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Portugal's early seaside holiday camps emerged prior to the Estado Novo era, serving as summer destinations for underprivileged children even before the implementation of national educational programs. Educational and charitable associations, supported by private philanthropy and the working class, played a pivotal role in the development of these facilities. Newspapers and cooperatives like Voz do Operário spearheaded social initiatives to address the challenges of the late nineteenth century, targeting workers and their families. These initiatives involved hundreds of children each summer, primarily between June and October, for the care of childhood tuberculosis and the recreation of young guests. These projects found space in existing buildings or gave rise to new buildings along a mostly pristine coastline, often at a considerable distance from urban centers. A significant example is the O Século seaside children's holiday camp, funded by private and public funds, operational since 1927 in S. Pedro do Estoril, between Lisbon and the renowned Cascais. The project went through at least three construction phases, influencing city public life and benefiting from the support of Lisbon’s famous Feira Popular, in operation until a few years ago. Archival documents, historical photographs, and blueprints testify to the evolution of these facilities over time. Transformations between 1944 and 1945 highlight the importance of this camp in the collectivity, its strategies of funding, and its needs, staff, and the children it hosted. Over the years, many of these facilities disappeared due to the tourism expansion in the area, unlike the case of O Século, which still partly continues programs dedicated to childhood.

The 1928 International Exhibition for the Fight against Tuberculosis, held in Rome in the Palazzo delle Esposizioni on Via Nazionale, and the 1937 Exhibition of Summer Camps and Childcare, also in Rome but in the Circus Maximus area, constitute two important chronological milestones of a research that connects architects and engineers on the theme of architecture for holiday camps for children. They are two stages of a ten-year journey that from an original purely sanitary-assistance purpose acquired that of nationalistic-ideological formation in which the Fascist regime transformed the buildings intended for tuberculosis treatment into actual gyms for the physical and spiritual training of young Italians, which can be considered as formidable propaganda machines. During the 1928 exhibition the role of the holiday camps for both the recovery and prevention of children from tuberculosis began to emerge and the commitment of the Roman engineer-architect Cesare Valle, who had been tackling the problem of the hospitalization of TBC patients in Rome since the 1920s, was underlined by the exhibition's wide resonance in newspapers and journals. Less than a decade later, in the exhibition dedicated to holiday camps, the technical-sanitary solutions had already taken on a supporting role, and in the designs of the citadel and the pavilions of the institutions for the care and education of children by various protagonists of the Italian architectural scene, it was above all architecture and propaganda that found an effective combination.

In Portugal, Salazar’s government, after the creation of the Estado Novo (1933–74), introduced a series of welfare policies following the example of what had been implemented in Italy. Although with different declinations, closely linked to the Lusitanian nationalist identity, Italy became a model for Salazarism. Various organizations such as the Fundação Nacional para a Alegria no Trabalho (FNAT), the Organização Nacional Mocidade Portuguesa (ONMP) and the Obra das Mães pela Educação Nacional (OMEN) were involved in building holiday camps for children in the country: they were located on the seaside, on the hills, and in mountain valleys, with functional programs related to childcare and leisure. Numerous leading figures in Portuguese politics were sent by the government to study and visit fascist welfare organizations in Italy, while architects – engaged since the late 1930s in drawing up layouts for summer camps – were urged to use a traditional architectural language. Based on a research conducted in several Portuguese archives, the essay traces the relationship between the two regimes to highlight, through political ideology and built works, similarities, and differences in the relationship between the modernity of architecture and the needs to represent national identity.

This paper aims to analyse the ambiguous relationship with modernity of the holiday spaces in the Third Reich. The Kraft durch Freude (KdF) and the Hitlerjugend, the two major Nazi organisations dedicated to normalising the leisure time of the Reich's subjects, were protagonists of architectural experiences characterised by opposing conceptions of modernity. Two radically opposed architectural models seem to emerge from the KdF Seebad Prora seaside resort and from the ideal layout of the camp recommended by the Hitlerjugend manuals: the machine and the camp. The analysis and comparison of these two models define an opportunity to investigate the complexity of the totalitarian spatial ecosystem by analysing its two-faced approach to modernity, its structural link with the regime and the contemporary perception of its difficult heritage, attempting to dispel certain prejudices and oversimplifications regarding Nazi Germany's planning.

Architecture held a central role in the child welfare programs developed in twentieth-century Greece. Τhis contribution discusses two key examples from the inter- and post-war periods: Panos-Nikolis Djelepy’s Children’s village in Voula, Athens (1933–34, 1936–39) and Emmanuel Vourekas’s Paidopoli in Agria, Volos (1955–58), both influenced by their respective political, social and cultural context. It explores how the projects have contributed to the establishment of a building typology centered around the imminent issue of the hospitality and care of the children and youth. A critical comparative analysis of the two projects is presented with a particular attention on the ways in which they addressed the relationship between building and context, inside and outside, nature and artifice, in line with the prevailing medical treatments in those days, casting a novel attention on issues of environmental performance.

In the Postwar years towards the pursuit of happiness and the construction of a new society, an unusual accommodation facility was built on a meadow just outside Cortina d'Ampezzo: the Albergo Meridiana. The originality of this building can be found in the female client, in its target– childhood, hosting boys and girls from 3 to 14 years old – and above all in the proposal of a house built according to the Montessori model, rather than a more traditional holiday camp. The design was entrusted to Edoardo Gellner and it represented not only one of the first mature works of the architect, but also a real design experimentation on Montessori’s theories of the environment. Also, the building was a testing ground on the interior design which will lead, in the following years, to the more corporate variation of the holiday for children: the Eni Village Summer Camp in Borca di Cadore. In smaller dimensions, the Meridiana anticipated architectural forms, interiors spaces and materials and construction methods, contributing to irreversibly modify the social and pedagogical approach of the architecture of holiday camps through Montessori’s words and theories.

