Phd in ENGINEERING-BASED ARCHITECTURE AND URBAN PLANNING

Thesis title: Etica dell’Architettura contemporanea. Lo spazio pubblico come luogo di resistenza

The research aims to demonstrate that the space referred to as the Public Building-Landscape has the capacity to highlight the substantial power of architecture in relation to the physical, mental, emotional, and social well-being of those who inhabit it. Architecture can serve as a paradigm for promoting healthy living, capable of preventing discomfort, distress, and even induced illnesses, such as the widespread mental disorders that characterize our contemporary society, often stemming from the collective perception of urban isolation. The space of relationships, the public space, is the setting where these possibilities take shape. Here, architecture can become a catalyst for welcoming atmospheres, and design can act as an “attractor of virtuous behaviors.” Architecture thus becomes the place where communities can be built, spaces of interaction that prevent loneliness, spaces in which one function triggers and promotes others, facilitating encounter, sharing, and collective living. These are places where individuals feel emotionally welcomed, and are therefore defined as “affective” spaces, symbolic places where the collective “all” recognizes itself culturally. Hence, an ethics of architecture emerges, since Architecture is, by its very nature, an ethical act, through its potential to foster communal life and guide the construction of community.