Keywords

1 Public Compulsory School in Municipal Complexes for a New Culture-Civilization: Project for the “Carro di Tespi” Pavilion

The Carro di Tespi (or Pavilion) were mobile theaters built with covered wooden structures used by the comedians of the popular Italian nomad theater for their street theater, starting from the late Nineteenth century. They were mounted “on the town square” and remained set up for 40/50 days during which the companies of the “guitti” wanderers recited a different script night after night, exhausting completely their repertoire. They owe their name to the mythical figure of the theatrical actor Tespi d’Icaria, described by Horace in the Ars poetica and were anchored to the idea of a mass theater with a strong emotional impact and capable of conveying theatrical culture to forgotten sections of the population. The fascist regime used this experience to build an outdoor traveling theater in 1929.

“Test suckers and roots to build a new ethnicity”.Footnote 1 If we consider how it is possible that the origin (the poleogenesis) of Italian cities (whether large, medium or small) is to be attributed fundamentally to “facts of structure” (in the meaning given by Ferdinand de Saussure)—as the historian Henri Pirenne seems to suggest, paraphrasing the well-known thesis about the paleogenetic dualism of the medieval city (fortified nucleus and mercantile town) that became functional to the proto-capitalistic structure (Henri Pirenne 1927)—we could therefore argue that the interaction between the resources and the endowments of the city-center and resources and endowments of the peripheral area and of the metropolitan concentric structure becomes necessary to the understanding of the phenomena of transformation into an inalienable coherent destiny.

If after all it is considered possible that the most careful and in-depth analyzed urbanistic critique now tends to favor this hypothesis, it is also true that, in the not so disorderly growth of the same Italian cities, hazarding a generalization, there are entirely original characters that distinguish, in adherence or in transgression, the destiny of some of the most representative and emblematic among them.

It would seem that these characters may depend precisely on the “suckers” and on the “roots”, that is the propensity of the humanized environment and of the work culture that takes place in the relationship with the “longue durée” (like Annales), underlining once again the relative autonomy of architecture and of composition (Guido Canella 1969), but also suggesting the way to complete its “knowledge”. An architecture of the city that is capable, precisely, of bringing that “knowledge”, when it is considered “behavioral” architecture, which we believe must be the basic philosophy and ultimate goal filtered into the project and into the construction.

And it would not seem on the other hand, still generalizing, to contradict this hypothesis with the appropriate differentiation between capital cities, military cities, trade fair cities, ration cities, etc. These non-ordinary, genuine characteristics of Italian cities, superimposed on the “structural facts” that have conditioned their development, would seem to be the expression of a whole culture, even if specific point to point. What then could be a minimum common denominator that can confirm the belonging of these cities to that level of merit that is attributed to the “boroughs of Italy” and that can condition the project of the “modern”?

It could be, for instance, a geographical factor, which is declined at first in the great Italian citiesFootnote 2 divided, for example, by climatic bands (north, south, but also coast, countryside, mountain); or for medium and small cities it could be the effect of irradiating the characters of the same major cities of reference on the territory and the other way around. Characters that combine and recombine with different degrees of intensity and elaboration to create a “skein” whose in-depth and punctual deciphering is decisive for understanding the true nature of every Italian city.

However, it seems to be the so-called second and third order poles, precisely the “boroughs”, that contain in their genetic heritage—typological and figurative but also urbanistic-morphological—that clarity and transparency of “behavioral” intentions that it seemed to have been reached with the medieval construction of the primary space (the town square) of the compact city in a system however “polycentric”, that of the “boroughs of Italy”.Footnote 3

We could therefore be led to suppose that the structuring factor for excellence is represented by the agorà, understood as an assemblyFootnote 4 and by its permanent surrogate, the public school, considering the epistemological question and the academic political-cultural distinction.

