Designing trust

Generosity, rather than distance: this is the key term of post-Covid-19 urban space. “After decades, generosity means banning the extreme and perverse ‘drying up’ of space, driven by an economic relationship  that has reduced shared places to a minimum and has merely been a matter of cynical exploitation and poor quality.” In the name of generosity, Femia does not like the ‘defensive’ projects proposed by illustrious colleagues, like the visor by Norman Foster, the personalized masks of Danielle Baskin, and other types of shields circulating on the web these days. “They are fun, perhaps, but nothing more. Plexiglas panels are of dubious value, and they are obscene if we consider the fact that they can harbor the virus for variably long periods of time.” So while schools were closing in Italy, and images arrived from Denmark of kids still in class or romping in the very generous playgrounds of the Tivoli Gardens, at the Copenhagen Zoo or in the Danish National Museum, Femia won two competitions, for a school in Legnago and a research campus at Annecy, France, oriented towards effective social distancing without preventing physical presence.

Speaking of generosity and trust, Massimo Alvisi of the studio Alvisi Kirimoto develops the design idea of tomorrow by starting with the family, “the safest place where each person cars for the others and no one puts their loved ones at risk.

Let’s imagine networking these small nuclei, starting from the apartment building, and let’s try to see them as public assets regulated by agreements between municipalities and private individuals. Balconies have become small states, rooftops plazas for playing, expanding the natural landscape of the city. We can redesign these urban sections, triggering relations between them and those who inhabit them; the work can be incredible and satisfying, valid from the town to the metropolis. A sort of ‘vertical balcony’ to be scaled in the name of rediscovered social contact.”

Updating old ways of thinking (and designing)

Restoring value to the relationship between man and his environment also means updating layout logic that by now is forty years old. It is here, Femia believes, that digital and visual design become allies. “Visual design does not mean simply informing people with signs and images; it also means generating awareness and responsibility. Graphics can be a driver.”

Alessandro Cambi, Francesco Marinelli and Paolo Mezzalama of It’s, a Roman studio active all over Europe, agree. “A material does not necessarily have to be physical: it can also be virtual.” The idea is to develop a dual dimension: “Physical (reduced) and virtual (extended), given the fact that we will live in a variable balance between the two worlds. In each of them, we have to always put human beings and their wellness at the center. We do not have to start over, from scratch: it will suffice to retrieve and apply all the reasoning formulated to date about flexibility into a single, updated vision. For example, to imagine the new habitat in keeping with the principles of the Active House (light, wellness, energy savings), as we are doing for a residential project at EUR in Rome. Or talking about the smart city in a serious way, not with the superficiality that has led to two opposing factions, pro and con, both lacking in content.”

Materials: another key concept

It remains to be seen what material will go into these dreams, the city, the future. But some fixed points are already there. “While the Italian Health Ministry provides only vague indications about the retention of the virus on surfaces, a scientific study conducted by the New England Journal of Medicine show that it lasts longer on plastic and steel,” Femia warns. “Never as in this moment should haste be kept at bay, leaving room for reflection and deeper understanding. The solutions of expansion of hospital facilities – the projects for pods and rapid prefabrication – also have to be evaluated with great caution: units separated from the operative scientific core of hospitals (laboratories and research) have more limits than virtues in situations of emergency.”