The essay offers an introduction to the experience of holiday camps for children. Holiday camps were a form of social tourism which was typical of industrial societies and which affected the coasts, countryside, and mountains of Western countries for more than a century. After a brief presentation of the conditions that generated their emergence, the essay is organized according to three different dimensions, which are here called “promises:” the promises of salvation, preparation for life, and innovation.

This contribution aims to offer a reflection on the main pedagogical and organisational profiles of Italian climatic holiday camps at the end of the nineteenth century, focusing on three Milanese experiences: two of them, the Cura Climatica Gratuita ai Fanciulli Gracili, alunni delle scuole elementari comunali di Milano (for the pupils of municipal elementary schools in Milan), and the Colonie climatiche autunnali per fanciulli e fanciulle (for boys and girls), have as an emblematic connecting element the figure of the doctor and philanthropist Malachia De Cristoforis (1832–1915), a protagonist of the lively international debate on holiday camps taking place in those years; the third experience, the cure climatiche organised for the young guests of the Martinitt Orphanage, although a somewhat peculiar initiative in terms of the type of beneficiaries, shares some important traits with the previous ones, including the philanthropic character and the centrality attributed to immersion in nature, an element that ideally places the camps in the track of a centuries-old pedagogical reflection.

Originally established as welfare institutions at the beginning of the 20th century, under Italian fascism the function of the holiday camp was transformed into an instrument of indoctrination and physical training. Built predominantly using the architectural language of the razionalismo, the summer camps of the 1920s and 30s were impressive in their design and spatial organisation. But even if their modernist architecture does not seem to have any political references, there are several enrichment codes and symbols that form the backdrop to exert an ideological influence on the young visitors. Lettering, political emblems and slogans, works of art, machine aesthetics and ultimately the floor plan organisation all had an effect on the guests. With the colonie, an entire generation was disciplined, manipulated, sworn to Mussolini and the fascist regime and ultimately prepared for war. After the war, the buildings were mainly taken over by state or church relief organisations. With increasing individual tourism, many facilities have stood empty since the 1970s. Their desirable restoration and conversion, however, should take account of the ominous purpose and orientation and make them visible. Artistic and architectural interventions can be a way to critically question these legacies of fascism for future generations.

In the French Haute-Savoie there is still today a building that is deeply linked to the history of the Italian Republic, which not only testifies to its roots and values, but also represents a paradigm of childhood tragedies in the twentieth century. It is a holiday camp in Saint-Cergues Les Voirons (now converted into private apartments) which was built by the Italian “fuorusciti” for the children of the emigrated compatriots. The creation of this holiday camp was considered one of the most successful undertakings of international anti-fascism. After its opening in 1933, the holiday home was used for a few years by Italian emigrants’ children as well as a refuge for well-known anti-fascists; then it was adapted to the new needs of assistance to the most fragile and difficult children imposed by international circumstances. Five years after its opening, the building was in fact used as a holiday camp for Spanish refugee children from the civil war and, after the outbreak of the Second World War, it became a place to welcome children of any nationality, victims of the conflict and finally a home-refuge for young Jews fleeing deportation. This building, built in a typical alpine style, was most dissimilar from the fascist monumental architectural models. Built just a few kilometres from Geneva, it was much more than just a building: it was a real challenge against an autarchic regime that was increasingly turned in on itself, even in its educational models.

Holiday camps represent a significant example of the architecture for mass tourism in Sardinia after the Second world war, and a concrete example of the health and recreational function of local welfare state policies and religious pedagogical activities. Although marked by simple and sometimes questionable formal solutions – often far from relevant architectural experimentation – holiday camps are now characteristic elements of many Sardinian coastal landscapes, as well as examples of architectural and building articulations which were functional to the pedagogical conceptions of the time. Prominent among these cases are a seaside colony and an accommodation facility for social tourism in the picturesque bay of Solanas (hamlet of Sinnai) in southern Sardinia, both run by religious organizations and located just two hundred meters apart from each other. The first is the “Colonia Salesiana Don Bosco,” built between 1956–58, the second is the “Casa La Scogliera,” completed in 1971. The reconstruction of the design and construction history of the “Casa La Scogliera,” through unpublished original plans, documents, and memories, allows this article to assess the relationship that this building had both with the specific pedagogy developed in the context of religious organizations and with the tumultuous tourist development of Sardinia during the 1960s. This paper aims at revealing the history, values and critical issues of this architecture and the cultural context in which it is embedded, thus contributing to the current debate on the conservation and transformation of holiday camps.

In the fall of 1945, the former mountain holiday camp of the Milan-based Fascist Sciesa Group in Selvino (Bergamo) was transformed into a sanctuary for young Jewish refugees who had escaped persecution, ghettos, and extermination. The immediate perception that this served as a form of reparation was destined to fade over the following decades as this function was succeeded by others. The architectural and social history of Sciesopoli is marked by a long, unbroken concatenation of uses – some antithetical, others in continuity – unfolding from the early 1930s until the late 1980s. As the model of large buildings for mass vacations and therapies faced a crisis, Sciesopoli shared the fate of similar structures: abandonment due to the difficult, perhaps impossible, reutilization in the present. Today, the current needs no longer align with the dimensions and forms of this historical structure. For over fifty years, Sciesopoli has provided thousands of children and young people with the benefits of mountain air, outdoor activities, a heated swimming pool, anti-tuberculosis therapies, and refugee shelter. Presently, only the latter function may continue to exist as a social necessity. However, a refugee shelter is hardly an object of investment in the restoration of a deteriorated structure in need of adjustments, which have indeed occurred during Sciesopoli's seven lives.

