999

ii inclusive interiors #07

SCALES OF
Madalina Ghibusi ii inclusive interiors is a series of studies that – in the attempt
Architect and PhD candidate in the Architectural, Urban and Interior
Design Programme at Politecnico di Milano, she collaborates in various
to build the foundations of an adaptable environment that
research projects with the Department of Architecture and Urban Stud- From park through gardens and arriving to objects might seem, at the first sigh, like a big leap between meets the need of intercultural dialogue determined by the
ies of the same University.
these three different notions that we propose to call scales, as they are going to be treated by their ability current phenomena of transnational migration – aims at
to measure and orientate. outlining the most relevant architectural experimentations

INTERIORS
Maryam Khatibi
Architect and PhD student at Politecnico di Milano, she has conducted This is what the discourse of this publication aims to highlight: that interior design can reach and enrich on collective interiors, in order to highlight the most

SCALES OF INTERIORS
Madalina Ghibusi

Madalina Ghibusi Maryam Kathibi Chiara Pradel

undergraduate and graduate studies in architecture and sustainable
development. In 2017, she graduated from ETH, Zürich in master of on multiple levels. These levels will arrive to some touchpoints in a few cases only to continue afterwards innovative strategies and tools of “inclusive design” in this
advanced studies in housing and architecture. to go in other directions, proving how the research in design and architecture can become a never- Maryam Kathibi
regard. In doing that, it collects multidisciplinary critical con-
ending resource for future inquiries. Chiara Pradel
Chiara Pradel tributions focusing on the new spaces and architectures that
Architect and PhD student at Politecnico di Milano, she graduated respond to the change of social sphere in a society marked
at IUAV di Venezia and received a postgraduate research Master
by the intensification of the mobility of people as well as
parks gardens objects
of Advanced Studies in Architecture of the Territory at Accademia di
Architettura di Mendrisio. Her professional experience revolves around
Landscape Design.
information.
 Scales of Interiors

ii inclusive interiors 07
 ii inclusive interiors
#07

Scales of Interiors
Parks Gardens Objects
edited by
Madalina Ghibusi Maryam Kathibi Chiara Pradel
ii inclusive interiors Peer Reviewed Book Series
#07| Scales of Interiors: Parks Gardens Objects

A cura di / Edited by
Madalina Ghibusi Maryam Kathibi Chiara Pradel

Comitato scientifico / Scientific Committee

Giovanni Attili | Università La Sapienza, Roma
Luca Basso Peressut | Politecnico di Milano (Chief Editor)
Daniel Cid Moragas | ELISAVA, Barcelona
Irene Cieraad | Delft University of Technology
Arianna Dagnino | University of British Columbia, Vancouver
Christoph Grafe | Bergische Universität, Wuppertal
Hidenobu Jinnai | Hosei University, Tokyo
Susan Yelavich | Parsons School of Design, New York

Comitato di redazione / Editorial Board

Imma Forino (coordinator) Jacopo Leveratto Pierluigi Salvadeo | Politecnico di Milano

DAStU | Department of Architecture and Urban Studies, Politecnico di Milano

AIMAC | Interior Architecture Museums and Built Environment Research Lab at DAStU
AUID PhD Course, Politecnico di Milano

ISBN 9788891638830
© Copyright 2019 Maggioli S.p.A.
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Printed in December 2019 in the plant Maggioli S.p.A, Santarcangelo di Romagna (RN)
Index

7 ii inclusive interiors Book Series

11 Introduction

15 Fullness and Emptiness

Maurizio Vitta

Parks
27 The Exhibition Parks
Luca Basso Peressut
43 Lawrence Halprin and the Dancing City
Annalisa Metta
59 Singapore Green Spray: A Metropolitan Exhibition Park
Matteo Umberto Poli
71 Michel Desvigne and urbanité à venir
Francesco Repishti
85 Memory and Sublime in Post-Industrial Parks
Chiara Pradel

