FINDING A DESIGN METHOD:“INTEGRATED MULTISCALE PROJECT”

The paper will present a design methodology based on the integration between the disciplines of architectural and urban design and urban planning, tested in different teaching experiences (workshops, ateliers, ASP project, research and Master's degree thesis in Italian and foreign territories). A first operational opportunity was our involvement in the construction process for the River Sangone Masterplan and its related projects (River Agreement, March 2008), a voluntary tool for territorial governance (province of Turin, 11 municipalities) useful for defining strategies, actions, common rules and architectural projects for the environmental and landscape, economic and social requalification of a river basin, through participatory projects and processes. The methodology has been developed and tested in a series of project experiences that have shown the difficulties when dealing with complex issues such as the reorganization of the territory, landscape and architectural forms, with the aim to interpretate, understand, and communicate "all" places, opening new paths for the project. The need for other operational methods is obvious, but at the moment in architectural and planning researches the attempts to create “models” or “systems” of reference are still of a hybrid nature. Our research, which considers the building as one of the elements of a more fully-articulated complex whole, attempts to place building and voids, rural areas, public green spaces, private open spaces (building-void-nature) on the same hierarchical level. This kind of approach, although broadly shared by those who deal with design, encounters great difficulties in application. Only the integration of different disciplinary approaches, in our case architectural and urban design, can try to experience a real sustainable project trying to redefine a design methodology. Having broadened research horizons to embrace the large scale and landscape issues, architectural and urban design often tend to ignore or underestimate the complex strategies, stakeholders and actors of the transformation processes of territorial areas and habitats, preferring “image” projects that seem to guarantee quality and social and institutional consensus. Urban planning, has always focussed on defining large-scale project scenarios for adoption of strategies within the framework of territory and landscape planning and programming tools. It tends to address these issues with particular attention to policies, rules and institutional and social actors, but should return to reflecting on the implementation, orientation and repercussions of methods for projects. Our methodological proposal currently being tested, the integrated multiscale project, can be applied to in the architecture and design project as in an extensive area - large and local –. The method uses an experimental technique the transecting sections technique, three-dimensional sections useful for planning complex territorial and landscape systems, integrating various scales of action (the extensive area, boundaries between areas of different uses, disputed territories, focus areas and architectural-technological detail) creating visions and projects for the valorisation of extensive and local areas, to be discussed with process stakeholders (institutional, economic, public and private social) to define overall strategies and single common actions for transformation.