Although the history of vacation camps is well documented, their future is yet to be explored. Looking back on the results of a research project that mobilized a multidisciplinary research team from the Nantes School of Architecture, this paper focuses on the future of a former vacation camp called in French “Palais des enfants” (“Children’s Palace”). The camp is located in Saint-Hilaire-de-Riez, a seaside town in Vendée, on the French Atlantic coastline. The specific case of the “Palais des enfants” in Saint-Hilaire-de-Riez offers an ideal case study for the many issues that affect the future of these heritages: who are the stakeholders playing extended roles in managing the future of this camp? What are the legal, social and environmental constraints affecting these heritages? Which economic strategies should be implemented to develop new attractions in a coastal town marked by social tourism? This site, as well as its future, have led us to ground our analysis in a set of spatial, political and social perspectives. They have above all opened up new horizons for joint research initiatives informed by design and by art.

Il Lido di Venezia, lembo di terra emersa tra mare e laguna, è da più di un secolo luogo di villeggiatura privilegiato dei veneziani. A partire dalla nascita del primo stabilimento balneare (1857), le spiagge del Lido sono divenute meta turistica nel Novecento con l’edificazione di importanti hotel di lusso e ville in stile liberty. È in questo clima di fermento che sorge, tra il 1936 e il 1937, la colonia marina “Principi di Piemonte,” su progetto di Daniele Calabi, commissionato dal Comune di Padova, che era interessato ad avere una meta turistica in terra veneziana. Inserita in un lotto di oltre 14.000 metri quadri, la colonia si compone di volumi organizzati attorno a una grande corte ritagliata in una rigida griglia geometrica, originariamente aperta verso il mare. Tuttavia, sono significativi i processi trasformativi che nel tempo hanno modificato l’impianto, arrivando in qualche caso a tradire l’idea del progettista. A partire dall’analisi della documentazione conservata nell’Archivio Progetti dell’Università Iuav di Venezia, l’articolo propone una rilettura dell’iter progettuale e del cantiere, inserendo la colonia nel contesto di sperimentazione e di innovazione di materiali e tecniche costruttive connesso alla stagione dell’autarchia. Lo studio considera infine i meccanismi in atto nel processo di riattivazione del sito che coinvolge stakeholder pubblici e privati, portando a evidenziare quanto le colonie per l’infanzia rappresentino una lente attraverso cui indagare le questioni culturali, tecniche ed economiche della conservazione e della valorizzazione del patrimonio moderno.

The foundation of Ostia Lido, which took place between 1909 and 1915 on the initiative of Paolo Orlando with the collaboration of the Associazione Artistica fra i Cultori di Architettura headed by Gustavo Giovannoni, represented a central episode not only in the expansion of the Third Rome towards the sea, but also of the Italian colonial culture. The construction of the Marine Hospice by Marcello Piacentini provided the first piece of the new settlement, addressed towards a language suspended between classicism and vernacular which was further developed by Vincenzo Fasolo in the nearby monumental Vittorio Emanuele III seaside holiday camp. Through the reading of the documents and the buildings’ locations, this article retraces the main design and construction processes of the two buildings, intimately linked to each other. It also traces the phases of abandonment and degradation, occupation and partial reuse that marked them in the postwar period, providing a picture of their current conditions and the opportunities that an systematic redevelopment could offer, inspired by the historical model of the “Albergo dei Poveri” and other spontaneous bottom-up activities.

This essay contributes to the discussion around the following question: what happens after a children’s holiday camp ceases its activities? Are abandonment and ruin an inevitable fate? The former mountain holiday camp “Rinaldo Piaggio” is the case study around which this reflection unfolds. The holiday camp was built by the Genoese architect Luigi Carlo Daneri in 1939 in Santo Stefano d'Aveto, Liguria, where it housed the children of employees of the Pontedera company until 1983. Later, it was sold and affected by an unsuccessful project to convert it into a healthcare residence, and as of today, it is painfully encumbered by a judicial sale procedure, and is in short “a masterpiece at auction.” The holiday camp is mentioned in many publications on modern architecture and was declared of cultural interest in 1996. This vast historical-critical consensus, however, was never followed by a monographic study aimed at understanding the problems of the building’s conservation, its functional recovery, and the preservation of its modernist qualities. After an introduction on the building, the text reconstructs the attempts to transform and update its use, focusing on what has happened in the last two years, between the start of bankruptcy proceedings and an unexpected opportunity to protect the architectural qualities of this masterpiece and promote the revival of its accommodation function.

In Italy alone, dozens of abandoned holiday camps for children are scattered throughout the landscape. The size and diffusion of this heritage calls for a scientific debate on the history and future of these buildings, which are often in a state of serious decay. From Alpine valleys to coastlines, former holiday camps for children tell a long story of educational, architectural, health and social experimentation, which has influenced generations of Europeans in the last 150 years. Holiday camps were hosted in traditional or modern structures, built from long-lasting materials such as reinforced concrete or temporary camping tents. Whatever their nature, holiday camps have left both physical and intangible traces on the European landscape and society. With this issue, in_bo engages in a debate on the history of holiday camps in Europe between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with particular consideration of contemporary reuse and restoration strategies of this architectural heritage.

Educated at the crossroads of various influences – Japanese architecture, vernacular European architecture, and the Modern Movement – Roland Schweitzer (1925–2018) traced a distinctive path in the French architectural scene. He is considered today as a precursor for a form of sensitive contemporary architecture that remains connected with the environment. Schweitzer sought to achieve a certain syncretism between contemporary and traditional form. Throughout his professional life, the humanist dimension of his approach founded its full expression in buildings with a social vocation. From the beginning of his career in 1954, the architect established fruitful relationships with popular education organizations. This proximity led to numerous projects and achievements – youth hostels, summer camps, family holiday centers – as well as long-term architectural research on these specific types of social tourism infrastructures. This paper focuses on the summer camps built in France by Schweitzer between 1958 and 1974. The analysis of the emblematic projects – especially the Cieux and Ballan-Miré holiday camps – allows us to understand how, thanks to a dialogue with the project sponsors and potential users of the site, the architect developed typologies and, more generally, an architectural language that was as close as possible to the uses and the users, educators and children, and enables to evaluate how architecture participated in the popular education projects linked to the New Education movement.