Gardens
103 The Gardens of Carlo Scarpa
Orietta Lanzarini
121 The Inhabited Garden: The Spatial Experiments by
Bernard Rudofsky and Tino Nivola in the Nivola Garden
on Long Island
Alessandra Como
135 Urban Gardens
Imma Forino
151 The Fair of Nature: Wild as a Norm of Beauty in Gardens
Silvia Maria Mundula
167 Contemporary Swiss Urban Garden Strategies
Maryam Kathibi


 Objects
185 The Object Dimension of Architectural Space
Pierluigi Salvadeo
197 How Do Objects Redefine Public Space?
Xu Xin
209 Objects, Bodies and Open Space: Reflection between Art, Design,
Landscape and Architecture
Federica Marchetti
223 Light or Dense: Evolutive Visions
Francesca La Rocca
241 When Objects Act as Urban Catalysts and Social Critics
Madalina Ghibusi

Apparatus
253 Profiles of the authors
259 List of illustrations
 7

ii inclusive interiors Book Series

ii inclusive interiors is a series of studies that ‒ in the attempt to build the

foundations of an adaptable environment that meets the need of inter-
cultural dialogue determined by the current phenomena of transnational
migration ‒ aims at outlining the most relevant architectural experimen-
tations on collective interiors, in order to highlight the most innovative
strategies and tools of “inclusive design” in this regard. In doing that,
it collects multidisciplinary critical contributions focusing on the new
spaces and architectures that respond to the change of social sphere in a
society marked by the intensification of the mobility of people as well as
information.

Scientific Committee

Giovanni Attili, Università La Sapienza, Roma

Luca Basso Peressut, Politecnico di Milano (Chief Editor)
Daniel Cid Moragas, ELISAVA, Barcelona
Irene Cieraad, Delft University of Technology
Arianna Dagnino, University of British Columbia, Vancouver
Christoph Grafe, Bergische Universität, Wuppertal
Hidenobu Jinnai, Hosei University, Tokyo
Susan Yelavich, Parsons School of Design, New York
70 |MICHEL DESVIGNE AND URBANITE A VENIR
 SCALES OF INTERIORS | 71

Michel Desvigne and urbanité à venir

Francesco Repishti

Contemporary landscape architecture of the “French school,” whose

theoretical pivot is supported, among others, by the studies of Augustin
Berque, Pierre Donadieu and Alain Roger, and which includes the
heterogeneous operational contributions of Gilles Clément, Bernard
Lassus, Michel Corajoud, and Michel Desvigne, has emerged in all its
importance in recent decades, especially in the development of large-scale
urban projects. It must also be noted that, in the recent past, this new line of
thought has received fundamental contributions with regard to the concept
of environment (Tissier 1996), of space (Bachelard 1961), of milieu (from
Paul Vidal de la Blache to Augustin Berque) or of espace (Lévy 1999).
Also reflections developed by geography of “naturalist” inspiration, capable
of going beyond the description and elaboration of typologies, aimed at
underlining and highlighting the recurrent frequency of structures, have
constituted a further decisive contribution (Repishti 2008, 33-38).

Michel Desvigne
Among these elaborations and developments, signs of an indisputable vitality
of the French thought in the world of contemporary landscape architecture,
the projects of Michel Desvigne constitute an original contribution and
provide a richness of novel elements, above all if considered as instruments
for planning and prefiguring the image of the city, able to overcome
formalism and the idea of architecture understood merely as image. His
works seem to bring about a paradigmatic shift by which the difficulty of
developing projects, in particular for former industrial areas, give way to
the capacity to prefigure large-scale and long-lasting forms, as well as to
witness a change by which the production of icons and spectacular objects
is replaced by sustainable interventions that are poor in visibility.
72 |MICHEL DESVIGNE AND URBANITE A VENIR

