Mission

The Centre’s Mission is to provide tools, cultural knowledge and technical expertise regarding Urban Design to the Scientific Community, to Citizens and to Governance Structures in order to acquire a unitary, systemic and organic point of view on cities.
To promote this cultural process the Centre aims to let converge its diverse competencies and resources into an articulated activity program elaborated on innovative modes and tools, in order to promote a cultural share of ideas on urban phenomenon among a diverse group of people with different knowledge.

A keen research on urban phenomenon has led the Centre to elaborate visions, strategies and projects for the cities and its inhabitants.
The Centre considers Urban Design not as a design scale or a project phase, but as a Method that places the system of relations as a core element of the project itself to determine architectures and spatial events.
A Method has no scale, by definition.

Since 2016, the Centre works in partnership with the Urban Design Laboratory of the Faculty of Architecture of University of Florence to promote events projects and researches in Urban Design.

Purpose

The Centre purpose is to promote relations, cultural exchanges and cooperation among persons interested in issues regarding cities and urban space design, extending trials in relation to social transformations and on-going innovations

The lack of consolidated urban planning tools and the design of architectures without a point of view beyond the building itself, a missing master view in urban planning, places Urban Design at the very core of urban spatial evolution, a research who aims to provide tools and methodologies, to formulate design models able to give life to processes of urban renovation, in order to give back dignity and identity to cities and public spaces.

Urban Design is set in a different dimension from urban planning and architectonic design in its most mere meaning. It is an open cross-disciplinary area of research taking life and ideas not only by architects, but also from different academics and competent players with knowledge in many field of studies concerning mankind and urban community issues.

The Centre places itself as a catalyst of interests and relations among academics and operators working in research, university teaching and design.
Since its constitution in 1986 to nowadays the Centre has had relations with many European and Worldwide Universities, Institutes, Associations, Foundations, Territory Governance Institutions from local to international scale.

In summary, the purposes of the Centre can be expressed in the following operative programs:

Setting up of an information structure to gather data and documents on the activity of subjects interested in Urban Design research, teaching and professional operativity in order to build a database and a tools for the community;
Promote initiatives and events to facilitate the interaction and the share of knowledge among subject interested in Urban Design (exhibitions, meetings, seminars, researches and projects).

Guide lines

Every issue the Centre aims to deal with and develop have the purpose to define the transformations of society and cities, considering that the innovations of life styles and habits of city players are continuously changing and evolving.

The role of Centre, at different scales and in different fields of study is acknowledged in the ability of:

dialog, operate and interact, with different Entities and Institutions, both internationals and locals;
create a multi-disciplinary platform (involving Universities, Institutes, Research Centres and other structures involved in the study of city and territory issues;
involve diverse fields of social, cultural, operative reality, connecting the world of the research, of the university, of the territory governance and of civil society;
define, investigate and foresee urban issues, to propose projects, placing itself as an observatory/laboratory able to relate with analogous and complementary institutions .

Core issues of the actual society condition can be summarised in the following way:

reassert “the right to city” for mankind in its complexity (material, cultural, spiritual);
confront with social transformations. In particular, the discrepancy between the mutations of society and the adjustment to its spatial and physical configuration, considering the shift between society composition and regulatory institution system that should accompany this changes.
pursue the thematic of architecture in the dialogue that should be considered as one of main purposes, not only regarding ethnic relations, but also in the affirmation of relational values as an essential condition for both new and contemporary democracies.

Some opportunities object for experimentations and design test can be found in some thematises of contemporary cities.Among them can be mentioned, as an example, the reuse of dismissed areas and their reintegration in the relational circuit of cities as a flywheel for renovations, the thematic of internal and external edges, such as the presence of a river or other infrastructures.

To take care of such problematics through institutional activities, professional activities and academic laboratories means for the Centre to place itself as an entity able to connect and create a system among many different realities, to deepen researches, to elaborate projects and in a wider overview to return places to live to the citizens.

Cities for mankind (Città per l'Uomo)
by: Piero Paoli