Fabrizio Zanni
Four "Genetic" changes in the urban landscape
Fabrizio Zanni is Associated Professor in Architecture & Urban Design
Politecnico di Milano
Milan. Italy;

Anthropical-geographical landscape
The physical support to human activities (1) is, as we well know, as more complex and stratified than ever before. On the basis of the Roman centuriatio, that had replaced the primitive ingens silva (2) and had reclaimed the marshland of Padania, a structure that can still be seen today in many areas of Lombardia, urban and non urban signs often contradictory have overlapped throughout the centuries, often repeating the same background. In Milan since the mid nineteenth century until the Sixties of the previous century the expansive background was based on the inbound layout and was often repeated, in terms of its larger or smaller dimensions, according to the mutual ranks of residential areas. Subsequently and up until today this background contrasts with the more diffused one, with the proliferation and dispersion of anthropical activities and spaces throughout the entire physical support. We are now witnessing consolidation of this phenomenon, whose perspectives cannot yet be defined. The physical support, the anthropical space therefore possesses another "layer", made up of urban pieces, agricultural residues, infrastructures, built and un-built spaces, functional agglomerates of various kinds (3). When we speak of "landscape" we intend to discuss such structuring from a general point of view and not an analytical point of view; furthermore, the landscape implies a specific look (4) outside of this picture, that contemplates it in terms of perspective. Renaissance authors, even if the landscape concept was not yet born (there are still a few centuries to wait), built their own ideal cities starting with the perspectives established pictorially. Therefore what is the "perspective" space of the contemporary diffused city? It is an eccentric and diffused space, perhaps similar to a complex labyrinth (5); a labyrinth of labyrinths in which similar formal ensembles get caught up in distant and different places, due to the evil "genius" of globalisation of forms of settlement, but in which they meet up with "remarkable areas" of the urban system, "thresholds" of transition, spatial pauses in the urbanised continuum. Given the importance of the infra-structural networks for the contemporary city, many of these threshold areas are made up of infra-structural bonds or by the special intersection within a specific context of infra-structural bonds, infrastructures and local morphology.

Landscape as a "setting" to be consumed quickly
From trains, from public means, from the highway the urban landscape flows dynamically and looses its physical nature. The building becomes a support for publicity, the public means itself looses the emblems of "lineage", municipality or public company, in favour of a mainly publicity restyling. In Las Vegas, as we all have seen, on the Strip the bright signs count rather than the physical structures. When the urban structure becomes a setting of consumption logics rather than figures of control of personal shape, then the urban morphology looses its meaning of format of spaces and the building types tend to loose the important cogency of spatial complexes in favour of a fatal tendency of uniformity. This does not mean that the city is lost to architecture forever but it means that the form must search for different routes besides the traditional ones and must be able to swallow up the trend of rapid consumption of urban areas, before being swallowed up. Unfortunately the current trend, for example in specialised shopping centres, is to use anonymous structures, leaving the role of formal expression to the superficial publicity "skin". False towers, false arcades, false nineteenth century galleries, false historical squares complete the commercial-publicity pastiche.

The "mobile" landscape of motorways
The motorway landscape is multiple, as frequent visitors of "bridge" motorway restaurants know: it is made up of the changeable yet always the identical performance of the tarmac, the blacktop of the beat generation (6), made dynamic by the constant flow of vehicles; but it is also the anthropical-geographic landscape that slides along the windows of travellers, the evasive icon of its real structure; finally these are the two previous landscapes seen from motorway restaurants. The architectural and urban subject of this special construction kind has been discussed in detail in the disciplinary essay (7) and in Italian literature (8). The motorway with its components has therefore become a part of imaginary literature and of the literature of "topical figures" that populate imaginary architecture: this means that it has also lost its role as a heterotopic service and its buildings, tollgates, stations, motorway restaurants, petrol pumps, rescue areas and other means including the road network, footbridges, dirt paths, grassy inclined plains and road signs have entered into the groups of architectural spaces on various scales of connections.

Notes
V. Gregotti, The territory of architecture, Fetrinelli, Milan, 1966;
For ingens silva refer to:
From a historical point of view: History of the Italian landscape, Einaudi;
From a theoretical point of view: S. Crotti refers to this in, Architectural Figures: threshold, Unicopli, Milan, 2000, in which the author speaks of the threshold of " ...alien parts" (that) "confuse the borders between mundus (arch temple city) and the ingens sylva, where the form, the society and knowledge are lost.";
(3) see, for example, the horrendous "accumulations" of prefabricated industrial and artisan buildings, physically identifiable from planning zoning of the General Town Planning Scheme since the Sixties up until today.
(4) see, for example: R. Assunto, The landscape and aesthetics, Ed. Novecento;
(5) see, for example: F. Colaucci, in: "Encyclopaedia of Medieval Art." Institute of the Italian Encyclopaedia founded by Giovanni Treccani, Rome, 1996, Vol. 7 (P. 543-547);
(6) J. Kerouack, On the road;
(7) Pippo Ciorra, "Motorway restaurants. Spaces and clearings for social relations on the road", in: P. Desideri, M. Ilardi, Crossings, the new territories of public space, Costa & Nolan, Rome, 1996;
(8) Carlo Lucarelli, 'Autosole', Rizzoli, Milan, 1998;
(9) F. Zanni (by), Architecture of Network Landscapes, Clup, Milan 2001;
M. Tadi, F. Zanni, Architectural Infrastructure and Project, Clup, Milan, 2005.

Fabrizio Zanni
Italy
fabrizio.zanni@polimi.it
http://www.fabriziozanni.net