NEW INVITED LECTURE: Architectural Association School of Architecture, London, May 25, 2022

I am honored to be invited by Prof. Pier Vittorio Aureli and Maria Sheherazade Giudici to give the lecture Spatial Intelligence: Collective Housing Design in the framework of PhD seminar class at the AA School of Architecture, London, UK.

This talk, entitled Spatial Intelligence: Collective Housing Design, explores the Interwar collective housing projects developed in Vienna and Frankfurt. Hof et Siedlung constitute two alternative typo-morphological models, each of them refers to a specific way of envisioning the city and domestic space. Vienna and Frankfurt are, hence, opposite phenomena, but complementary, as much for approaches as for results, from an architectural and planning point of view. These “extreme polarities” allow to go thoroughly into the understanding of the collective housing experiences, which played a crucial role in the European history. By means of critical redrawings and original documents, a selection of case studies are compared at three main scales: urban planning, urban layout, and dwelling typology. A brand-new interpretation and tools for architectural design convey the wealth and inventiveness of these collective housing projects. The goal is to infer the fundamental relationships between urban morphology and housing types that are still today meaningful for housing design. Thus, this talk examines the Viennese and Frankfurt accomplishments as urban organisms, which fully-fledged belong to the contemporary city. Thanks to the design ideas at their foundation, these Interwar projects identify trends and food for thought regarding new projects for collective housing