This paper discusses the role of ONMI in the management, coordination and construction of buildings for the protection of childhood, particularly the colonie (holiday camps) and the “Case della madre e del bambino,” built in Italy during the fascist regime. This article is based on research that is partly still in progress and partly already published. The considerations that arose around the role of commissioning also make it possible to highlight certain aspects related to the concept of rationalist architecture as a representation of the racist health instances of fascist ideologies. These aspects can be made explicit through the search for a correlation between original designs, buildings and functional and symbolic programmes. After the Second World War, most ONMI buildings survived (unlike the Case del Fascio and Case del Balilla), continuing to exercise to some extent the functions for which they were born, albeit with new meanings. These buildings were, in fact, the object of an absolutely necessary re-signification since they had in their genesis an ideological component, in the specific case racist, which was no longer acceptable in the changed historical-political context.

Brittany, a maritime territory, became at the end of the nineteenth century a territory of health and social experiences driven by a medical discourse that emphasised both the therapeutic virtues of seawater and the prophylactic qualities of sea air. Through regional examples, this study evokes the installation on the Breton coast of the first holiday camps for children, whose beneficiaries came from many French industrial towns, and benefited from the salubriousness of this marine climate. This study emphasizes the variety of the specialized establishments created in Brittany: from simple open-air schools to sanatoria and marine hospitals, which are then responsible for the fight against tuberculosis. These examples demonstrate how some municipalities specialized in hosting holiday camps for children, and how sometimes the proximity of these establishments to a more traditional resort led to conflicts on the use of the beach. The study highlights that after 1945 the social works of large French public companies multiplied the holiday camps for children on the Breton coast. Finally, the conclusion evokes the current situation, where this type of collective holiday is in crisis, and how the municipalities and institutions in charge of these establishments try to resist a very significant real estate pressure on the much-coveted Breton coast.

Existing literature on the first four decades of children’s holiday camps in the Netherlands (1880–1920) emphasizes that organizations had a dual goal with the care in the buildings; they focused on improving the physical health of children as well as child rearing. This article shows that the architecture of a holiday camp from the early years also focused on both goals. Both strengthening health and imparting upbringing played a role in the design of holiday camps of the Centraal genootschap voor Kinderherstellings- en vakantiekolonies that took a coordinating role for this new form of care for children. The Society divided the children into relatively small groups and implemented a group-system in the activities during the day. Both the social and medical goals were also implemented into the design of the building by architects. The first building in which this was given explicit effect was the Kerdijk holiday camp, which opened in 1907 in Egmond aan Zee. In this article, the author will analyze for the first time from an architectural-historical perspective holiday camp Kerdijk from the underlying ideas about the dual purpose of upbringing and health care. This purpose characterized the main organization for children’s holiday houses of the Central Society in the Netherlands between 1907–1920. From around 1920, the situation changed and the emphasis of life in the camps would increasingly be on health improvement.

The paper scrutinizes the evolution of the uses and functions entrusted to the Gustavo Fara holiday camp in the Italian municipality of Chiavari (Genoa) from the 1930s until today. The work analyzes the historical evolution of the building from its construction to the recent revitalization, including the tourism-oriented urban transformation of the western sector of the city’s waterfront, i.e. Preli. In particular, the essay questions the re-signification of the building in relation to its complex history (Fascism, refugee center, and elementary school) and interprets the more recent events that led to the recovery and conversion into apartments and a luxury hotel. The inquiry leads to answering the following research questions: How does the building dialogue with its surroundings? Is the former holiday camp seen as a difficult heritage of the Fascist regime or only as a representative building of twentieth-century rationalist architecture? How did the recovery process take (or fail to take) into consideration the needs of the community?

In cities transformed by neoliberalism and the machinery of capitalist production, the pandemic has opened new breaches into which new and old practices of value accumulation and extraction continue to creep in. In southern Italy, the slow development that still moves cities has preserved many areas, the manifestation of capitalist phenomena has been less violent. Delving into the "ancient heart" of these cities allows one to discover worlds lost at other latitudes. The article proposed here starts precisely from a glimpse into one of these deepened windows thanks to the testimony, which in this text is narrated in the form of an interview, of Franco Piperno, professor and philosopher of science, former councilor for culture of the Municipality of Cosenza in the 1990s. The experiences conducted in the oldest part of the city of Cosenza in the 1990s were conformed as manifestations of hope that, already at an embryonic level, seemed to ignite reflections on the ability to restore the ”triad urban” already at that time strongly compromised. The visionary power of these experiences is summarized in the book In Praise of Southern Public Spirit. Genius Loci and Social Individual, published in 1997, in which a manifesto of the new polis for Cosenza was elaborated, which put the rights and duties of the civitas at the center, exercising active care of the urbs. The example of Cosenza, in the forms of active citizenship it tries to manifest today, and in the way it is narrated and experienced by those who live there, echoes many micro-experiences, possible implementers of new urban alternatives.

Contemporary cities are dealing with practices and processes that mark not only a radical physical transformation, but also a profound anthropological, cultural, and political transformation of living. In this sense, we are witnessing some transformations in government and political life that are strictly connected to the affirmation of the neoliberal model of development. On the other hand, we are witnessing a progressive development not only of active citizenship, but of forms of mutualism and self-organization. In some cases, they are dictated by the need to respond to social needs and aspirations for a better quality of urban life, which are not answered by the appointed subjects. In others, they are the expression of the effort to build alternative models of development and collective life, becoming nowadays the place where to produce political culture. It is interesting to notice the recent evolution both towards structured and supra-local cooperative and mutualism networks, and towards collaborative forms of self-management in some neighborhoods. Interesting possibilities for innovation also seem to emerge for politics, including collaborative forms that envisage the constitution of substantive informal democracy, a sort of self-produced territorial democracy. The contribution intends to discuss the complex of these problems, referring above all to experiences in the Roman context and critically evaluating the possible effective conditions for the development of forms of self-produced territorial democracy.

