Cultures, Communities and Design

Abstract

From the establishment of the cardō and decumānus as the principal route of the first urban organization, the build environment has been thought as a group of full and empty, open and close spaces. In this group of structures, the street has been constituted a very important place for the society that live in it. About several authors who have researched about the city, Bernard Rudofsky has considered the street as the element of the city able to differentiate the essence which define it, place value on the cultural inheritance from the Mediterranean environment; a cultural context where the relationship between the rural, the urban and the life style establish the most characteristic essence of the place. To Rudofsky, it is this Mediterranean culture from the bases of the use of the street as an extension of the domestic space; the place of the scenery for the daily life. Inside of this thoughts about the street and its use, Rudofsky has established a permanent comparative with the society which has been the worse who represent this symbiosis between inhabitant-city; the American society. Take as a reference his work, Streets For People, it is possible establish these basics questions which make the Mediterranean Street, the best example of the relationship between society and the urban space. But, Which are the subjects or characteristics that make the Mediterranean street a referent? This paper it will search to reveal theses bases that make the Mediterranean a vernacular referent through which Bernard Rudofsky understood the city and the relationship with the inhabitant. Thoughts share with several scholars who analyzed the urbanism of the cities with the society in the center. Practices which have allowed come back to consider a urbanism aware with the society, able to keep the sustainable strategies for the contemporary city.