Thesis title: Ri-composizione tra urbano e rurale. Ricerche di modelli di trasformazione nel bacino mediterraneo.
This doctoral thesis addresses a research question concerning the relationship between urban and rural areas in architectural transformations. The aim is to investigate settlement models of the ‘non-urban’ that can be integrated into urban expansion, limiting the scope of research to cases within the Mediterranean basin, particularly in Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Greece.
In an era marked by urban overcrowding on one hand, and the increased visibility of rural areas on the other, this study positions itself in the middle ground, observing how urban expansion has often led to the incorporation of city fringes and rural centers, generating an incoherent architectural lexicon, or how rural settlements themselves are losing their character. The construction of the city, and thus, a compositional response to the inadequacy of settlement conditions, becomes necessary to define the modalities of a possible integration. More specifically, the research aims to investigate settlement modalities in operational and formal terms across two scales: the territorial and the local scale of the settlement, using an approach that involves the constant relationship between typological and morphological units, as well as their relationship with the context.
Through models, historical examples, and case studies, categories related to rurality are defined and analyzed from a compositional perspective. An analogical and comparative methodological approach is fundamental to formulate a knowledge path characterized by the collection of examples based on the category of rurality in transformations related to urban expansion, in order to delineate rules and principles within this domain.
The study, therefore, highlights the importance of a formal analysis and the definition of a possible qualitative design model in the relationship between urban and rural spaces, considering the qualities and characteristics of rural architecture as a starting point, viewed as a typological model linked to the dimension of human settlement in inhabiting the territory and space. In this way, it is possible to suggest potential transformations and approaches, contributing to an international debate that outlines new theoretical and practical dimensions for architectural design.