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Figura di spicco del panorama internazionale dell’architettura e del disegno industriale, otto volte Compasso d’Oro e presente al MoMA di New York, attivo anche nel campo della didattica e della pubblicistica, in oltre cinquant’anni di carriera Mario Bellini ha esteso la sua riflessione a tutte le scale del progetto, dando vita ad alcune icone del campo design italiano, e realizzando edifici in tutto il mondo, tra i quali il Centro Congressi di Villa Erba a Cernobbio vicino a Como, il Quartiere Portello di Fiera Milano, il Tokyo Design Center alla National Victoria Gallery di Melbourne, l’America Headquarters della Deutsche Bank a Francoforte, il Dipartimento delle Arti Islamiche del Louvre di Parigi, e molti altri.Dai suoi scritti e dalla sua vicenda personale emerge il ritratto di un architetto in dialogo con ambiti molteplici, quali la pittura, la fotografia, la comunicazione visiva e una sensibilità ai temi della rappresentazione che gli è valsa la targa d’Oro dell’Unione Italiana Disegno nel 2018. Mario Bellini ha infatti sempre integrato nel suo lavoro un’inesauribile passione per il disegno, inteso come strumento di indagine, di pensiero e di progetto. I suoi lavori sono stati recentemente al centro di un percorso di ricerca sul tema che ha avuto un primo nodale esito nella mostra “Mario Bellini, il disegno del progetto”, tenutasi nel 2018 al Politecnico di Milano. La ricerca ha preso avvio con un’esplorazione mirata dell’archivio Mario Bellini, accompagnata da un dialogo diretto con l’architetto e con le figure centrali del suo studio. Ne è nato uno scambio articolato, spesso condotto davanti ai disegni stessi e a partire da questi, un confronto del quale l’intervista che segue propone una sintesi significativa. Da questo percorso sono emersi materiali utili per indagare l’intreccio tra pensiero e genesi della forma nell’opera di Mario Bellini che prende corpo attraverso le molteplici espressioni della rappresentazione. Dalle risposte dell’architetto-designer, accompagnate da una selezione dei materiali d’archivio, emergono temi nodali che attraversano la storia del disegno di architettura e ne caratterizzano in particolare gli ultimi decenni, quali il rapporto tra disegno e immaginazione, tra disegno e concepimento dell’idea progettuale, tra tecnologie, genesi del progetto e gestione dei processi.DOI: https://doi.org/10.20365/disegnarecon.25.2020.dw2

CoViD-19 is producing a number of changes in the meaning of health. In order to protect our health, States have restricted the exercise of many rights: movement, education, work, etc.�� Health has thus become a tyrant that crushes all other rights. On the other hand, shortages impose choices for access to intensive care beds, leading to a tragic selection between those who can be treated and those who cannot. In this way, CoViD-19 has denied the health of the excluded. Finally, the pandemic has revealed a condition of great inequality in access to treatment. The article examines these dynamics within a framework of constitutional principles in order to draw lessons for the possible emergence of new pandemics., BioLaw Journal - Rivista di BioDiritto, N. 3 (2020)

On October 24, 2018 the Italian Constitutional Court held that the absolute ban on assisted suicide provided for by Art. 580 of the Italian criminal code is unconstitutional under certain conditions. On the one hand, this Article «serves the purpose of protecting interests that are worthy of protection by the legal system» (p. 6), such as life and the protection of weak and vulnerable people. On the other hand, in specific situations like the one in the DJ Fabo's case, the assistance to die «may seem to the sick person to be the only way out of being kept alive by artificial methods that are no longer desired, and which he or she has the right to refuse» (p. 8). In particular the Court has set four conditions under which the absolute prohibition of suicide assistance can turn to be unconstitutional, and namely in those cases in which «assisted persons are (a) affected by an illness that is incurable and (b) causes physical or psychological suffering, which they find absolutely intolerable, and who are (c) kept alive by means of life support treatments, but remain (d) capable of making free and informed decisions» (p. 8). In such a situation the absolute ban on suicide assistance obliges the patient to «undergo a slower process, in a scenario that corresponds less well to the patient's vision of a dignified death and which is marked by more pain and suffering for the people close to the patient» (p. 9). Being aware of the impact and scope of its remarks and of the values at stake, the Court decided not to immediately declare the unconstitutionality of art. 580 of the criminal code, but rather to postpone the official discussion of the questions of constitutionality to the hearing on September 24, 2019. In a «“collaborative” and “dialogical”» perspective, the Court thus called upon the Parliament to regulate a subject which is at the «intersection between values of primary importance, the balancing of which presupposes, in a direct and immediate way, choices that the legislator is, first of all, authorized to make» (p. 11). As already known, the Parliament has not passed a law on assisted suicide so far; the Court will therefore decide at the hearing on September 24 how to amend what has already defined as a «unconstitutional regulatory scheme» (p. 11). Against this background and considering the reasoning of the Court in December 2018, the Authors of this Document - legal scholars and professionals with long-standing experience in these topics - decided to open an interdisciplinary discussion on the main legal end-of-life issues. Starting from the Order but without limiting the analysis to it, the Working Group met on a monthly basis at the University of Trento and with the support of the Jean Monnet BioTell Project, addressing and studying in depth the large number of tricky issues raised by the Order of the Constitutional Court and linked to a possible Parliament decision. The results of these discussions have been gathered and developed in the Document together with some operational proposals, offering a “constitutionally oriented” and scientific grounded understanding of end-of-life issues. The Working Group thus aimed to contribute to the public debate suggested by the Court, which must be truly informed and plural due to the impact on institutional choices. On September 25, the Constitutional Court ruled the impunity of those who foster the suicide under the conditions expressed in the Court press release reporting the Court's judgment.

In this paper, we focus on the importance of developing pathways for helping children and adults to deepen their knowledge of the local areas, or territories, where they live. We understand the term ‘territory’ to encompass artistic heritage sites, as well as natural and urban landscapes. Working directly with communities and constructing projects based on knowledge building, interpretation, narration, and reflection is an essential step towards developing a shared and forward-looking vision of heritage. For all too long, scholars have focused on the passing on of pre-defined cultural information, rather than on co-constructing knowledge and contents with citizens directly, via participatory processes that allow members of the community to narrate their experience and lives in their local territories. We describe attempts to develop such participatory trajectories in relation to the towns of Mantua and Sabbioneta, the heritage sites of Villa Carlotta, Orto Botanico di Bergamo, and Isola Comacina, and the district of Milan where the University of Milano-Bicocca is located.

The school as the driving force behind an action of rediscovery, enhancement and communication of cultural heritage: this is the ‘heart’ of the ScAR project (‘School Activates Resources’) by Politecnico di Milano, the largest technical university in Italy. ScAR is one of the winning projects of PoliSocial 2017, a social responsibility programme by Politecnico di Milano, which in that year had as theme ‘the suburbs’. ScAR puts some schools (levels 1 to 12) at the centre of knowledge-building processes (Scardamialia & Bereteir, 2006; Conole, 2013; Vuopala et al, 2015; Gillies, 2016) aimed at understanding and conveying, through technologies, the value of their everyday landscape: less ‘glaring’ with respect to ‘official’ cultural heritage, but not less interesting.