A Research Drawn on Housing and the City. A Conversation with Orsina Simona Pierini

The research and teaching activity of Orsina Simona Pierini, Professor of Architectural and Urban Composition at the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies of the Polytechnic University of Milan, focus on the historical interpretation of the city’s architecture from the perspective of design. Her knowledge of the role of the dwelling in urban planning stems from the systematic study of the different expressions of habitation in contemporary European cities, as well as from specific research focused on modern Spanish architecture and Milanese residential constructions, with particular attention to the relationship between the dwelling and the city. Her interpretation of these phenomena is, therefore, transversal as it involves various different scales and addresses the critical-historical sphere; it’s also a means to define design methods that respond to the needs and demands of current habitation.This conversation with Orsina Simona Pierini is organised, therefore, around certain topics that summarise her experience as a scholar and her personal opinion of the expressions of contemporary collective architecture that define the configuration of the contemporary city and, in general, the current way of inhabiting.

The research and teaching activity of Orsina Simona Pierini, Professor of Architectural and Urban Composition at the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies of the Polytechnic University of Milan, focus on the historical interpretation of the city's architecture from the perspective of design.Her knowledge of the role of the dwelling in urban planning stems from the systematic study of the different expressions of habitation in contemporary European cities, as well as from specific research focused on modern Spanish architecture and Milanese residential constructions, with particular attention to the relationship between the dwelling and the city.Her interpretation of these phenomena is, therefore, transversal as it involves various different scales and addresses the critical-historical sphere; it's also a means to define design methods that respond to the needs and demands of current habitation.This conversation with Orsina Simona Pierini is organised, therefore, around certain topics that summarise her experience as a scholar and her personal opinion of the expressions of contemporary collective architecture that define the configuration of the contemporary city and, in general, the current way of inhabiting.

Background
This issue of ZARCH presents an up-to-date and critical analysis of the different manners in which contemporary habitation is configured based on current and critical Orsina Simona Pierini -There are several ways to approach this question.We can discuss urban and neighbourhood planning, the local and the international context, or we can introduce the relationship with modernity or merely address experimentation, that is, the contemporary habitat.
However, we must clarify a terminological issue that emerges at this point.In Italian, the term we use for habitat doesn't correspond exactly to its translation into English or Spanish.
In fact, it seems that habitat is used here as a synonym for "housing", that is, the study of how dwellings redefine a place.
Understood in these terms, I can discuss the work we have done, for example, in the book Housing Primer 2 , in which we sought to interpret the current experience based on the legacy of some concepts of modern architecture, but being aware of the existence of specific contemporary processes in design today.Together with Bruno Melotto, we addressed two relevant topics: firstly, the relationship with the city, the place, the context and therefore, morphology; and, secondly, the relationship with the ways people inhabit, therefore, typology.
One key issue to address is the tightening up of the block and the consequent return to a conception of the city that the Modern Movement had seemingly erased.This is very much a topical issue in contemporary design and is accepted as a way of tightening up, not so much in the "massive" terms used in the 19 th century, but rather as the ability to intervene with experimentation in the block.
Another important contemporary question is variation: morphological (the slabs are often articulated in height) and typological (what we have termed typological "nonchalance").

Many contemporary interventions return to a morphological
tightening up, while maintaining a marked typological articulation, for instance, when duplexes are located in the ground floor to preserve a special rapport with the ground.In fact, we know that the configuration of the ground level is a key topic in contemporary housing, as it concerns the way in which residential buildings sit on the ground, considering that collective functions have often proved ineffective.
The contemporary approach to the topic of the block offers several solutions to the connection to the ground, with vertical and horizontal distribution systems that vary according to the floor, even including loggias and maisonettes on the upper levels.This is a specific feature of contemporary housing that, while exploring the possibilities of the block and its coherence in height, reinterprets it using up-to-date design tools such as typological mixité.
