Final Meeting

Varna, October 6-9, 2015

Thoughts about the main Sehud Project results
by Prof.ssa Maria Grazia Folli
Maria Grazia Folli

Thoughts for Varna

Young people today suddenly find themselves in a situation where, as a result of lifes
strange demands, an average intelligence is not enough []. Indeed, it is not enough
to play well; doubts repeatedly arise: is this the game we should be playing now? What
game is the most appropriate?
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, 1937

I'm very sorry not to be with you in this meeting of Varna. Actually, I wanted to know this city so interesting for
the richness of its culture and geography; as well, I wanted to meet the Sehud project partners, the students
and the professors belonging to Varna University.
But I will come soon. I hope.
Milan is present through the Polytechnic Foundation and well represented by Ing. Amarilli; however, the team
Polimi is close to you even if only virtually, in this final meeting, wishing you pleasant and fruitful days of work
and visits.
I send you some final thoughts about Sehud activities, inscribed in a broader reference frame related to the
issue of teaching and learning of the architecture with a focus on reality; difficult, complex, problematic status
(caused by the economic crisis, social upheaval, cultural uncertainty) that forces us to constantly ask ourselves
about the meaning of education and training (Bachelor, Master, PhD profiles) thinking to its impact on the
project and the consequent transformation of the reality; which urgently needs to make sure that every our
graduate is able to exercise, consciously, the profession of architect, facing difficulty and complexity of the
present and near future with determination, competency, intelligence, incisiveness.
And, to do this, acquiring high humanistic culture, technical and scientific skills, as well as attitude on the
conceptual processing or creative thinking concerning building conjectures, useful to improve the spatial
configurations that host our life.
1.
As coordinator of Sehud but, above all, as a passionate teacher, I explored with great enthusiasm, in the past
three years, the relationship between teaching and learning through the cooperation of many Universities, with
the comparison between different disciplinary approaches and skills. The intent was to produce materials and
methodologies aimed at an implementation of the quality of teaching in our Universities; the quality will be
validated by the effective 'social utility' of knowledge and experience transmitted and acquired in academia.
What interests me is to understand how much and what we are able to make useful and innovative for our
schools and society; I have at heart 'to measure' the immediate results and future legacy, in terms of content,
conceptual and methodological tools, stimulus on critical and purposeful exercises, that this program has been
able to produce.

Addressing issues
On different geographical and cultural fronts we questioned about issues that could be considered binding on
the contemporary for sustainable future, that must be the horizon of architecture in a wide and articulated

POLITECNICO DI MILANO Prof.ssa Maria Grazia Folli

meaning. Architecture, as William Morris said in 1881 involves all the environment which surrounds human
life and that according to Lucaks humanism, is "expression of civil art".
The seven problematic sections of the modules of curricula:
-City as an open system,
-Heritage protection for saving city identity,
-Economics, policy & law regulations ,
-Modern approaches & technologies,
-Eco-human measurement ,
-Visual communications ,
-IT technologies;
have developed topics nowadays essential to face not 'generic' and random new projects but rather the
'construction of new spaces and the restoring of anthropogenic landscapes'. The term 'restoration' expresses
an attitude above all ethical, concerning maintenance, enhancement and upgrading of the existing together
with the worry of wasting resources, primarily soil; essentially, expressing in every 'design gesture a sense of
responsibility towards a sustainable development of the planet. Even 'rehabilitating' science and technology
by having, at the same time, the courage to cast doubt on the 'outdated' notions of certainty, truth and totality
that, in the past, have relegated the techniques in authoritarian and separate areas, often antithetical to
humanities.

Methodologies and themes to address the issues.

-Concreteness Vs liquidity.
The inability to conceive a contemporary global and unique vision, the widespread proliferation of speeches,
the devaluation of the individual thought in face of global vision, the inability 'to stay on course' as Bauman
says, have resulted in the impairment of each horizon of meaning. It is a phenomenon which affects everything,
including architecture, and before that, its teaching. The present 'liquefaction-fluidization' of the world, and thus
of knowledge, is forcing architecture to lose its consistency and disciplinary specificity, confusing it with
sociology, anthropology, communication, geopolitics and more.
It serves, then, seriously reconsider the confrontation with reality -with its processes and its criticalities- with
the "reality of architecture". Architecture between the arts / disciplines is the one that entertains stronger links
with reality and social phenomena - with the world of the "ideals", "physical" and "social" objects and the
possibility of their transformation and modification. Architecture, in fact, as rational and real construction, by its
very nature, determines, consistently, the scenarios of life, conforms the physical space and the artifacts of
city, territory, landscape.
The notions of concreteness, consistency, coherence, density, materiality about reality is thus a call to civil
liability of architecture and its effects on the physical transformations -immediate and future- of living places.