After graduating from the École Nationale Supérieure de Paysage in

Versailles (1984), Michel Desvigne became, together with Christine
Dalnoky, the first landscape architect to reside as a fellow at Villa Medici in
Rome (1986-1988). Their initial success (they collaborated until 1996) was
partly due to the gardens intended for two works (1986-1989) of Renzo
Piano where it is already possible to recognize a strategic use of greenery,
both in organizing the outdoor areas of the Thomson factory in Guyan
court, and in eliminating the communal space constituted by the narrow
courtyard of a public construction in Rue de Meaux in Paris (Dalnoky,
Desvigne 1987, 118-120).
In the first case, the building, designed by Piano for the Thomson factory, has
a modular structure and the layout of the landscape naturally develops this
structural pattern: a linear articulation of parallel bands evokes the spatial
modulation of the architecture with an alternation of large openings and
full and opaque rectangles. Protected by a large curved wall, the bands are
arranged radially and change nature as one moves away from the building,
acquiring the shape of courtyards, parking lots, lawns and forests. The
presence of an industrial plant and an indifferent context do not represent a
limit, rather they allow the creation of a work that is a reference to the cycles
of an agricultural territory, which was structured in a temporal succession
of actions that followed the continuous transformation of planting. In the
Square des Bouleaux in Paris, the collective space of the buildings was
deliberately limited to the straight paths connecting them with the Rue
de Meaux: a birch forest, but above all a totalizing surface composed of a
hedge occupies all the available space, denying any idea of sociality to the
courtyard and limiting it to the area beyond the entrance (Repishti 2006,
110).
A professor at Harvard, Desvigne has also carried out numerous projects
in the United States, embracing and being inspired – also for more
recent projects (Paris-Saclay, 2010-2016) – by the approach of Frederick
Law Olmsted to the American landscape, which overcame the idea
of a park as an isolated and independent element. In addition to the
Harvard Graduate School of Design, Desvigne has also taught at several
universities of architecture around the world: ENSP (Versailles, France),
EPFL (Lausanne, Switzerland), UCL (Louvain, Belgium), AA School of
Architecture (London, UK) and the Academy of Architecture (Mendrisio,
Switzerland). In 2011 he was awarded the Grand Prix de l’Urbanisme as a
landscape architect for his contribution to the reflection on the city and the
territory, in particular for some founding concepts developed over the years
such as prépaysage and lisières.
 SCALES OF INTERIORS | 73

Paysage and prépaysage

In the activity of some contemporary landscape architects, for some years
now, it has been possible to envisage, to various degrees, references to a new
practice of design: for example, in territorial planning, in projects for the
recovery of large disused and residual urban or infrastructural areas, or in
the design of public spaces and parks. The structural conditions that over the
years have led to a landscape-oriented urban action became visible when the
“traditional” sectorial tools, applied to post-industrial situations, appeared
ineffective and when it became clear that some places were more suburban
than urban, characterized by infrastructure more than by architecture.
The growing use of landscape art as an agent of urban regeneration must,
in fact, be seen in conjunction with the increase in the presence of critical
areas in post-industrial cities. While the responses of architects and urban
planners to the enormous craters to be found in industrial and railway
landscapes were limited to strategies, ideal representations, spatial schemes
and diagrams, and images, landscape architects indicated how it was
possible to effectively transform the territory, in what timescale, and with
what techniques. Because of their culture and knowledge it seemed logical
to them that the new hybrid landscapes of the city should be traced over
time following a series of principles capable of supporting different possible
scenarios, rather than an idea of design that views the urban space as a
finished, permanent, and contemplative object. An experimental vision, at
times also somewhat demonstrative, composed of a series of actions that
take place over time and that are able to question or strongly oppose the
idea of an eternal project.
In fact, in the interventions of Peter Walker and George Hargreaves or in
those by Peter Latz, James Corner and Michel Desvigne, the issues addressed
by contemporary landscape architecture, which entail going beyond an
idea of landscape as absence of architecture, and influenced by the many
expressions of Land Art, appeared as unprecedented answers. Inventions of
great originality and a variety of experiences have over time defined some
principles: the new ecological paradigm as the guiding principle behind
all urban actions (also, sometimes, architectural actions), the overlapping
of art and landscape architecture, together with a new idea of “active”
and “participated” public space, and the confirmation of the inability of
architecture and urban planning to prefigure and regenerate some urban
places (Repishti 2012, 40-41). Furthermore, it should be also noted that in
times of economic crisis, recomposing the urban landscape by redesigning
the public space and landscape has proven to be significantly cheaper
74 |MICHEL DESVIGNE AND URBANITE A VENIR

