Architectural design and planning talk to each other: a dialogue via Strategic Choice Approach (SCA)

The paper proposes the use of the Strategic Choice Approach as a way of structuring the architectural design process, partly individually and partly supported by meetings and interviews with DMs, experts, and stakeholders. SCA is employed as a graphic and a designing tool to provide alternative transformation scenarios. We reflect on the possible use of SCA to determine prescriptive conditions on physical form at a scale that is still intermediate between the single building and the urban tissue. In this sense, planning and architectural design talk to each other via SCA. It still represents a way of approaching the challenge of planning in an uncertain world, but moreover it produces an architectural project or transformation. SCA can work in a physical sense, not only eliciting guidelines and strategies. This proposal shows an application to a real-world problem, currently under debate by the City of Turin (Italy), the re-use of abandoned barracks located in a prestigious residential area.