When I think of the 19 th -century block, I notice that the alignment to the street is continuous, even for kilometres, while the sensitivity has changed today.The intervention on the ZAC Masséna, in Paris, by Christian de Portzamparc and Dominique Perrault is a good example.Although they were architects, they were called upon to provide a type of urban planning regulation for the entire complex.Therefore, their work focused on architectural elements to characterise the urban plan, identifying the îlot ouvert-the open block-that represents a kind of hybridisation between the block of the old city and the planimetric freedom of the modern city.On the îlot ouvert, they set certain planimetric rules to demarcate the lot, but they were particularly concerned with the development in height.They identified a continuous base line of about three storeys high, so that the perception of the resident and of the passer-by is that of visual continuity of the street.The A Research Drawn on Housing and the City.
With regard to visual continuity, we must digress to the perception of space and the study of visual culture as established by the sculptor Hildebrandt at the end of the 19 th century that meant the transfer of certain principles underlying the perception of space from art to architecture.I am obviously referring to the line of thought that was later followed in Spazio by Luigi Moretti, a theoretical treatise devised in the editorials of his magazine of the same name, and Bruno Zevi's research on the term "spazio".
Based on your extensive research and teaching activities, it's possible to glean a lesson on the subject of contemporary collective building.Could you suggest a description of common spaces in terms of scales, the theoretical issues underlying them, and the methodologies applied?
OSP -In my opinion, those are two separate questions.One concerns the scale of design, and the other addresses the theoretical framework.Just as research and teaching, these activities run in parallel, in a continuous interrelation but with specific features.
In teaching, I almost always work on housing, and often "hybrid" housing-that is, in urban contexts the building absorbs functions beyond that of inhabiting-and other questions also arise, for instance, structure.Actually, 90% of building consists of residential architecture, but there's a notable disconnect with this topic in the workshops of architectural design courses, since students are often encouraged to design large spectacular spaces, museums, libraries, even if they then graduate without knowing how to design a small apartment complex.
So we must teach them to design with particular attention to the spaces of the dwelling following a process that I define as "round trip", that is, starting from the housing cell at a 1:50 scale, studying the themes of habitation-for example the living spaces such as the living room-and then moving up to the scale of the city and returning to the housing cell.
Otherwise students end up defining buildings as banal bodies to excavate without really understanding what happens inside.
The process we have tried to establish consists in "attacking" the dwelling and trying to understand all the problems and relationships with the outside.What is the sense of a living room with a loggia?What is the relationship between the kitchen and these spaces?How does the organisation in the sleeping area work?Once we have addressed this scale, we move on to the city scale to investigate the relationship between the building and its context, addressing questions such as the connection with the ground-which, as we stated, is very important-and the potential for a good distribution of the building and the dwellings.
In your opinion, is this "round trip" process you've described applicable to every year of the degree in architecture, or is it specific to a particular period of architectural training?
OSP -Good question.I use it in the third year design workshop and in the fifth, when I'm more optimistic about how prepared the students are.Then, there's the teaching for doctorate studies, which is a very different question.I've been doctoral advisor to a number of dissertations on this subject, including the meaning of the role of drawing.For example, on the use of the section and its role in reading the relationships between spaces and heights, the connection to the ground, distribution, and the inside of the dwelling.
I then followed a dissertation on the role of the wall in the residential span by Mauro Sullam and another on the reconversion of the neighbourhoods of the 1960s and 1970s by Fabio Lepratto.We organised a small course on housing with the latter within the PhD programme "Turning Research into a Book", in which we analysed several books on this subject to see what the structures of books look like, how are indexes organised or the approach from which these questions are addressed.We also organised an exhibition with these doctoral students in which they had to invent a book based on pairs of housing cases.They didn't need to write anything, they "just" had to think up a structured index and design the cover.
Teaching is certainly a place for experimentation, but it isn't always strictly connected to research.Sometimes I do some internships and some redesign works with students.These teaching activities, like the project itself, take on a highly experimental character.
Research on housing, however, usually occurs in my study.
I mean my own work and my publications, all of which I do with the passionate support of my chosen collaborators-the doctoral students or those who follow me in my neurosis for drawing as a tool for education.