than implementing architectural programs that almost always involve

the construction of a new museum (or media library) or an anonymous
commercial-directional enclave (Desvigne 2012, 24).
In this scenario, the thought and action of Desvigne stand out, as we have
already mentioned, above all for an original attitude that can be summed
up only in part by the concept of prépaysage, that is, the attention to the
preparation of territories for their future vocations, also before the execution
of permanent mineral interventions. These are mostly operations carried
out on a territorial scale that use nature as an intermediate, temporary and
procedural planning tool, capable of prefiguring the future form of the
territory subjected to landscape action: it is a project that elaborates both a
plan and a form and that is therefore capable of developing an architectural
project and not only abstract volumes.
This new garden is therefore conceived in such a way that over time its
form and its plant species – which constitute its “natural” element – can
be renewed. It is an adequate and coherent response to the precarious
situation of a place, able to prevent a state of abandonment of the area and
enhance the legitimacy of the final project: it allows the public to gradually
 SCALES OF INTERIORS | 75

appropriate or become used to the architectural elements being built around

it, following its growth and thus progressively prefiguring the future urbanity.
It is something more than just a temporary garden exhibiting its transitory
and ephemeral character, indeed it is a public space able to provide concrete
features, in a period of time that goes from the moment the decision is made
to the beginning of the works that follow, which as is known, are aimed at
defining a more conventional image of urbanity.
The approach proposed by Desvigne, therefore, is completely opposite to
that adopted by totalizing planning of an abandoned urban area: instead of
the elaboration of an urban project, he proposes an “infiltration strategy, a
process of evolutionary occupation, that exploits the fragmentation of the
territory to introduce gardens and walks;” the intention is to create “a system
of temporary parks, which accompany all the transformations without
waiting for the implementation of the bigger project” (Desvigne 2002,
52-59). The theoretical reflection is based on the possibility of triggering a
temporal process through the implementation of an “intermediate nature”,
whereby the achievement of a “hypothetical and illusory final state will
occur through a sequence of states, corresponding to different states of
metamorphosis. External surfaces appear, they disappear and shift according
to the evolution of the buildings and the rhythm of the relative urban points
of passage” (Desvigne 2009). Vegetation, in fact, becomes responsible for
tracing a new urban matrix, possibly following and enhancing the existing
signs of urbanization, giving it a new and clearer hierarchy and establishing
new relationships between spaces.
This idea of considering the natural dimension as a prerequisite for planning
interventions, in that it is able to prepare territories for their future use,
is therefore one of the key principles of Desvigne. He claims he was
inspired by the system of parks created by Frederick Law Olmsted in the
late nineteenth century in the United States, where the construction of the
landscape was seen as the creation of the necessary conditions for building
the city.
The Île Seguin in Boulogne-Billancourt, for instance, an island in the Seine
to the south of the historic center, is viewed as an occasion for the recovery
of large scale disused urban areas where there are conflicting interests
that are difficult to reconcile, but which Desvigne has interpreted as an
opportunity to reshape the entire district. The need to make something
visible very quickly led to imagine a prototype of the future urban structure,
starting from the design of the public space: a finished garden inside the
working site served as an anticipation of the future park to which the public
had access even before the urban project was started. According to Desvigne
76 |MICHEL DESVIGNE AND URBANITE A VENIR
 SCALES OF INTERIORS | 77