-Ideas, Ideals Vs ideologies.

The concreteness, as comparison with reality, should be guided by conceptual references, by reflections on
the meaning of the project, on disciplines, on tools which, carefully and curiously, are able to face the problems
through incisive, positive ideas. Since architecture, to produce habitable places, cannot be destabilizing or

POLITECNICO DI MILANO Prof.ssa Maria Grazia Folli

nihilistic: after all, it must have a positive intrinsic beauty and contains, as Stendhal and Nietzsche said,
"promise of happiness."
Ideas, unlike ideologies - that belong on closed systems of ideas and beliefs, which often distort reality - are
thoughts, conceptual frameworks oriented on the planning act, aware of reality and its needs. They are those
'reasoning' that allow the materialization of the project and then the achievements, in a responsible manner,
to the society.
Contemporaneity cannot rely on the principles of truth, but it can have ideals. Ideals are principles, guidelines,
goals, hopes, aspirations as those principles Calvino, in his American Lectures at Harvard of 1985-6, identified
as 'six memos', for 'the next millennium'. Ideals of architecture can guide our work to new systems of
consistency: between form and meaning, between remembrance and forgetfulness. Essentially, it can be vital
efforts of legitimacy, ethical and aesthetic, of the role of architecture for the present and the near future.

Transdisciplinarity. Vs. divided knowledges.

The mono-disciplinary knowledge, or the accumulation of many mono-disciplinary knowledge according to the
model of encyclopedic knowledge, was inadequate to understand the complexity, uncertainty, contemporary
pluralism and unable to intervene, modifying and improving reality.
The conceptualization of integration between disciplines is diverse: multi-multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary,
transdisciplinary. Multidisciplinary concerns the juxtaposition of various disciplines; interdisciplinary would go
beyond coexistence, creating interaction with disciplines; transdisciplinary, is the ability to lean out with
curiosity the boundaries of conventional disciplines, to make a cross-disciplinary experience in a systemic and
not necessarily linear way. That enables unprecedented curious glances on things and their relationships and
find new perspectives of action to address issues of high complexity and cogency.
The new ecological awareness of the digital age requires conceptualizations and relation with transdisciplinary
practices: the expressions of sustainability (from the low-tech to eco-tech), focusing on energy efficiency and
compliance with the possibility of regenerative resources, require skills on use of alternative sources of energy,
compatible technologies, including bio and nano, recyclable materials. Sustainable building strategies, taking
into account the requirements of security, usability, comfort and management, must also define constructive
"styles" as to the possible manipulation during the life cycle (flexibility and "reversibility"), in a continuous
interaction with the natural and man-made environments, at different scales, uses and individual and social
practices, economics, mobility, etc; and the architecture becomes the (interdisciplinary) interface between the
issues of sustainable development and its intrinsic constructive, functional, aesthetic, symbolical nature.

Memory Vs. amnesia.

The tabula rasa of modernism and, more recently, the violent and rapid transformation processes that occurred
since the last decades of the twentieth century, have subverted spatial configurations, cultural and social
structures of European and non European cities and territories, which were the outcome of the superimposed
forms, materials and intentions, which were an expression of historical identities.
"An era without memory is ephemeral and doomed itself to produce ephemeral objects" warned the Italian
theorist Ernesto Nathan Rogers in the phase of post-war reconstruction of the second half of the twentieth
century. The prophecy was fulfilled, everywhere; and today the city and architectures are always more
'generic', made of 'ephemeral objects'. Most of all, they are not effective in counteracting this scenario the

POLITECNICO DI MILANO Prof.ssa Maria Grazia Folli

diffuse aesthetic theories 'respectful' of stylistic and constructive traditions like the visions, by Maurice Culot
and Leon Krier in Europe, Andrs Duany / ElisabethPlater-Zyberk and Peter Calthorpe in the US, which re-
actualize the morpho-typological models of the historical Cities.
The results of these approaches are limited to a 'decoration / sweetening of reality' and, as such, are ineffective
in improving spatial and social contexts. This happens in many other exaggerated statements of identity and
devotion to the traditions, even invented, with the intent to find possible principles and values, legitimized by
alleged continuity with the past. As Koolhaas argues provocatively in 1995 'to the extent that identity is derived
from physical substance, from the historical, from context, from the real, we somehow can not Imagine that
anything contemporary - made by us - contributes to it. ". The challenge that we have to accept is to give new
meaning to the past in the present; and not to forget that identity is the result of a dynamic process of evolution,
the outcome of a narration that concerns urban forms, territories, social individuals and groups; because a dull
culture of conservation - of commemoration and celebration of the past-it prevents the ability to have a vision
of the future.