The article deals with the relationship between city, territory, and democracy, starting from the results of an international research, which investigated the peculiar forms of the crisis of the notion of Public in those territories that are marked by a long-date conflict between the state and mafia crime. The research questions areframed onto a perspective arguing that the territory is an elective place to read the traces built throughout the relationship between communities and illegal powers. Those questions have posed the need to investigate the set of confiscated assets by claiming the need for architectural design intervention, aiming at the spatial, linguistic, and symbolic transformations without which their transition to commons cannot be said to be fully accomplished. Referring to the municipal area of Palermo, the architectural design studios faced the background scenario constituted by the almost two thousand cases (a very underestimated number) registered by the National Agency for Seized and Confiscated Assets, and relating to the forms of the Public in a context in which democracy is en panne, where the presence of anti-democratic forces that are not only antagonistic to the state but aim to replace it, is not the exception but the rule. Until its conclusions, the paper deals with the reciprocal feeding relationship between research and design studios and concludes by opening new paths, at the crossroads between the updating of the themes of the droit à la ville and spatial justice, which look at the project as a device for emancipation.

This article reads the technological management of complex and global events, including SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, as part of the transition of European democracies towards control and surveillance models imposed by normal emergencies following one another with increasing frequency. The text reflects on pandemics along history, on the technocratic and digital trajectory of contemporary societies, and concludes by outlining local-based forms of self-government.

Since their origins, our cities have been conceived and are still imagined and planned according to cultural and urban schemes that reproduce geometries complicit with the patriarchal and neoliberal system. City governments assume a central role in this process through the promotion of corporate policies and rules, on the one hand, and exclusionary urban planning projects on the other. In both cases, the ideal user of the city remains the white, cisgender, heterosexual, able-bodied man or, otherwise, households which reproduce the cisheteropatriarchal norm. After tracing the approaches of some authors who have analysed and problematised the issue of contemporary urban space through the lens of a intersectional perspective, the case study of CHEAP, a Bolognese urban art collective that, through the practice of poster art, questions the normativisation of public space, will be presented.

Community planning and civic engagement have a long and enduring tradition within the Emilia-Romagna region. This is particularly relevant when we examine the many connections between local government policies concerning social issues and the making of urban policies for most of the Post-war period. The paper is intended to describe how this Civic Culture has changed, from its early years to the recent times. The long period development of this political experience shows how a decision-centered approach to urban planning (led by the Communist Party), has recently turned into a more fragmented and uncertain profile, due to the rise of new and influencing actors that have deeply changed the public domain.

The connection between the forms of power exercise and those of space must be under continuous observation. In a co-evolutionary ecosystem, where local societies transform (and transform themselves with) the environments in which they live, a perturbation in the ways of living and producing eventually also perturbs forms of governance, and vice versa. In this process of becoming and con-being, the condition for safeguarding democracy is the protection of what we define here as democratic cities and territories, of which we have collectively attempted to circumscribe the meaning, character and limits. Whether they are real or utopian expressions, an observation or a desire; whether there are models for implementing them; whether there are parameters that identify their democratic nature; whether an aesthetic characterises them: we attempt to answer these questions in this issue of the journal ‘in_bo’. In the first section of this issue, the analysis of the condition of permeability of democratic institutions by mercantile powers provided the means to understand whether planning is still able to produce imaginaries, elaborate models, support - symbolically and practically - the elaboration of ‘landscapes of rootedness’. Urbanism once again becomes the promoter of projects with a broad social and environmental spectrum when it is supported by a nomos derived from collective discernment. The second section of the booklet is dedicated to this complex topic, bringing together examples of micro-political alternatives to the capitalist development model and anthropocentric conception. The third section welcomes a reflection that calls into question the legacy and vocabulary of town planning, as well as its renewal. Numerous thematic threads bind the contributions: whether the urban planning toolbox knows how to absorb the acceleration of the changes taking place, whether it knows how to orientate its evolution, whether it has coined a language capable of representing the fluidity of the present time; whether the hybridisation between plan technique and digital technique generates virtuous progress.

The essay tries to provide a contribution in the direction of a planning that is more responsive to the potential of community self-government of places, focusing in particular on some issues considered fundamental to this end, namely: the possibility of rethinking democracy as demo-dynamic; the relationship between the political sphere and the urban sphere in some political visions inspired by community self-determination; a geo-historical interpretation of the origin and evolution of the city, up to the current forms of regional urbanisation; a vision of the urban finally freed from the classic city/countryside dualism, as well as from other correlated dualisms; the need for planning to renounce any type of transcendent rationality to favour forms of territorial self- determination. On the basis of the acquisitions now matured in some interpretative strands of the aforementioned questions, a form of planning is proposed which, in order to move towards territorializing immanence, is based on the recognition of the distinction between the common good (and commoning processes) and the private or public ones, placing moreover itself within the framework of a circularly subsidiary approach which, even within the given institutional framework, tends to make the most of the self- regulation faculties, and of self-planning, already available to local communities.

The fifty-year experience of reflections, restorations and projects on an architectural, urban and socio-economic scale promoted in the town of Saint-Macaire, on the Garonne near Bordeaux – an experience defined by Françoise Choay as a “manifesto of optimism regarding the survival of our building competence” –, constitutes a case of popular re-appropriation of the historic city, that has the merit of continuity to the present day. From the restoration site of the Benedictine cloister – the prieuré –, wanted and managed by the city’s young people from 1967 onwards, they moved on to the municipal power, soon reaching it. The dense cultural and associative activity promoted by this position led to forms of social self-organisation that produced an experience of substantial planning from below: in more than three decades of municipal government, it was possible to integrate collective facilities located in historical monuments, public housing in Renaissance buildings, re-appropriation of craftsmanship, new and old inhabitants into the historical city. The essay reconstructs the phases of this experience of collective management of urban transformations and addresses, through Macarian examples, the theme of the permanent quest for domination by those with cultural power at the expense of those without, particularly on the subject of the control of urban and architectural aesthetics.

