This paper is based on two autonomous research projects, which are being carried out with the guide of professors Claudio D’Amato, Elisabetta Pallottino and Francesca Romana Stabile. The two studies lead from very different cultural premises, but share the common goal of investigating and interpreting the
minor architectures that build up the very texture of our historical cities.
It will be argued that the study of visual composition - vistas, perspectives, significant spatial sequences, quality and proportion of paths and squares - might prove itself to be a valuable guide for the analysis and contemporary transformation of layered urban fabrics. This approach will be discussed through a number of interdisciplinary references from the XX century, both practical and theoretical in scope: from the Italian
Ambientismo to the research on visual perception of the
Gestaltpsychologie in Germany and the US.
Such a
visual take on historical urban landscapes - if complemented with the findings of historical, typological, material and functional analyses - might provide us with a more
holistic image of the built environment, thereby endowing contemporary interventions in historical environments with a deeper, more contextual culture.
[abstract del testo negli atti in corso di pubblicazione]