La ricerca del Gruppo Urbanformgrammars si focalizza sul rapporto tra architettura e città. Assumendo questo orizzonte problematico si è sviluppato nel Novecento il contributo più rilevante del pensiero architettonico italiano. Ad esso vogliamo riallacciarci guardando al fenomeno della città contemporanea per riconoscere, insieme alla crisi della sua forma, le potenzialità che da essa derivano. La “città-natura”, interpretata attraverso una teoria che permetta di considerare unitariamente i valori morfologici del paesaggio e quelli degli insediamenti urbani, l’“edificio-città”, inteso come “grande” forma architettonica capace di evocare la complessità spaziale della città e come elemento catalizzatore e misuratore dei vuoti urbani, i “tessuti densi” capaci di riproporre, nella “città in estensione” contemporanea, la condizione compatta e gerarchicamente articolata della città storica, costituiscono i campi privilegiati della nostra ricerca.

This abstract refers to theoretical and application research on the grammars of urban form that the author is carrying on into Urban and Architecture Design courses in dICAR Department of the Polytechnic of Bari and other design experience as the International Workshop Erasmus Intensive Programme "Re_Build The Urban Form" held in Monopoli (Bari) in 2013. The crisis of the contemporary city represents the occasion to redefine its form beginning from an idea of the city in which the relationship between the form of the land and form of urban settlements is recognized as a fundamental value. Disused urban areas have a central role in the process of "re-generation" of the form of the city for re-founding potentialities that these empty, wide and central space may have in the process of renovatio urbis. Compared to this problematic field, our disciplinary contribution is developed in terms of "form", both theoretical, individualizing in the idea of “city-territory” the field of application of the research, then from a design point of view, assuming an episteme able to recognize in distinguished way the morphological value of landscape and urban settlements. Case study cities are represented by Gravina and Monopoli, medium-size cities in South of Bari (Apulia-Italy). Identified project sites are crisis areas of urban form, connoted by the presence of abandoned buildings and empty unresolved spaces; they have a great value for the proximity to the ancient "compact" city and for the strong relation with natural excellence elements such as ravin and natural harbour on the coast-line. The aim of this work, both theoretical then didactic, is defining and new settlement/dwelling models as paradigms of a new idea of city-territory, using formal grammars of exemplary methodological value, able to express a meaningful relationship between the form of the land and the urban form.

This paper expresses the partial results of a research conducted by the author in the Faculty of Architecture of Polytechnic of Bari, on the experimentation of renewed “grammars” of urban form for the contemporary city, referred to city-territory idea that can sum up the presence of the interior urban spaces together with the open natural spaces. In particular, it regards the study of “Terre Salentine”, small urban planned nucleuses of late medieval origins (13th-14th centuries) in southern Salento (Italy), considered as a part of a settlement model of city-territory in which, the relation between country and city is wrightly resolved. The aim of the research is to define new settlement/dwelling models specific for the Apulian territory but of general value, because derived from an idea of cityterritory as expression of a sane relationship between city and productive vocation of countryside, that can hold the consumption of the territory of Salento caused by the incongruous expansion of urban centers and by the low-density touristic structures along the coast. The Research process is developed into two phases: the first, through an analytical phase focused on the individuation of Terre Salentine, on the study of the relationship between urban form and physical form of productive natural environment, on the relation between urban form and building type; the second was an experimental design phase in which, formal structure of terra, assumed as paradigm, is declined according to an inductive method that starts from recognizing Page | 64 significant elements of its structure. The cities of Castrignano del Capo (Lecce) and Ruffano (Lecce) are considered as paradigmatic cases study. This research allowed to individuate and analyse for the first time the terre of Salento, elements of a model of polycentric city-territory based on the necessary and measured relationship among urban nucleuses of small dimensions and productive country. The terre can be taken as settlement/dwelling model for the contemporary city in Apulia. In this sense, the design experimentations developed inside this research, have scientific value as verification of the analytical work, value of models of transformation in continuity with the tradition of a place and methodological value. This study is absolutely original in its method and in its contents and will be extended in the future to other cities such as Tricase (Lecce).

The morphogenesis of the city generally develops itself in discontinuous way. Recognizing the impossibility to think the city as a unitary form, for the complexity and the lack of homogeneity which characterize its form, the model of the city for parts, appears the most appropriate to interpretate its development. The settlement units of ended form is an urban part of an intermediate scale between that of architectural unit and that of urban organism, through which it is possible to define a model of city built as mosaic of single interventions, recognizable in its spatial, formal and functional identity. These models are referable to some paradigms of Italian urban culture that, starting from the idea of city for parts [1], introduced by the studies of A. Rossi and C. Aymonino in the school of Venice, are identified with the settlement unit of the district, with the idea of urban sod by F. Purini [2] and with the micro-urbanism of S. Holl’s urban projects. The rational nature of the settlement unit is related to an urban action of planned type. In this sense, it shows many similarities with some medieval models of settlement/housing, among which, one of the most interesting is that of “terre”, settlement and planned urban units that constitute the morphological episteme of the cities in southern Salento (Apulia, Italy).