The contribution investigates through the photographic tool the space between some Roman houses built in the early 1900s, in which a collective dimension of living can be found. Through the built forms, the materials and the possibility of passing freely and democratically in the intermediate spaces between the private domestic sphere and the public sphere of the city, the path through images stops the gaze on the public building settlements with the aim of recovering a dimension and a shared atmosphere of living. The covered passageways and the entrance thresholds, the drying racks and the green open space emphasize the importance of the empty space as a focal point of the collective architectural project. With particular reference to the fundamental role of proximity spaces, the goal is to feed an imaginary on collective housing that is not only speculative but perceptive, phenomenological, immaterial which does not only concern a space of consumption but a time and place democratic made up of daily actions.

The approval of the national law on collective property (2017) and the almost simultaneous approval of the Friuli Venezia Giulia Regional Landscape Plan(2018) are introducing novelties in the places that had mostly seen a resurgence of interest on collective property.. The essay takes as an example one of the areas with the highest density of management claims by fractional communities, one of Carnia's traditional alpine areas, the Canal di Gorto. Its environment was marked both by the demographic crisis and the uncertainty about the stability of the communities in relation to the great economic transformations imposed by globalization and industrial delocalisation. Our aim was to describe the innovations introduced in the last five years in order to understand if any change in the evolution of the management of collective assets is looming. The acknowledgement in the landscape plan of so-called civic uses in Friuli Venezia Giulia has proved to be very partial, despite the cooperation of the Coordination of regional collective properties and the new investigations by the regional planning offices engaged in the formation of the urban planning tool. On the other hand, at least three small villages in 2020 claimed the democratic right to be allowed to manage fractional resources on their own in order to guarantee benefits and services to their inhabitants. The process described is placed within a democratic claim of territorial management capable of producing projects even starting from planning solicitations at a regional level.

The forms of power acting on the territory have transformed the city into "a powerful machine of distinction and separation, of marginalisation and exclusion". This is the premise of the essay which, starting from the concept of “spatial capital”, questions how the right to the city should be understood today and identifiesaccessibility to urban resources as one of the key issues of urban democracy. This means that the project of urban mobility and the design of the network of connections between temporally and spatially distant places are strategic to the reshaping and redistribution of spatial capital, and that the interscalarity between the metropolitan dimension and the neighbourhood dimension is the key to an open and flexible city in which the opportunity to use facilities, wherever one lives, in the centre or on the periphery, becomes effective. In this scenario, the 15-minute city is one of the most significant proposals that combines the demand of the civitas with the need for the ecological conversion of the polis to realise an idea of shared living.

The polarizing attention paid to the bigness debate, referring particularly (if not exclusively) to metropolitan areas and global realms, still tends to overtake the issue of small urbanity. In a country as Italy, where small settlements with a population of less than 5,000 inhabitants represent 69% of Italian municipalities and affect as much as 50% of the national territory, the endemic isolation of small towns and hamlets seems to be finally contrasted: a better knowledge of local dynamics has developed; some policies to struggle the dispersion of inhabitants have been promoted and initiatives to support the return to places and emerging forms of resilient community have been drawn. In this perspective, the case of the 47 villages around Messina is emblematic. For the first time, bottom-up request for a referendum has been held to create a new municipality called “Montemare” which should collect some of these small towns splitted in the northern area of the Peloritan area, affected by conditions of marginality and abandonment as perceived and complained by the inhabitants. Coastal or hilly (as in the case of the “Masse,” the subject of this paper), these hamlets experienced a condition of relative prosperity until the second post-war period and since then they suffered a progressive abandonment. The proposed Messina Urban Plan puts these villages in a new condition of centrality within innovative strategic features and in specific projects of recovery balancing territorial disparities.

Citizen and community-led initiatives have grown to tackle unmet social needs with alternative means than mainstream urban policies and planning. Over the years, the European city has become a field in which these civic, collective, social practices have consolidated, enabled by the fertile knowledge density of the urban environment. Several cities attempted to move from the management of the practices to one of political recognition. The city of Bologna is one of these, relying on its traditional attitude of working to fill the gap between the level of institutions and the one of civic instances, achieved with different degrees of success. Its administrative and urban planning process has led to recognize the city as a model in providing a fertile ground for the flourishing of innovative civic practices, some of which have been institutionalized over time, while others remain outside the political schemes. Delving into the narrative that has put forward Bologna as a model of good government, this contribution reflects on the trajectory that has shaped the city’s present capacity to enable spaces for dialogue, civic action, and co-planning with the constellation of urban practices in an analytical-evolutionary perspective that allows to trace its contextual and political configuration. The goal is to deconstruct and update Bologna’s narrative as a model, with a critical perspective on its development facing future urban challenges.

Within Florence's District 4, there are two Isolotti: the first is a well-designed suburb born in the 1950s thanks to the INA-Casa plan, inspired by English garden-neighbourhood models with lots of public greenery, low houses and wide pedestrian spaces. The second, which arose in the 1970s-1980s thanks to funding from Gescal and the Ministry of the Treasury, is characterised by a concentration of large apartment blocks separated by green spaces, but also by a fragmented urban fabric and a rarefaction of daily activities. The pandemic has led to new thinking on the importance of neighbourhoods as places from which to rebuild new networks of active citizenship; to rethink more flexible uses of publicly owned spaces. In the wake of the Children's Geographies studies, we want to give voice to the every-day geographies of adolescent girls and boys in order to get their vision of the neighbourhood as social actors; observe their practices of appropriation of neighbourhood spaces and listen to some of their proposals for urban regeneration. Places are not only areas where visions, narratives and symbolic meanings meet, but also instruments through which something is publicly affirmed, where a political act is realized. The material and physical characteristics of places play an important role. The conditions that determine the freedom or constraint of actions for the boys and girls are contained within the materiality of the street, the square, the gardens or the condominium areas.