-Empowerment Vs indifference.
In The Art of Life, 2009, Zigmut Bauman outlines bold bet -for contemporary men - to demonstrate
inventiveness, creativity, reflection and personal commitment (to be able to decide and act accordingly).
Among the few viable ways, he assumes an empowerment, which he sees and hopes to be like "ability to
make decisions and act effectively on the basis of the choices made. Extremely current is the consideration
that Wittgenstein said in 1937: Young people today suddenly find themselves in a situation where, as a result
of lifes strange demands, an average intelligence is not enough []. Indeed, it is not enough to play well;
doubts repeatedly arise: is this the game we should be playing now? What game is the most appropriate?
Empowerment, for training, becomes fundamental. According to Bauman "authentic empowerment means not
only acquire the abilities necessary, to successfully play in a game projected by others, but necessary also the
power to influence the objectives, the stakes and the rules of the game"
For the students, to promote imagination, self-esteem, independent ability to reason and deal with problems,
means to know how to evaluate alternatives, to take action in a flexible manner according to the changes
taking place. And the architecture of empowerment can be a challenge to take on, with determination, themes
/ goals, specific to the contexts and physical space. For example, the relationship between architecture and
aesthetics. 'Empowerment of Aesthetics' was the title of an exhibition presented last Venice Architecture
Biennial, 2014. The Danish Pavilion reintroduces the forgotten power of aesthetics as the complementary to
the rational as essential for our common road into a sustainable future.

These, I have proposed, are points of reflection for Sehud and especially for its legacy; I also think they are
issues that underline the work done, at least for a good part. Many materials prepared, lectures, cultural
references, bibliographies, etc. incorporate methodologies and themes mentioned; as meaning that to the
development of each of the 7 major problem areas of the modules are always subtended questions put to the
disciplines of the architectural and urban design, about the meaning of doing and on theoretical and applied
instrumentation, adequate to face reality. This is the approach, by which we held the experimental design of
the workshop, conceived as a moment in which students have tested knowledge and cultural paradigms
coming both of their background, both from Sehud experience. They have investigated strategic contexts of

POLITECNICO DI MILANO Prof.ssa Maria Grazia Folli

five Ukrainian cities, have built ideas of transformation, for improvement of existing reality have tried to translate
thoughts into concepts and formal principles.
I think it is an important, culturally and ethically responsible, subversive than some widespread practice of
'academic' design exercise; self referential practices, which tend to remove the comparison with the contingent.
As the problems that concern the relationship between architecture and environmental issues: the resource
consumption, in particular the soil sailing, that requires to explore new dense and compact configurations; the
waste, that poses the need to enhance the existing integrating it in new forms and uses of the city; the damages
of zoning, which produced separate monofunctional areas, must be healed with new functional and typological
mix; counteracting the 'fall of the public man' as said Richard Sennett and the crisis of the role of public space
as to structuring element of the city, such as the interior space of the community with irreplaceable cultural,
symbolic, civil values.

The issues have had particular focus and developments in relation to specific urban contexts.
For Osnova area, in Kharkiv the aim of project design research was been developing methods of
implementing a step-by-step strategy of ecological rehabilitation of depressive districts in the city : the steps
concern strategies of environmental restoration, both acting on the redevelopment of the fundamental
resources soil, air, water- and by favouring the potentiality of urban and territorial reorganization and
stimulating the development of new economic and social activities. To give concreteness to the interventions
, it is necessary to ask ourselves what is the specific nature of these issues in the specific case of Osnova,
what are the specific architectural and town planning design moves that we can do. A specificity of the city
of Kharkiv is its particular relationship between 'culture and nature'.
The Osnova is placed in a territorial context characterized by the -non common- presence of green areas,
relevant for quality and quantity. The relationship between nature and culture could developed constructing
a strong structural system where green spaces, rivers, lakes, hills, -flora and fauna- , but also filaments of
vegetation, 'green' roads, environmentally friendly infrastructure, new responsible productive and residential
settlements , friendly public spaces could become the backbone of the Kharkov territory and strengthen its
identity. The system asks innovative technologies, both in relation to the methodology of the processes - such
as - knowledge / information - ; both aspects of production of alternative energy, sources of income, individual
and collective wellbeing, but they must be referred to an idea of city where the new urban relationships are
weak, reversible and spread. The weak urbanization may provide the area to finance measures of the tasks
associated with the increase of 'naturalistic' qualities.
The aim for Zapadnyi area of Dnipropetrovsk is Enhancing the quality of the urban environment; renovating
the riverside (post) industrial areas; recognising the potentiality of the new -morphological and functional
relationship between the Zapadnyi zone and the urban context. changing the quality of the urban environment
towards sustainable innovation vector of development of the area through public and private structures.
From its origins, Dnipropetrovsk was shaped like a connection between geography and topography (the skyline
of the hills and the irregular pattern of the river) and the characters of the settlements; the structure of the
orthogonal grid, the measurement of blocks, the relationship between public and private space has been
useful, in time, to ensure urban development consistent with its natural and historical environment. In the last
Decades fast and hard transformations took place outside of this logic of consistency, but the challenge of this
study is to face innovation and tradition: developing specific design guidelines consistent with the 'character'