This article deals with the theme of contemporary city and of the research of the most appropriate forms for its development. Recognizing the impossibility of thinking the city in a unitary way, for the complexity and the lack of homogeneity which characterize its form, the model of the city for parts, referred to different phases of growth of the city itself, appears the most appropriate to interpretate its development. The settlement units of ended form, to the scale of the district, represent the new constitutive units of forma urbis in the continuity with some settlement/living models of the history. One of the most interesting models in this sense and able to strongly connotate an entire territory as the Southern Salento (Apulia, Italy) is the «terre», morphological residential ended units, in direct relationship with the productive country and the nature. The article presents some results of this completely original study, conducted through two thesis workshops of the Polytechnic of Bari which, beginning from the individuation of fifteen examples of Terre dealt with a type-morphological study and the planning experimentation applied to two cases study as the city of Castrignano del Capo (Lecce) and Ruffano (Lecce).

LO STUDIO DELLA REALIZZAZIONE DI UN COMPONENTE AUTOMOBILISTICO IN LEGA DI TITANIO TI-6AL-4V MEDIANTE FORMATURA INCREMENTALE NELLA MODALITÀ A SINGOLO PUNTO (SINGLE POINT INCREMENTAL FORMING).

RESEARCH INTO THE FORM OF THE CONTEMPORARY CITY Experiences in urban planning at the Faculty of Architecture in Bari The Architectonic Design Workshop of the fourth year has, for some time now, constituted for the Faculty of Architecture in Bari the scientific environment where theoretical and applied research is carried out into the contemporary city and the relative compositional and planning techniques. The historical/cultural context of reference is that of the Mediterranean city in general and of the “stone cities” of the Puglia region of southern Italy, with their particular characteristics and problems. The general objective of the research is to identify and try out new settlement models, defined through a process of reading and understanding traditional architecture founded on a mindful relationship with the place, its characteristics, and its "resources". In this sense, the morphological, typological and construction aspects (of the single structure and the whole) are compared and resolved by introjecting, at all stages of the project, the problem of sustainability. The decisive moments of this planning process are: 1.identification of the architectural themes of the project, i.e. recognizing the general value expressed by the functional themes (the dwelling, the collective building, the communal space, …) as well as the natural characteristics of the site; 2.definition of the settlement principle through an architectonic interpretation of the relationship between place and building type, i.e. via the identification of an idea of relation between Nature, the public space of the city and the private space of the home; 3.research into the forms of dwelling corresponding to the settlement principle found; 4.selection of appropriate construction systems and materials. The relationship with tradition, instigated through an identification of the models and their deployment, constitutes one of the ways through which the project seeks to root itself in the place, to establish a relationship of continuity with its construction experience and, above all, give it some sense. These models generally hark back to settlement/dwelling types that represent a particular formal and construction interpretation linked to a determined historical moment and a specific function. They present themselves as a possible alternative to the current way of thinking about and making cities, the outcome of standardizing and globalizing processes that are indifferent to places, their history and their characteristics.

Il libro affronta il tema della architettura in pietra da taglio, attraverso l’approfondimento di due questioni di valore fondativo tra loro complementari, la prima legata alla necessità di individuare e sistematizzare i saperi che governano la concezione e la realizzazione delle architetture in pietra, la seconda alla centralità della formazione, alla definizione degli strumenti teorici e tecnici e dei metodi pedagogici per la trasmissione del sapere e del saper fare. Il caso di studio individuato, cioè il Compagnonnage du Devoir du Tour de France, ovvero la scuola di formazione all’arte ed alla tecnica di costruzione in pietra più qualificata in Europa, è assunto come modello sia per la continuità della sua tradizione vivente che per l’elevato livello qualitativo della sua formazione. Il confronto con esso, da un lato ha consentito di verificare l’impostazione generale del lavoro rispetto alle questioni individuate (costituzione di un dominio disciplinare, rinnovamento della tradizione costruttiva, trasmissione delle conoscenze, formazione costruttiva); dall’altro, la conoscenza della sua struttura formativa ha reso possibile l’analisi critica del rapporto tra una tradizione costruttiva e il suo rinnovamento nella storia. La finalità della trattazione è costituita dalla individuazione dei principi, del metodo cognitivo, della natura fenomenologica e della struttura formativa della costruzione in pietra da taglio (stereotomia), su cui fondare la riorganizzazione di un magistero del costruire in pietra che sovrintenda alla ricerca ed alla formazione delle specifiche competenze del “mestiere della pietra” e che governi le conoscenze e la trasmissione dei principi e delle regole dell’arte, all’interno di una tradizione operante. Il libro vuole quindi offrire un contributo alla riscrittura dei principi ed all’aggiornamento delle tecniche relative all’architettura in pietra da taglio per poterne riaffermare la continuità come tradizione costruttiva analogamente ad altri materiali e relative tecniche, all’interno di un percorso di ricerca scientifica e di sviluppo applicativo di valore rifondativo.