The proposed research intends to study processes of urban transformation in Italian cities within the framework of the concept of "affective space". Such notion, that is increasingly acquiring importance in the fields of human geography, environmental psychology, anthropology etc., provides interesting cues for the understanding of the relationship between subjects and the space they inhabit. So far, it has however had limited application in the specific context of the existing city.
The central research questions will be: what is the impact of deep changes in existing urban fabrics on their inhabitants¿ affective sphere? What is the influence that the affective sphere exerts back on changes unfolding in the city? An increased awareness of this matter is in the research group' view central for the understanding of the nature of contemporary urban space, thereby taking up a fundamental role for any forecasting of transformative actions.
The research will be articulated in phases related to the theoretical investigation of affective spaces, and on three distinct design exercises connected with case studies from contemporary Italian cities: the regeneration of deindustrialized areas in Turin, the unfinished public buildings in Giarre, Sicily, and the spontaneous/grassroots uses along the riverbanks of Rome's Tiber. The case studies have been selected due to the strong impact of these situations on the local residents' perception, and to the critical situations in terms of wide-ranging modification of an extant context that they all display, albeit in different ways.
The expected results will consist in an in-depth investigation of urban transformation processes, under the lens of an innovative field of research that transversally cuts across human and natural science. As a tool to better understand the nature of urban space, it can provide novel insight for established planning and design methods, as well as categories for the creation of new cognitive city maps.
The research project intends to address two urgent topics related to contemporary urbanization and transformation processes, applying an innovative theoretical and methodological framework to a well-established field of study.
As stated, the central theoretical foundation of the project will be the concept of affective space, a model that is gaining increasing traction, due to its cross-cutting position between human and natural sciences. By placing feelings at the center of our research concerns, we intend to study the relationship that people establish, both as individuals and as groups and communities, with the urban space they inhabit. This will be done by granting centrality not only to the discursive and narrative processes through which subjects develop their feelings, but also to the pre-reflective, emotional impact that different spatial situations produce on them.
Until now, research has focused mainly on the historical, narrative and symbolic dimensions of the relationships between subjects and spaces. We can refer to the writings of Paul Ricoeur, in particular to those collected in "La mémoire, l'histoire, l'oublie" (Paris, 2000), to frame how classical phenomenology ¿ at least in its side most attentive to the psychological and moral constitution of the Self ¿ has carried out its investigations on the influence of subjectivity in architecture and urban life. If we consider for instance memory, one of the carrying concepts of late-20th and early 21st century urban theory, we can easily see that from Aldo Rossi's classic "L'architettura della città" (Padova, 1966) to the 2015 n. 48 issue of Yale architecture journal "Perspecta", "Amnesia", discussion has predominantly verted on historicized acceptations of memory, sustained by a strong linguistic-symbolic infrastructure. On the other hand, recent contributions that adopt the model of "storytelling" in the field of urban planning, tend to understand the role played by feelings in this scenario within a theory of political communication (M. van Hulst, "Storytelling: a model of and a model for planning", in "Planning Theory", 11(3), 2012). Other recent studies however highlight a different line of the phenomenological attitude: the one setting out from the late writings of Edmund Husserl (such as "Erfahrung und Urteil", posthumously published in 1939) and which later can be found in the essays by Hermann Schmitz (from "Der Leib", 1965, to "Neue Phänomenologie", 1980). According to this model, feelings don't live only inside individual consciousness, but also "out of us", embodied in things, social connections, spatial situations. They are not only produced by the "stories" in which we are driven, but also by the small signs that things send to our primary recognition mechanisms, those that are connected to our brain system and involved in the constitution of intersubjectivity. With "spatial situation" we have therefore to intend an inclusive description of a specific and contingent condition, including both the physical articulation of objects and the presence of immaterial entities that influence the subjects' emotional spheres.
Combining architecture and urban life with transformation of affective space over time, investigating its repercussions on individual and collective memory, this research opens a view toward a hitherto almost unexplored field. Some recent studies, indeed, put forth the idea that the spatial externalization of emotions, as sustained by the "new phenomenology", grounds the possibility of considering feelings as being embedded in physical space, thus becoming "retrievable" by different subjects even in a historical perspective (e.g. T.F. Sørensen, "More than a feeling: Towards an archaeology of atmosphere", in Emotion, Space and Society, 15, 2015). From this specific declination, we can develop the project of an "archaeology of feelings", and in particular of the city's feelings, of urban feelings, which also follows Michel Foucault's conception of the ideas as something material, practical, dependent both from the historical contingency and from the physical constitution of the human body (M. Foucault, "L'Archeologie du savoir", 1969). The outline of an "archaeology of feelings" becomes especially promising for the understanding of the affective landscape within the changing city: residents who have witnessed the transformations enact a comparison between past and present experiences, whereas more recent inhabitants may witness the presence of "historicised" feelings through the traces these have left behind. This particular take on affective space is innovative, since almost no existing literature addresses this specific issue. Furthermore, it can provide an increased awareness of the impact of urban processes and transformations on both present and prospective inhabitants, thereby becoming a potential design tool.