So we can go back to the topic that somewhat defines this "two-faced"-Italian and Spanish-issue of ZARCH: if you had to identify some specific elements of the theoretical questions that shape the topic, which of these would be specifically all-Italian in nature?If we momentarily break free from context and from the weight of history, we can work on the matrix of habitation with much more freedom.Our drawings for a more recent book, Housing Atlas4 , show, for example, typological planimetries that have never been seen before.In these drawings, we proposed to return to the "truth" of a typology that isn't always constricted by morphology, it's the lesson that comes from the two cultures I grew up in: complementary aspects that have refined my gaze.
That gaze was also useful for my experience studying Milan.
The timeframe of our book Case Milanesi 1923-19735 is because the freedom expressed by professional architects in the design of dwellings in Milan froze in that year.Before that date, that theoretical construction that would later completely inhibit Italian culture, creating discontinuity-even a break-with modernity didn't exist.The continuity between tradition and modernity, however, does exist in Spain, in the Netherlands, and in Portugal, although positively questioned.
In some respects, it's like mannerism, the values of the modern are known and acquired and, at the same time, reinterpreted and rejected, until defining the contemporary.I, however, opted to cancel their autonomy to create a choral discourse.For me, these architects had a collective idea of the city to propose, and I enjoyed doing it, even with a touch of irony (Figure 3).Pierini and Alessandro Isastia, Case Milanesi 1923-1973. Cinquant'anni di architettura residenziale a Milano, 2017.research group and the outcome is the volume that came out in October this year.

Graphic Atlas
While in Housing Primer, we addressed some topics of contemporary design, in Housing Atlas we reinterpreted the 20 th century, starting with the "garden city" to MVRDV.
The sheet opens with a 1:10000 planimetry, there's always a typological plan at 1:1000 or 1:500.One characteristic of the book is that it includes the individual typologies in the urban planimetry to capture the specificities of the various 20 th -century neighbourhoods.Finally, the book includes the plans of a portion of a building at 1:250 to explore the space inside the dwelling.
Nowadays, historiography forces us to be very accurate in what we say, using analytical instruments for this purpose.
Today, if we look at the Siedlung Heimat by Ernst May and compare it to Römerstadt, it's clear that both projects are very different: the first is a piece of a compact city, while the other is a design of the territory.From the typological perspective, the "slabs", which all looked the same, are shown in detail, a composition of several types.OSP -For me, the question is bound to the term "urbanity".
In Housing Primer, I referred to some writings by Thomas Sieverts, a German urban planner who foregrounded the question of urbanity.I also cited a text by Bernardo Secchi, a conference he gave at the CCA (Canadian Centre for Architecture) that illustrated the topics I had identified in Housing Primer.
However, in the Italian dictionary the term "urbano" isn't connected to architecture, but to the people, as it emphasises their "civil" character; city dwellers' good manners compared to the villain living in the countryside who doesn't know how   As an individual with a specific identity, I "adapt" to being within a collectivity: mutual adaptation shapes the built city, its spatial conjugation and sociality.The word "adaptation" also identifies an architectural practice whose instruments are the so-called in-between spaces, between the city and the dwelling.A well-known example in Milanese architecture is the atrium-the entrances-how the city penetrates the building and the dwelling goes out to the street.

Domestic Scale
In his houses, Gio Ponti combines the idea of the dwelling as a shelter in which it's possible to identify the inhabitant with a personal interpretation of spatial fluidity 13 in which space can generate variable models of unity or fragmentation.How do you think this idea has evolved with respect to the current needs for multipurpose housing?
OSP -This topic is quite interesting.Right now, I'm working on the interiors of Milanese dwellings 14 (Figure 5), and there's an obvious difference between space understood as public or as domestic space.
It's obvious that perception of an individual moving in the space is very similar in both cases, but in the domestic space it isn't only related to planimetry, since the perception of space is developed through colours, furnishings, and the plasticity or the angularity of the volumes.For example, Caccia Dominioni is extremely attentive to these aspects: he called himself a "piantista" but also a baroque urban planner.When he designed houses, he introduced "svincoli" (junctions) that he called "piazze" (squares) and were simply a series of wardrobes; in this way, he proposed the theme of expansion and compression of space, which corresponded instead to rooms with well-defined shapes: clearly recognizable 13 Gio Ponti, "Alloggio uni-ambientale alla Triennale", Domus 301 (1954); "Alloggio uni-ambientale per quattro persone", Domus 320 (1954); "Una casa a pareti apribili", Domus 334 (1957).
