Catastrophes and new paradigms of architectural and urban projects

Abstract

With which methods, tools and techniques the architecture and the urbanism are connected with the effects of the catastrophes on the human installations?
In an epoch that seems characterized by the affirmation of the "society of the risk" and from a "second modernity", it seems necessary to establish if is in progress or not a paradigmatic change of the culture of the architectural and urban project. In this perspective any field of action appears fitter than the one that interprets the interventions connected with the "cycle of life of the disasters" (prevention, answer, reconstruction, mitigation). Beginning from the theoretical recognition around the terms of the problem (catastrophe, crisis, emergency, paradigm) the contribution investigates the relationship between project and catastrophe. The hypothesis is that the project of complexes, turbulent and dynamic systems, must be considered as the strategic integration among operations of knowledge of the physical space, of the technical environment and of the socio-economic and cultural fabric of the places and the communities exposed to the risk of manifestation of the disasters.
To result effective this integration must be open to the modifications, both ordinary and exceptional, of the context of reference.
Methodologically is necessary to impose in the urban and architectonical project and along the whole cycle of life of the disasters the implication of the critical factors through maps, expressed through scenarios and represented across adaptable and transitory configurations. In perspective the change of announced paradigm aspires to impose the architectural and urban project, as essential tool in the prevention of the risks connected with the demonstration of the catastrophes.