Collective self-construction sites are children of the time of crisis. They represent, when economic conditions turn into social urgency, an emergency solution, but at the same time experimental, connoting themselves as real architectural laboratories, with a strong democratic impulse. Starting from the description of some construction practices, implemented in São Paulo Metropolitan Region, the contribution proposes a critical reading of the theoretical speculations at the origin of these virtuous practices, recognized as a legacy of the design research of the 1960s-1970s of the Arquitetura Nova group. Indeed, the investigations of Sérgio Ferro, Rodrigo Lefèvre and Flávio Império inspired, and permeated, the organization of the site for houses and collective spaces areas, intended for the population without access to the housing market. Arquitetura Nova's aspirations and experiments confirm the affirmation of new management and realization processes. The constructive paradigm is completely overturned in order to break down the boundary between intellectual and manual labor. The project, designed a priori, loses its role to give way to individual contribution. The production of the group, partly or not at all known in Italy, focuses on a constant dialogue between all the actors involved in the construction: the challenge is to build some houses according to new relations and productive reasons.

The forms of language give a glimpse of urban planning policies. Clear language, without demagogic proclamations, generates a suitable platform to translate urban planning strategies into concrete actions. A discretional language with multiple meanings and modalities to affect territorial governance can produce unexpected results. The Reform of Title V of Italian Constitution has divided up regional languages within a national legislative framework that still has a reconstructive imprint. Land governance is changing within international attention focused on caring environmental values. After decades of constraints, first in order to protect cultural-environmental assets, then to stop their destruction, national regulations ask to facilitate development. In answering this need, region councils invent new lexicons and new meanings, according local planning history. This paper attempts to set up a regional lexicons synoptic framework in order to point out risk of fragmenting spatial planning role into a complex of partial perspectives, as well as a need to reflect on territorial and environmental values interpretation codes.

The paper proposes a reflection on the school as a privileged context for education for democracy and as an engine for the transformation of the public city. Through a survey of national and international experiences of re-appropriation, recovery and creative use of areas pertaining to school buildings, the text invites a critical reflection on the potential of these places that, redesigned, open, connected, can be strategic elements for a reconfiguration of the public city. What emerges is an articulated, lively and complex picture of other ways of doing schooling that tries to provide operational responses to implement a pedagogy of transition. This can act in terms of training, sustainability and social impact, triggering a virtuous circle capable of strengthening the school's human capital, multiplying its interactions with the territory and contributing to the growth of a democratic conscience. In this framework is part of the project FIABA, experimentation currently underway aimed at developing a new methodological proposal. This aims at enhancing schools as living laboratories for the city in transition, going to act both on the scale of proximity and therefore of the neighborhood, and on the architectural scale of the schoolyard for the construction of a new permeability between school and city.

The concept of the sacred can be perhaps broadened by comparing it with its opposite, revealing new meanings. If the term profane etymologically refers to the need to “stand outside the temple” (from the Latin pro-fanus, literally “in front of the temple”) then, on the contrary, the concept of sacred refers to the need to stay within a confined space identified precisely in the “enclosure” (the root of the Latin templum is associated with the Greek term τέμενος, meaning “sacred enclosure”). This interpretation highlights an aspect of sacredness that implicitly recalls elements of architectural composition, such as limitation, form and material, variously declined according to the specific context. That said, can contemporary didactic experience measure itself against the ability to give an aesthetic-compositional response to man’s innate need to relate to the absolute? This is the meaning of “Polvese Chapels” initiative (inspired by the exhibition Vatican Chapels presented at the 16th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice), conceived with the aim of investigating a compositional-design theme, that of the sacred chapel, in relation to a specific naturalistic-environmental context, that of Polvese Island (now a major tourist destination) imagining its transformation into a place for introspective and silent meditation.

The paper focuses on an experiment in researching and teaching design carried out at the Architecture of Interiors Design Studio at the Polytechnic School of Architecture in Milan. The studio addressed the theme of sacred space, understood as a dwellable place, and able to welcome its users in the fulfillment of gestures that express its most profound being. The hypothesis underlying the experiment is that the design of sacred space causes students to move beyond some contingent themes and to focus their design attention on the project of a hospitable form capable of accommodating the gesture of the person who dwells in it. It also calls into question the issue of worship spaces, not only as a problem of space for one specific religion to be juxtaposed or composed with those of other religions, but as a problem of space, or better a "system of spaces" on which religions can look out and experience together their specificity and each other's differences. The experience demonstrated an interest in the theme for students in architecture who could experience the possibility of understanding the coexistence of these spaces that, while traditionally radically different, retain a unified foundation capable, if grasped, of bringing together other gestures. Its outcomes are of value beyond the specifics of the sacred space project and allowed, from our point of view, to effectively practice some cross-cutting architectural themes that are valid regardless of the subject.

in_bo vol. 13 no. 17 focuses on one of its main themes of interest – the sacred – and investigates it according to the relationship between sacred architecture and design pedagogy in contemporary schools of architecture. Edited by Luigi Bartolomei and Andrea Conti, the issue draws a reflection from the sacred understood as the object of highest expression in architectural projects, to the intrinsic relationship between design pedagogy and sacred, intended as a complex of rituals that constitutes the educational practices in architecture. Authors’ contributions span from case studies of design studios to theoretical reflections, and analysis of educational and professional practices of architects and artists.

This paper examines the spiritual works and practices of the German artist Anselm Kiefer and the lessons they provide to architectural thinking and doing in educational settings more and more driven by reductive material control. Considering Kiefer’s emotionally charged works, and their ability to speak about a larger totality, the text examines the relationships between material and space, material and history, material and language, that emerge in the artist’s working methods as a model for architects concerned with achieving spiritual awareness in a secular world. Through works and spaces experienced during the author’s visit to Kiefer’s former home and studio, La Ribaute, the paper examines how his work is a part of greater paradigmatic, spiritual works of theoretical architecture. By virtue of questioning the more banal practices of modernity, the author discusses how Kiefer’s acts of creation enrich our understanding of the processes used to conceive architectural atmospheres that involve linguistic, expressive, and indeed spiritual possibilities that have not been previously considered in relation to representational making.