“the immediate use of the site by the public and its appropriation helps to
encourage the planning project for the island, still being discussed after two
decades” (Desvigne 2012, 26).
The public space of the Île Seguin garden is the concrete and practical
shape given to a time interval. The intervention, a sort of anticipation of the
future is therefore configured as a concrete and practical type of interval, in
a literal sense, and therefore serves as a real element that takes place between
a hypothetical previous time sequence and one aimed at urbanization. An
interval that is not only metaphorical – it is based on immediate visibility
– between the decisions made by urban planners and the populations for
whom they are intended. In fact, the routes and the subdivision of the land
constitute a formal memory of the layout of the Renault workshops, with
their alignments and repetitions.
Also in Lyon, along the Saône, a series of projects designed by Desvigne
have made it possible to create, from 1999 to the present, a park for the
redevelopment of Lyon Confluence of almost 150 hectares, using the same
approach: to set up temporary gardens in order to immediately attract the
inhabitants and encourage them to return to live in the space, so they could
immediately re-appropriate part of it, thus triggering a process of new
colonization of what was considered a marginal area. With the technique
of “garden-tiles,” which allows to maintain the ground untouched, large
flowerbed-containers have been put in place, filled with soil, in which
shrubs are planted. Temporary green areas have thus been created, with an
immediate effect, also easily removable when the final project is realized. The
objective has been to allow the Confluence area, a marginal area affected
by a strong instability due to the functions housed here, to continue to
maintain a strong component of renewal, this time brought about by the
transformations caused by the green spaces. Greenery has also been given
the role of attractor, being a material capable of renewing the value of a
landscape that thus goes from being a “residue” of urban transformations,
distant from pedestrian flows, to an area with a new social and aesthetic
value, in which a new relationship with the river and the adjacent territory
is established. From the renovated quai along the Saône, temporary and
permanent green bands extend perpendicularly that organize the weaving
of the settlement of the future buildings.
A similar case is represented by the spaces and fragmented fabric of
the right bank of the river Garonne, affected by the phenomenon of
deindustrialization. The opportunity to create new public spaces and a large
park, overlooking the historical front of the city, together with economic
and ecological reasons, made it feasible to integrate in a single project both
78 |MICHEL DESVIGNE AND URBANITE A VENIR
 SCALES OF INTERIORS | 79

urban planning and landscape architecture. The long-term project, which

was launched in 1999 and involved more than 400 hectares, has changed the
image of Bordeaux by implementing a process of progressive replacements
capable of embracing the concept of precariousness as an element of
planning. The proposed strategy involves planting in as many free areas as
possible, in order to create a sequence and a series of woods of different
densities and ages, which follow and at the same time show the traces of the
transformation process of the park and of the adjacent districts. The rows of
trees, perpendicular to the river like the previous industrial lots, also define
and orient the wings that will constitute the new public spaces and the paths
on which the new buildings will be inserted, anticipating the geographical
structure of the future district and underlining the continuous and complex
relationship with the river bank.
On the opposite bank, the historical one, the city of Bordeaux has
undertaken a series of important transformations of the riverside, whose
function has undergone profound modifications due to change in port
activities. The project of Michel Corajoud, mirroring the intervention of
Desvigne, involved the redevelopment of almost five kilometers along the
left bank, in correspondence with the city center, designing a natural and
mineral riverfront using a series of traditional landscape elements, such as
the planting of rows and groups of trees, the opening of large spaces obtained
with specific demolitions, the creation of lawns, new pedestrian paths with
stone pavements, and a walk along the water’s edge. At the center of the
project – the urban front is further back in correspondence with the Quai
de la Douane – is the eighteenth-century square of the Stock Exchange,
transformed by the miroir d’eau, which is the main attraction around which
the public life of the new riverfront revolves.