For a didactic offer that is coherent in a renewed global course of studies that are truly “of the futuribles”Footnote 5—in the context of the Italian public school of every order and degree—a role that seems to us to be decisive should be covered by the instruction given by the universities, as well as by the research that is carried out within them in the name of them. But we are obliged to acknowledge that the didactic offer presented to university students doesn’t follow a coherent academic organizational program, even if we consider a new faculty and the implicit epistemological and methodological assumptions.

Therefore, a possible new direction for a degree course today should inevitably be placed in coherence with a general reference assumption (perhaps incorporated as stigmata of the same faculty), with the sense of belonging to a critical thought.

Nevertheless, belonging to that partisanship that is consistent with the assumption, we are trying to introduce into the debate to circumscribe and define a “problematic and operational”Footnote 6 approach to knowledge, aimed at forming critical intellectuals and not just specialists or professionals with a trade.Footnote 7

The coordinated professors within this new direction, beyond possible differences for cultural positions, would necessarily be united by the same “holistic” conception of reality, by virtue of which the approach to knowledge can be global, dialectical and historical, in total antithesis with that of ontological and methodological individualism, or “Robinsonian”.Footnote 8

Learning in this way could express itself in maximum awareness as a dialectic expression of a historically determined civilization. By virtue of an adequate ability to interpret the needs of society, it would be able to stand out on the identity of the European (and of the world) city and on those of the historical and problematic essence of its disciplinary heritage, escaping from a notion of cultural project which today is increasingly equated with the pursuit of the vogue too often claimed in the global market of postmodernist culture.

If we become aware of the underlying gnoseological and epistemological discriminating factor, perhaps the spaces intended for education should be reformulated in reverse order: from the configuration of a university to the possible configuration of a school complex that includes high school, passing through middle school, to end with primary school and kindergarten, where the configuration of a middle school would have a dominant role, as Giuseppe Samonà had already underlined back in the 1960s: “It is likely that in the future there will be large localizations of educational establishments of middle schools that will be much more significant than (the) universities, because in them the intelligences will mature and a very lively social life will be formed.

So it could be said that, by filiation, the school, considered as a functional and figural device, should present that same typological “icasticity” and that predisposition towards the central role of the “behaviors” of the space of life, if not universal, of the center—church-palace-square—of the “boroughs of Italy”. Those same behaviors that are necessary for the learner to build their own critical intelligence corroborated by the juxtaposition of preparatory spaces delegated to their formation.

The research for a new way of child and of adolescent education based on “doing”, able to put the student at the center as an actor and not just as a user of their development, a new “Montessorian spring”Footnote 9 (Fig. 1) seems to be a viable way within a scenario that appears to be completely fluid. To achieve these goals today the school should radically transform and renew itself, with an “ontological-social”Footnote 10 attitude, into a “school-laboratory” made up of different ateliers, special rooms aggregated around a space that we could define as a “library” or as a town square “forum scentiam-forum of knowledge”, where children can carry out appropriate activities and become aware of the cognitive problems to be deepened through the aid of books and, above all, learn the art of permanent assembly as a form of culture-civilization.Footnote 11

Fig. 1
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Phototypesetting for the presentation of the project references. E. Beaudouin, M. Lods, École en plein air, Suresnes, Paris 1932–35; «Hinterland» directed by G. Canella, n. 17, 1981 and n. 3, 1978, dedicated to the subject of education; G. Folli, Open air school in the Trotter, Milan, 1918–1927; R. Steiner, First Goetheanum, Dornach, 1908–25; «Casabella-Continuità» directed by E. N. Rogers, n. 249, 1961 and n. 245, 1960, dedicated to the subject of school; T. Crosby, Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, London 1997; G. Canella, P. Bonaretti, Technical Institute Giambattista Bodoni, Parma 1985; G. Canella, Service Center Piazza Monte d’Ago Quarter, Passo di Varano, Ancona 1984; A. Belloni, Primary School Rinnovata Pizzigoni, Milan 1924–27

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The projectFootnote 12 involves the prefabrication of a medium-sized structure, a “special” classroom to be placed in the courtyards of public schools of every order and degree that requests it, typologically preordained for those special operating activities that the teaching requires, when it wants to have the features and characteristics of a “problematic and operating” approach.

