Dallo spazio pubblico allo spazio aperto: dispositivi per il progetto di Città

Public space has historically been a structuring element of the city, for its collective life, a space of democracy or an element of compensation of social and spacial inequalities. Yet, the recent debate shows a crisis in the design of public space for different reasons: deterritorialization, change in collective shapes and actors, lack of public resources. In the wake of the traditional criticism towards the modern, urbanism and architecture have shown how the practices of being together are nomadic and possible, and are not in need of a stable project or localization. Practices in use often clash with the project of a collective space: the former representing the needs of everyday life, the latter seen as a “normative project” of the public space resulting from a normative and governmental apparatus. The discussion above raises a substantial question: what happened to the project of public spaces? This study proposes an inquiry based on the “percolation of meanings”, outlining the genealogical traces of the role of public space based on its relationship with the concepts of environment and with the shape of the city, and adopting them as a key to re-build and revisit conceptual inertia and new interpretations of the role of public space project.