covered space, courage, dreams,...
Read more
Schools

Schools

On the pages of illywords, the works of writers, artists and established professionals are the inspiration for the ideas and images of emerging artists, photographers and...
Read more

Contacts

You can leave your comment on the blog pages, asking everything you want to know.
Read more

Where to find

illywords is distributed at the most important cultural events of design and art supported by illy, and it is also available at leading bookshops the world over.
Read more