We are naturally favoring the atavistic distinction that there is between the work of industrial design—dominated by practicality as a form of knowledge induced by the dominant traction of ergonomics applied to the “object of use”—and the work of architecture—pervaded by practicability as a form of knowledge induced by the dominant traction of the typology applied to the public building for the city. It has been difficult for us to find away to identify “knowledge” in the structuring “composition” process that has characterized this research on prefabrication as an architectural product of a work that otherwise could be attributable to the design of the “object of use”. Thus it is uprooted from any “allocation context”, while still abstracting from the practice of reconstruction, imitation or anastylosis and evoking instead, in the construction of this prefabricated humanized environment, a tendential “approach by figures”.

The theme is therefore the search for the possible conformation of a reversible pavilion that can be inserted in the courtyards of the degraded and typologically insufficient public school complexes, but also for the reuse of the “mother houses”, typical of the irrigated countryside farmhouses, and also for the restoration of town squares in places damaged by the earthquakes, as the primary nucleus of experimental teaching.

The project requires the constructive completion of a school complex in the outskirts of Milan,Footnote 13 located at the intersection of two waterways, the Naviglio Grande canal and the Lambro river, characteristics that make it a microcosm, but unfortunately “wounded boroughs” hit by degradation and neglect, and characterized by instances of superfetation that have over time altered and mutilated their practicability (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2
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The pavilion “Carro di Tespi”. Ground floor plan, First floor plan, Masterplan

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We therefore chose a planning strategy that envisaged the re-triggering of the endemic territorial polycentrism which, as always, also involved the small Italian cities, the so-called “boroughs”, and thus, by extension, the foundation cities, the additions of parts of cities, the quarters and “formally completed parts of cities”.Footnote 14

The pavilion, “Carro di Tespi”, is envisaged as prefabricated with laminated wooden structures and floors, and vertical infill walls in sandwich panels complete with building services and insulations, such as x-lam system. The panels are uniform, modular, square of three meters side, self-supporting and interchangeable, with three finishing solutions, so as to allow the construction of different sequences of “reversible” aggregation spaces, so to speak “in palimpsest”. For the reconstruction hypothesis, therefore, the research has provided for the maintenance of the original building, a work that would seem part of that eclecticism “of manner” of Milan (“Novecento” style without frills and tinsel) which, in the complicity of some architects dedicated to the construction of the city of the 1930s, it prefers a relationship with the context, not directly from a geographical point of view, nor from an exclusively historical point of view and not even from a purely linguistic point of view, but from a more general point of view of “evocation” (Figs. 3 and 4).Footnote 15 The concept of “evocation” that these architects of the “Novecento” style seem to be transplanting for a criterion of assimilability that can be defined “of distance in absence” and “of temporal detachment” with respect to the chosen models, and it seems sublimated in their poetics. This concept can also be, for example, an alternative to other decisive experiences that have involved similar “boroughs” of northern Italy, which are prerogative of enlightened entrepreneurs (like Adriano Olivetti in Ivrea) who were able to operate in those same years through the wise planning and construction of the already industrial suburbs.

Fig. 3
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The pavilion “Carro di Tespi”. Longitudinal section, General view, Cross section

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Fig. 4
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The pavilion “Carro di Tespi”. Front elevation east, Photographic insertion of the project in the Ilaria Alpi school, Front elevation north–west. (For all the images, rights are reserved for authors.)

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This practice of “evocation”, in the case of the school on Via San Colombano, seems to be an appropriate path to conform to, in the act of composing “by figures”, not so differently, on the other hand, from what Leonardo da Vinci undertook proposing for Milan—city for which the most original proposals were made over time, even though they have almost always been betrayed—the project of placement of his “giant” equestrian sculpture, which should have been allocated either in the Sforza internal courtyard (the Rocchetta) of the Castello Sforzesco or in the transplantation of the “Square of Central Italian tradition” newly formed in front of the Castle itself.