June 27, 2024 – 9:00 AM – 1:00 PM
University of Florence – Department of Architecture
DIDA, Santa Teresa, Room 201
Via della Mattonaia 8, Firenze
Chair: Giulio Giovannoni, giulio.giovannoni@unifi.it.
Speakers:
Silvia Ross, University College Cork
Subverting Tuscan Spaces: Conflict and Otherness in Literature and Film.
This talk will address the notion of alterity within urban and peripheral spaces, as represented in a variety of literary and filmic texts which are set in Florence and Tuscany more generally. Using these texts as case studies, the talk will provide examples of spaces typifying structural conflicts which result in the marginalization of Othered subjects. Examples include the Roma living in camps in Florence’s outskirts in Antonio Tabucchi’s Gli zingari e il Rinascimento and Silvio Soldini’s Rom Tour ; the mobility of Senegalese migrants in a documentary titled Va’ pensiero. Storie ambulanti (2014), directed by Dagmawi Yimer; the Chinese community in Prato as portrayed in Edoardo Nesi’s Storia della mia gente. The talk will advance the premise that literature and film, as media that can generate empathy in the reader/viewer, are able to provide insights and understandings of the relationship between (minoritized) subjects and urban space.
Giuseppina Forte, Williams College, Massachusetts
The Self-Built City: Material Politics and Ecologies of Difference in São Paolo.
Navigating the challenges of researching subaltern urban histories, we confront fragmented records and their limited representation. In the absence of institutional archives, adapting ethnographic methods becomes critical, with research questions continually changing to match the dynamic nature of fieldwork. Embracing these conditions of heterogeneity and emergence in the field is essential for rethinking urban theory within subaltern urbanism. In this context, anthropological approaches to urban space offer a deeper exploration of the intersections between material politics, ecological considerations, and socio-political agencies, which may be challenging to uncover through institutional archival research and quantitative analysis. Ultimately, this enriched understanding can help unpack the interplay between institutional planning, architecture, and the elusive concept of “cityness” that escapes official modes of representation and control.
Giulio Giovannoni, University of Florence
Ethnography of Non-Places and Requalification of Peripheries: a Lefebvrian Approach.
The concept of periphery has both a geographic-spatial and symbolic meanings. Representations of suburbs and of the so-called ‘non-places’ associated with them often have bleak, not to say dystopian, connotations, which are the consequence of the distance of observation and of our incapacity of deepening and investigating what Lefebvre refers to as ‘lived space’. These representations come into play in planning processes, contributing to produce unsatisfactory results both on a factual and symbolic level. This talk provides a theoretical justification and a methodological illustration of a Lefebvrian approach to the analysis and design of peripheries and non-places, which simultaneously considers the physical, social, and symbolic dimensions of space production.
Paola Giuseppina Briata, Polytechnic University of Milan
People, Places, Practices. Ethnographic Approaches and Spatial Sensibilities.
Writings by ethnographers with a sociological/ anthropological background outline ethnographical paths as bodily and situated experiences where everyone’s background matters (Semi, 2010; Cefaï, 2013). If the background is in architecture or planning, this is reflected also in a specific spatial awareness of the observer. The planners/architects’ capacity to observe life in a spatial context is thus a core point. At the same time, it’s interesting to stimulate architects and planners to keep their tension to say ex-ante that space could work better if designed in a different way in the background. This exercise is helpful to focus on everyday practices in the space, as well as to understand how the comprehension of the intertwining between people, places and practices is relevant to developing site-specific projects, able to take stock of know-how that comes from people using a space. This contribution will introduce the basic principles of the so-called “ethnography for designers” (Cranz, 2016). It will focus on the role of space in social life, as well as on the relationships between space and power. Far from any form of spatial determinism, some issues related to the complex and slippery relationship between space and behaviours will also be unpacked.
Anthropological Approaches to urban space 