Day 01

I expected this course to teach me how to project and design structures starting from those already employed by animals or plants. As far as the human mind can project, nothing is in fact more perfectly engineered than biological structures, which slowly adapted and evolved to minimize their efforts to live in a complex environment. To this purpose, all living entities developed particular systems that allowed them to perform a specific function: for example, the human bones are constituted of a material which is extremely resistant without being at the same time too fragile, thanks to its microstructure.

The course actually started with a social/psychological analysis of Presence in a particular environment. This is linked to the fact that only alive presences make a specific place lively: no matter how beautiful it is if then we feel lost inside it or it is not functional to our purposes.

That’s why the final aim of this course will be that of projecting a building: other than being based on biomimicry principles, it will also need to be planned so that the people that live/work there, feel comfortable, as if it was a natural extension of their bodies and they could maximize their role inside of it.
Considering this from an holistic viewpoint, we should replicate what already happens in our bodies: the cells are single entities, like people, who are able to explicate at most their functions since they all collaborate following different and precise tasks. We should therefore create an environment in which spaces and functions are well defined and separated.

Regarding the course itself, today I felt a little startled since the organizational aspect was carried out, compared to the academic one. The final presentation cleared a little up my mind, so that I now feel ready to get into the problems and matters that we will need to focus on.
I like the multicultural environment and the different academic backgrounds of the students: if these two aspects will be well mixed, then we might be able to come up with interesting solutions that take into account different kind of problems.

Giacomo Cuspidi