Reading morphology through diagrams. Exploring methodology

The relationship between reading and designing can be found in Saverio Muratori’s theory. At the same time reading, as a means to understand the contemporary city, meets urban morphology analysis in 1979 in Gianfranco Caniggia e Gian Luigi Maffei “Lettura dell’edilizia di base” in the chapter “Lettura delle strutture edilizie”. In this context, reading means understanding urban structures using analytical tools like maps and types to produce different outputs. However, the contemporary city is framed by a co-existence of variable times where past, present and future are linked and overlapped. To explore the complexity of reality it is necessary to define new analytical tools capable of keeping dynamicity. Grounded on the instrument used by the Italian School of Muratori and Caniggia, the following research questions the feasibility of the mapping method as a tool to understand complexity produced by transitional events in contemporary scenarios. Studying the diagrammatic component of the maps reveals its role in understanding urban transition. The diagram as a medium (Gleiter and Gasperoni, 2019) to understand and generate processes can be a functional experimental machine that defines relations between cities’ patterns (hidden and formal) and their transformation. Through diagramming the maps of San Bartolomio (Muratori, 1959) and Via Rovelli (Caniggia, 1963), the research explores new methodologies helpful in the transition between the analogical study of urban morphology and data-driven design. The outcome is a method that merges maps and types (diachronic and synchronic) with the help of diagrams, opening the possibilities of multiple representations of urban transition.