14 Enrico Morteo and Orsina Simona Pierini, Nelle Case.Milan interiors 1928-1978(Milan: Hoepli, 2023).In one of his essays, Robin Evans claims that things don't happen by chance.Specifically, regarding the corridor of a house, he claims that bodies should not meet and concludes that perhaps the rooms of a house should have more doors to restore the social dimension.
Orsina Simona Pierini reflection.As stated by Robin Evans 1 , human relationships are defined within dwellings and public spaces, as a result of the rapport established between territory, city, and dwelling.In your opinion, and based on your research, what are the factors that condition the contemporary habitat?
theme of the street is key in contemporary design, after it was banned during the Modern Movement and later recovered in the 1970s.The îlot ouvert as envisioned by Portzamparc defines the architecture of the street with the basement, while for the upper parts, it follows a far more varied and articulated arrangement of the buildings.It's a new interpretation of a theme that has travelled through history, from Olinto and Priene through to the 19 th -century plans.
OSP -Perhaps we should look back to certain aspects of my life.I spent three years in Barcelona and I worked a lot in Madrid.In Barcelona, I conducted research with Carlos Martí Arís-renowned in Italy for his book Le variazioni dell'identità 3 (Variations of Identity)-and was fascinated by his immense cultural openness.So, although my Italian background is undoubtedly deep and imbued by typology and morphology, with Carlos, I was able to articulate and refine it.I enjoyed widening my culture of tradition and, in a manner of speaking, keeping it in check.The role of Carlos' book on typology consisted in disrupting the mechanicity between type and morphology that existed in the Italian school-as if typology and morphology had to live in a sort of arranged marriage that neither one wanted.Instead, Carlos was able to almost omit morphology, to penetrate into the soul of typology without it being continually questioned by the notion of place.I believe these aspects are also relevant in teaching, even in the "round trip" process I mentioned earlier.
Let's go back to the topic of the atlas: In your publications, you propose a systematic study of some specific case studies that go from the urban scale to the housing unit.What were the criteria for selecting the examples for analysis, and what are the specific goals you set in analyzing them?OSP -The question of the drawings for Housing Primer and for Case Milanesi is quite different and also involves the people who worked with me.In Housing Primer, the subtitle Le forme della residenza nella città contemporanea (The forms of the residence in the contemporary city) is an homage to Carlos Martí, who had published a great book on rationalist neighbourhoods: Las formas de la residencia en la ciudad moderna (The forms of the residence in the modern city) 6 .The term modern was a reference for reconsidering and interpreting the individual case study, identifying the tools of contemporary design.We were therefore interested in making comparative drawings.For each topic we selected five examples.We had no interest in diagrams or precise redrawings, but rather in showing the design activity.The projects served to identify the general characteristics of the principle of design.Housing Primer 7 (Figure 1)-in English "primer" means "spelling book"-was dedicated to the students, for whom we wanted to create a primer for designing housing.It's a booklet of very few pages with a digital attachment containing 200 case studies geared to offer the students an atlas of case studies.Bruno Melotto and I had fun because we stole examples from each other.The same project can be of interest for being compact, but also for its typological "nonchalance".Case Milanesi 1923-1973 8 (Figure 2), however, emerged from the idea of restoring the beauty of the modern architecture of Milan.Cino Zucchi started a work on the historical-critical ZARCH No. 21 | 2023 Conversaciones / Conversations A RESEARCH DRAWN ON HOUSING AND THE CITY.A CONVERSATION WITH ORSINA SIMONA PIERINI SIMONA SALVO NOELIA CERVERO SÁNCHEZ repositioning of Milan as a laboratory of the modern that we want to continue.With Alessandro Isastia, we said: "we have to recount the beauty of these homes through drawing!".We have always tried to represent the ground floor in context at the 1:500 scale to favour the understanding of the relationship between the building's connection to the ground with its context, and that's what makes this book different from others.Furthermore, with the drawing we sought to interpret the way to render the substantial materiality of the façades.Modern architecture in Milan isn't white plaster architecture.It's extremely rich in the use of materials: the tiles are broken pieces of marble, there are thousands of types of Klinker, some of which mimic brick and others tiles, and then the use of stone...These details and construction aspects convey a modernity in which the material means everything.