When discussing the role of the sacred in design education, the conversation focuses on a transcendent divinity, the dominant paradigm of divinity in the West. This orientation towards a divine other underscores the separateness of rare, specific acts of design-for-the-divine from the majority of the projects students engage in studio and, later, in practice. Of greater value in contemporary classrooms may be student explorations of immanent forms of divinity; of spaces and objects that are not infused with spiritual meaning by their orientation towards some other, higher divinity but by the divinity present within themselves. An immanent orientation in student design studios can add layers of significance to finished projects and overlay the processes of design and production themselves, transforming them from simple acts of production into spiritual acts of communion with the divine. Seeking as a model an extant design culture whose processes and products are intimately interlaced with the immanent-divine, this paper proposes a study of Japanese craft practices and the Japanese native religion of Shinto. Because it emphasizes practice over dogma, vernacular Shinto permeates modern Japanese culture, especially its art and design traditions. From this fusion of Shinto and contemporary Japanese craft, this paper derives three core lessons for Western designers and explores ways of incorporating these lessons into the western design education.

The essay discusses the research on the design of cultic architecture in the context of contemporary architectural culture in Sicily, starting from the experience of Pasquale Culotta and Crispino Valenziano. Their partnership intertwined between the speculative dimension of writing and theoretical reflections, and in the concrete experimentations of both designed and built architecture. From their experiences, it emerges the systematic treatment of a quality that goes beyond the areas of sacred architecture to refer to a deeper interpretative key of cultic architecture, a conception in general often neglected if not completely ignored. Indeed, their work gives light to the rigid reading of sacred architecture, to be understood as a building structure that is not qualified by sacredness, or by distance as remoteness of our Christian God, but rather by Holiness, therefore from the proximity in the distance of the Christian God. Through the discussion of important moments of conjunction between professional practice, as well as the establishment of a tradition in the discipline at the School of Architecture, and scientific research, it is possible to underline some specific characteristics such as the architecture of the place and the Mediterranean theme. These features motivate an even more important quality, reconnecting it to the universal experience of cultural architecture, namely the unit of space and time of the artifact as a spiritual expression, overlapping the nature of space ordered by the project.

Within the framework of architectural design teaching, the reflection on “sacred” places as places of “worship,” proposed to international students, is a privileged opportunity for the young designer. The topic proves to be particularly suitable for communicating the values, qualities and characteristics that each architectural project should possess, as well as being capable of providing tools for understanding the urban landscape and its genesis, and, consequently, methods for its regeneration. The precision of the program for the Christian religious building – the church – on the one hand, with its liturgical and celebratory aspects, and combined with its immaterial poetic component, constitutes a privileged stage for the creativity of the designers, as well as for a teaching/learning relationship that is not limited to the handing down of technical skills only. From both research and teaching experiences – through the analysis of methods, outcomes, and paradigms – it emerged numerous inspirations from the approach of the sacred in the contemporary city. Inspirations address the theme in terms of meanings, methods, forms and poetics, showing its relevance within the training of architects, in an increasingly secularized, fluid, and multicultural society.

If we realized that we are not alone when we design, would it help us to approach the possibility of a wider Sacred Pedagogy? The contemporary world poses some significant challenges to the realization of a sacred pedagogy. Some of them have been theorized as The Secular Age, The Disenchanted World and the Technologic Time. “To throw the baby out with the bathwater” is an idiomatic expression that adequately represents the state of the art on this subject: something valuable – the sacred – has almost been eliminated while trying to get rid of something deemed to be worthless. But if the sacred is – broadly speaking – about transcendence, then sacred pedagogy should be less about easiness and more about resilience. Through this paper, we will try to work through a small exercise together: we will provide a picture as an inspiration to cross the levels of Creation step by step, from the most evident for an architect to the most subtle. With this goal in mind, we hope to take a small step towards a fraternal pedagogy of sacred imagination. And finally, to try and question the unrecognizable role of the pedagogue within this context.

The relationship between planning education and sacred space is ambivalent. On one hand, urban history courses highlight the relationship between sacred space and the history of the city; on the other, contemporary planning has lost the sense of sacred space. The urban structure of the historical city follows the hierarchical articulation of religious architectures, characterizing the skyline and the organization of public spaces. This is true for the ancient city, but it is especially true for the medieval and modern city, whose aesthetic and compositional codes find their cornerstone in the integration between specialized religious buildings and the rest of buildings, such as housing, etc.. The relationship between city and sacred space is equally clear in the traditional Islamic city. However, planning has lost a sense of relevance of the sacred space in the contemporary city. This same relevance re-emerges today in many forms. This contribution affirms the need to re-establishing this relationship, in light of the urban transformations that have characterized cities in the last half century and of the changes that have affected the demographic structure of Italian cities in the last decades. Among the relevant issues for a potential pedagogy and research agenda, there is the relationship between sacred spaces, multi-ethnic society and identity, and the relationship between the production of space and the symbolic dimension of dwelling.

Institutions of higher education have distanced themselves from teaching anything related to the sacred in architectural education. While the education of the architect has remained a critical focus for practitioners since Vitruvius, architecture’s historical ties to the sacred have been forgotten and dismissed. Many are beginning to realize the importance of this topic for contemporary architectural education. Architects have an ethical task of defending the authenticity of human experience as well as creating a beautiful world that uplifts the human spirit and nourishes cognitive, behavioral, and emotional health. As the co-founder of a new architecture program, I discuss both the practical and operational experiences of teaching and developing curricula with sacred pedagogy in mind. The paper also reviews “where” and “how” academic programs might attempt to deal with the sacred in curricular development. The success of any pedagogical intent will ultimately take years to manifest itself in the built works of students. Integrating the sacred into architectural education is critical for the profession because it helps future architects cultivate their empathic imagination, increase their compassion for the building user, and nourish their love for humanity.