Lisières
The contraction and impoverishment of so-called public space is a central
theme in the current debate. New forms of common spaces (e.g. privately
owned but publicly used spaces, such as shopping malls or theme parks)
have replaced some of the activities that were once held in public spaces,
while other communication and entertainment activities, initially common,
have been transferred to the private sphere through television and computers
(Zardini 2015, 70). The importance of reinventing a new dimension of
public space is therefore connected to the feeling of actually belonging
to a community and to the places daily activities are carried out in, thus
contributing to the birth of social thinking and community practices which
are linked not only to the economic dimensions, and are fundamental for
the future.
80 |MICHEL DESVIGNE AND URBANITE A VENIR

Urban dispersion does not only affect the outskirts of large cities, but
also occurs in smaller cities, in pseudo-rural countryside areas with
no real relationship with the city, which are a sort of impoverished and
unreadable countryside, deprived of public spaces. Such a situation causes
an irreconcilable relationship between agricultural land and residential
settlements, where no relations or exchanges take place, leading to the
creation of a barrier that is not only metaphorical but also physical. It is
therefore a question of repairing, transforming and redefining spaces and
territories already inhabited and occupied, of urgently rebalancing the
proportion between landscape and building, carrying out subsequent repairs
or small additions.
Desvigne claims that his “ideal city is any city in which it is possible to draw
an edge. A modest limit to uncontrolled development, to delimit lots and
production areas. A formidable reserve for a public space to be invented”
(Desvigne 2012, 24). The reflections of Desvigne, however, go beyond
the scale of individual districts and speak of a geographical scale that can
change the quality of life in cities, improve the ecological aspects and restore
consistency in areas with previously unrecognizable and indecipherable
characteristics. He gives a new form to the relationship between urban
areas and nature, in which agriculture plays a central role from an aesthetic,
structural and functional point of view. The concept of lisières (border, edge),
in fact, does not denote the presence of a natural element functioning as
border, but rather the creation of an intermediate landscape, a place of fertile
exchange between the agricultural world and the peri-urban dimension,
aimed at establishing coherence between the two sides. The redevelopment
of so-called peri-urban areas can be more easily addressed on a landscape
scale, although according to Desvigne the collaboration between landscape
architects, architects, and planners is essential. It is not so much a question of
imagining a new model for the future, but rather of drawing up an inventory
of what exists in order to conceive a concrete and immediate transformation
or, at least, to trigger or foster processes.
Desvigne envisages some possible solutions which allow to operate on the
edge, therefore on the lines of separation between the fields of extensive
agriculture and low-density residential areas. Thickening this edge would
create open links, creating porosity rather than a belt which, although
it might be green, would correspond only to the expansion of a zone of
passage. It is about bringing about a shift from the concept of temporal
interval, which we have just addressed with regard to the idea of prépaysage,
to that of spatial interval, closer to the idea of threshold. This singular
environment, entrusted to the practices and techniques of agriculture, could
perhaps remedy the discontinuous nature of the urban periphery. On the
 SCALES OF INTERIORS | 81

urban and residential side, this landscape would mark an opening and the
elimination of a limit, first of all because of its public nature:

Its simple existence would have profound effects. The currently dead-end
suburban roads would lead to shared spaces. They would change and no longer
have the status of privately used public roads. On the side of the countryside,
this same expansion applied to the border between two properties would
create a network of roads, ditches (once present, today they have disappeared;
they would allow to control drainage of water); also, the land could be used
in some rudimentary ways (creating meadows, orchards ...) to gradually form
actual common spaces. By envisaging the possible use of these edges it becomes
evident that tools are indeed few and simple, that they can be applied easily
with colossal effects. The interference created would reconcile these two worlds
by allowing them to experience forms of development and economic exchange
between neighborhoods. Natural resources would not only be preserved, they
would also be animated and expanded.

