Kenzō Tange Lecture: Maria Claudia Clemente and Francesco Isidori “The Architecture of Public Space”
Harvard GSD - Piper Auditorium, Cambridge, MA
Today, approximately 56% of the world’s population—equivalent to 4.7 billion people—live in urban areas, and that number is constantly growing. This phenomenon of unchecked growth, evident in both global megacities and “old” European cities, has led to the pulverization of the very concept of the city. In this context, the public space around which Europe’s great cities were built—the space of thecivitas, major collective events and street demonstrations, as well as, more simply, the place where one encounters the “other”—seems to be vanishing, giving way to a void of quality and identity. To bring public space back to the center of the debate, we must reflect on a different vision of the city, one structured around the form of public space, that architecture can help shape and enrich. Drawing on the reflections inThe Architecture of Public Space(Park Books, 2023), the lecture will illustrate several examples from Labics’s recent architectural work, where the connection between architecture, the city, and public space is most evident.