POLITECNICO DI MILANO Prof.ssa Maria Grazia Folli

of the city: specifically Topography, Landscape, original Settlements systems (blocks, mixit, scales);
regarding the design of public space, the enhancement of the riverfront, the creation of attractive activities; in
coherence with the identifying characteristics of Dnepropetrovsk, can be addressing with cultural awareness
the morphological constructive and economic theme of the tall buildings building height.
The aims of the project for Telichka territory, in Kiev is revitalisation of this industrial area and organization
of the city centre, which will have multifunctional structure, improving functional use, becoming a community
centre, maximizing the use of local resources. The specific attention to the three-dimensional characters of
the urban landscape is a relevant conceptual approach able to wonder about the coherence between functions
and programs and the meaning of their forms. In this direction, it is possible to implement the environmental
structure of the city making system between the Telichka green spaces and the with the Central Park allowing
the connection of the 'green' city, with the banks of the Dnipro. The recognition of guidelines, visuals,
measures, scales, relations with the existing one can orient the project toward decisions not random. Improving
the existing informal cultural cluster through the reuse of artefacts of 'industrial archaeology' that is present in
the area, can produce a dialectical relation between the actuality and the memory of Telichka.
Pidzamche is one of the districts of Lviv, strategic for location within the city and for its richness, of historical
and cultural heritage- permanence of road layouts and private and public buildings, by typology relevant for
architectural connotations-. Then, to enhance the valorisation of the area potentialities the research is focused
on public spaces of residential neighbourhoods: square, public spaces, playground and yard. Everywhere the
public space is less and less narrative space and place of integration,
so, a real change of look needs in the relationship between local communities and spaces of collective life,
expression of civic culture, in a broad vision of sustainability. In this perspective, it possible define a new
network structure of public city defining public spaces of Pidzamche district retrained through improvement
measures (flooring, lighting, green, furniture, etc.), each of which will have to interpret the urban context in
which it appears (guidelines, visual connections, relationship building types, etc.); but the Management of
street furniture should be part of an organic and unitary project (of skills and building regulations). As the use
of repeatable certain components or their differentiation allows connotations of recognisability and local
identities.
Without to forget that meanings and values of public space lived by users / consumers are multiple and
complex .
The design project theme for Mezhlimanie territory in Odessa is from decline and misuse to rebirth identity,
restructuring of the existing multifunctional residential buildings and public space. The concept of development
project of the territory is based on principles of sustainable development ,including the following components:
environmental, social and economic, as well as related to them the crossing fields, as social-environmental
and economic-social.
The Villages of Chapayevo, Ilynka, Chebotaryovka, Cherevichnoye, Augustovkamett have very weak
structures defined by plots of longitudinal streets overlooked by low and sparse buildings. These peculiar
characters ask interventions able to redevelop housing, to implement utilities and the reception of new
population and tourists, the increase of energy sustainability and ecosystems, through not violent but light
interventions: avoiding, minimizing land consumption; producing 'densification' within the plots of the territories
'already consumed' by long blocks; defining building types consistent with the history and culture of the
environment and to new functional needs.

POLITECNICO DI MILANO Prof.ssa Maria Grazia Folli

Concreteness, idealities, transdisciplinary, memory, empowerment are tools / concepts, which are partly
subtended to many strategies expressed in these experiences of the workshop, and that, perhaps, have the
ability and the strength to generate new ideas and new tactics, new practices , really effective, to accompany
a transformation of contemporary cities, particularly the Ukrainian contexts, towards a desirable future.
This auspicious, which I hope can be expressed in the Manifesto, is the great legacy of SEHUD.

Milan, October, 5th, 2015

POLITECNICO DI MILANO Prof.ssa Maria Grazia Folli