Being a landscape architect means c ontributing to the construction of a common

territory. A public space in an urban center is undoubtedly the most visible of
these common assets, the one that confers an identity to a neighborhood or a
city. In European cities, public spaces always have specific configurations and are
very resistant to standardization and globalization (as opposed to architecture
or trade). The observation of different archetypes of public space indicates that
their permanence is based on their being relevant to a portion of territory or
an urban form, on a writing process of great dignity and on respect for the soil.
(Desvigne 2012, 26)

Desvigne applies this theory of redesign of the edges in several projects. For
example, in the center of Burgos a disused railway line has been replaced
by a system of blocks arranged around a central avenue that serves as a
public connecting space. This landscape intervention is based above all on
the geographical characteristics of the place, alternating and superimposing
stone pavements and groups of trees that form small or large forests,
favoring the connection of the new neighborhoods (designed by Herzog &
de Meuron) with the already urbanized areas.
Perhaps the project where the study of the edges is most evident is that
for the urban campus of Paris Saclay (2010-2016), adjacent to many
important university and research centers (École Polytechnique, CEA,
University of Paris-Sud, CNRS), and set in a natural, agricultural and forest
landscape. The project, which covers about 500 hectares of land, starts from
the observation of natural elements, considered as the physical support to
which the development strategy is anchored to, and is implemented with
the redesign of the edges, which through the thickening of its landscape
elements, establish new relationships between urbanized and agricultural
82 |MICHEL DESVIGNE AND URBANITE A VENIR

areas. The edge is structured as a continuous path that can accommodate

different functions and integrate infrastructure and eleven new areas for
university campuses and mixed and interconnected neighborhoods, but also
includes an agricultural dimension that is almost domestic, adapted to the
scale of the urban campus. The agricultural land is preserved and the whole
territory is an ecologically coherent archipelago. The use of techniques
borrowed from agriculture also makes it possible to meet technical
requirements such as the storage of soil, materials, and water; the creation
of nurseries promotes ecological engineering which in turn contributes
to the transformation of the site. The evolutionary character renders the
border a living and inhabited landscape, a showcase and a trajectory, able to
contribute to the identity and attractiveness of the neighborhoods, for users
and residents as for visitors (Desvigne 2015, 38-41).

Conclusions
Experience has shown that large urban planning projects today are testing
sites where the intentions to create strong iconicity, economic interests
aiming to make immediate profits, high ecological aspirations, and the
needs of the inhabitants render their implementation weak and uncertain.
Desvigne proposes instead to regulate urban planning starting from a
project-plan in which the landscape plays a programmatic-processual role
in territorial development; a very pragmatic project, which however requires
long lasting actions and enlightened political conditions. A vision opposed
to the one according to which the quality of urban space is based exclusively
on visual perception.
Starting from these principles, it is not surprising to observe how the
thought of Desvigne thought actually entails a return to a strong utopian
component opposed to the much celebrated dystopian visions: faith
in possible change opposed to the fatuity of large projects, faith in the
potential of the recomposition of urbanized territories starting from their
geography (Desvigne 2012, 24), especially by means of instruments that
allow to prefigure future scenarios thanks to nature and the realization of
public spaces, even if only as minimal “edges” limiting urban development.
 SCALES OF INTERIORS | 83

References

Bachelard, Gaston. 1961. La poétique de l’espace (1957). Paris: Les Presses

Universitaires de France.
Berque, Augustin. 1999. Médiance de milieux en paysages. Paris: Belin.
Desvigne, Michel and Christine Dalnoky. 1995. “Trasformazioni indotte / Induced
Transformations.” Lotus International (87): 108-131.
———. 2002. “Recherches pour une esthétique de la trasformation.” In Penser la ville par
le paysage, edited by Ariella Masboungi, 52-59. Paris: Editions de la Villette.
———. 2009. Intermediate Natures: The Landscape of Michel Desvigne. Berlin:
Birkhauser.
———. 2012. “Summer Park Governors Island.” Lotus international (149): 47-49.
———. 2012. “Il paesaggio come punto di partenza / The Landscape as
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