RELATIONAL ARCHITECTURE ON THE A7

Relational architecture, protagonist of this thesis work, is what is proposed as a contribution to one of the most delicate issues within our country today (Italy): the territorial fragility. A possible response for those forgotten and weak portions of landscape, marginalized by the fluxes, which contrarily can represent opportunities to be seized.

The proposed strategy arises right from the reading of a strong potential in this service area which, placed close to both the antithetical conditions, has instead all the characteristics to be able to shorter the distances between the two, reconciling their missed relationships, making new ones emerge and then transforming its being a caesura into an hinge. The construction of a relational architecture, as a limit “in between\", in the specific meaning of threshold, is therefore what is proposed as a response capable of operating this overturning. \r\nIt manifests itself as a single transformative action between the territorial and the architectural scale which, configuring itself as an autonomous entity capable at the same time of mediating between the antithetical conditions and to regulate the relationships, it makes it possible to mend the existing gaps, giving a new identity to the area, transforming it into an attractive pole and an active centrality capable of reactivating the territory. Specifically, this is configured as a stereotomic form-structure generated according to an action-reaction principle to the characters of the two conditions. A single entity, halfway between the infrastructural work and the architectural object, which sees an overlapping of fluxes, a plurality of accesses and the coexistence of different populations. The potential of the motorway as a global agent with social and narrative power is combined here with the vocations of a territory that need to be staged, giving life to a new implemented service area with a bidirectional offer, where the highway dimension, from artificer of the crossed landscape marginalization, now proposes itself as a stage to reinvigorate it. \r\nHowever, general purpose of the thesis work, it is not only to illustrate a strategy and its concrete translation into the project through a methodological path based on research and knowledge of the territory, but also to trigger further reflections around this topic. The project serves as an application example proposing itself as a well-wisher of new questions and promoter of new actions.