(IN)TANGIBLE HERITAGE(S)
Abstract
This paper analyses the contemporary Metropolis form role, agent for the production of new symbolic representations, as a reaction to the loss of the enchantment of the city that began with the Grossstadt last century. The Metropolis without aura, the commodity city or the terrain of class struggle where even the arts are capitalistically exploited must be overcome. It is a question of hypothesising a change of cultural paradigm, new spaces where inclusion can take place and where the city can be recreated as a repository of imagery. What is the ontology behind the technique of metropolitan planning and management, its vision and its symbols, the tools to imagine and pre-vision it? The relationship between space, memory and representation in the digital age must be also rooted in the ancestral times of the generations that built the territory and in the daily experience of metropolitan citizenship on the move. What, then, guides the possibility of mental representation in the real, what is memorable? In the text, the contemporary Metropolis is considered a City of Muses for an anthropology of the inhabited city. For the construction of its real map, a return to surreal enchantment is proposed in order to create a relationship of tension in which the apparently meaningless fragments acquire a new meaning, capable of reconstituting the broken symbolic unities, in order to re-sensualise the architecture of the metropolitan city. The text proposes the tool of Metropolitan Cartography, created by MSLab, as a method for producing maps that take shape in the rules of language and the dimension of the symbolic to recognise and renew the enchantment of places. Our cartography is the rupture of the map as a sign of the places’ lost capacity to communicate deep meanings about inhabiting the earth. It operates through a psycho-cognitive alteration of the space that has already been deconstructed, which is achieved by using the inclusion of the artistic phenomenon in the construction of maps.
Antonella Contin arch. PhD is a Research Associate at DAStU / Department of Architecture and Urban Studies, School of Architecture Urban Planning Construction Engineering at Politecnico di Milano. She is the Coordinator of MSLab – Measure and Scale of the Contemporary City. She is scientific and full organizational responsible of international Workshop (Milan, Madrid, Seville, London, Istanbul, Teheran, NY, Cairo, Bari, Cadice, Guadalajara, Rio de Janeiro, Arua-Uganda) and International Seminar such as: Femminile Futuro. The sense of diversity and otherness of the female gender in the intimate and public spaces at Politecnico di Milano. She is Group Coordinator of some Eu co-funded research projects, such as TEllme, Training for Education, Learning and Leadership towards a new MEtropolitan discipline, and Contested Territories. She gave lectures at many international Universities. In particular, her research deals with the Metropolitan Architecture Project, a new sustainable urban growth model, smart, sensitive city, new technologies, and urban design mapping. Her recent publications are: (2021) Contin A.,Metropolitan Landscapes. Towards a shared construction of the resilient city of the future. Springer Nature: Berlin; Contin, A., Giordano, P., and M.Nacke Tellme Inaugural Book, Training for education, learning and leadership towards a new metropolitan discipline. Inaugural book, Buenos Aires: CIPPEC.
(2019) Contin A., The Narrative Structure of the Agro-Urban Metropolitan Territory. The Metropolis as Hypertext for the History of the Twenty-first Century: A Network of Middle Cities as an Operational Topography, in Sustainable Urban Development and Globalization. New strategies for new challenges—with a focus on the Global South, ed. A.Petrillo, P.Bellaviti, Springer International Publishing.
Valentina Galiulo is an Architect since 2018. She is PH.D. student at the University of Seville in Architecture Doctoral Programme researching City, Territory and Habitat (LT4) issues, and she’s an Academic Tutor at Politecnico di Milano. She was Research Fellow for MSlab ( Measures and Scales of the contemporary city) in DAStU – Department of Architecture and Urban Studies in Politecnico di Milano. Her research focuses on experimenting with Metropolitan Cartography, as a methodological tool for sustainable and integrated development in contemporary metropolitan cities, to investigate the dynamics of urban-rural transformation of Metropolitan Landscapes. She holds Master in Architecture, and a Bachelor’s Degree in Science of Architecture at Politecnico di Milano. She worked at Escuela Tecnica Superior de Arquitectura in the Department of Urbanism and Territory in Seville. She followed experience at the CONICET (National Scientific and Technical Research Council) and at the UnCuyo in Mendoza working as a researcher for TELLme project: Training for Education, Learning, and Leadership towards a new Metropolitan Discipline, Erasmus + 2017-2020. Her publications: Galiulo, V. (2021). Envisioning Metropolitan Landscape through Metropolitan Cartography: Metropolitan Landscape dynamic interactions in the Milan case study. In Metropolitan Landscapes. Towards a Shared Construction of the Resilient City of the Future, Eds. Contin, A. Springer: Berlin; Contin, A., Galiulo, V. (2021). The memorable image of Metropolitan Cartography as a symbolic trigger for Metropolitan Landscape. In Metropolitan Landscape: Towards a shared construction of the resilient city of the future Eds. Contin, A. Springer: Berlin