Finally
, we tried to reinterpret the current situation of the floor plan: for example, the topic of flexibility and articulation of the interior spaces, from Aldo Andreani to Luigi Caccia Dominioni.My essay is structured around three lessons: context, elevation and floor plan, to arrive at an epilogue on construction details.As I already mentioned, the two books are very different, but both are design instruments: by reading Case Milanesi 1923-1973, I learn to understand the possibilities for articulating a floor plan, how a façade can be composed, or what are the shared topics for a precise cultural context, such as the use of the loggia in Gardella, Minoletti, or Morassutti.That's the reason why we felt the need to redraw all the examples using the same method.In my essay, I made collages of all the façades together.Alessandro, my co-author, didn't like this choice because he felt they should be presented one by one.
In your research methodology, graphic representation constitutes a tool to describe the abstraction of living spaces.Can you illustrate this drawing-based aspect of your research and explain the role that diagrams and planimetry play in defining their specific features?Perhaps you can also tell us about your upcoming book?OSP -Carmen Espegel-who you know well-Dick van Gameren-now Dean at the Faculty of Architecture in TU Delft and formerly Head of the Department of Dwelling, where he published DASH, Delft Architectural Studies on Housing-Mark Swenarton-who worked on Camden Town-and I undertook the challenging task of redrawing roughly 90 case studies on 20 th -century housing in Europe 9 (Figure 4).As the head researcher, I proposed a European 9 Pierini, Espegel, van Gameren, and Swenarton, Housing Atlas, 2023.
Typological drawings are important because they're the nucleus between the housing cell and the city.These two terms are usually detached from one another and, instead, they should find their condensation within these types of drawings, which, in turn, would favour a more precise reinterpretation.Furthermore, if I go into detail and study the individual cells, I can also consider contemporary design.The range of examples covers nearly the whole of Europe, from Sweden to Portugal.Some case studies are well known, others far less so.The use of the chronological criterion to list them reveals a sort of evolution of the topics, while the index shows thematic moments with respect to the nations.A few years ago, Mauro Sullam and I set up a web page (paquebot.eu) in homage to Corbu's paquebot we move around Europe in a sort of conceptual ferry through space and time.Once again, it's an instrument that students can use to consider case studies of the 20 th century and apply them to contemporary design.The theme that recurs throughout my work concerns, in fact, the specificity of the modern and its continuity with tradition.Urban Context Your analyses on Milan denote your profound experience in research on the dwelling and the relationship it establishes with the street through the reading of numerous works by renowned architects (such as Giovanni Muzio, Luigi Caccia Dominioni, and Luigi Moretti), which have allowed us to rethink the city by paying special attention to the context.What are the mechanisms that help to shape the architectural object in its context without altering its individuality, as Kollhoff argues, to identify the rule rather than the exception 10 ?OSP -Perhaps we've talked too little about this question and we should go back to it.Before I graduated, I worked with Virgilio Vercelloni on the production of two atlases of Milanese history and cartography 11 .This led to my passion for the urban scale and the reinterpretation of the significant moments that 10 Hans Kollhoff, "Costruzione urbana contro alloggio -Urban building versus Housing", Lotus international 94 (1997): 101.11 Virgilio Vercelloni, Atlante Storico di Milano, città di Lombardia (Milan: L'archivolto, 1987) and idem.La storia del paesaggio urbano di Milano (Milan: Officina arte graf.Lucini, 1988).
served spaces and dilated and exceptionally articulated serving spaces.This is achieved through three dimensional, chromatic, and material control.Obviously, the experimentation on flexibility and spatial fluidity is quite different and it brings us back to the figure of Gio Ponti.Speaking of fluidity and adaptability, it's important to underline the relevance of floor plan design and its impact on typological aspects, for instance, or how it can be useful to control and plan it coherently.I'm referring, specifically, to the concept of open building, and John Habraken's experience with the "tartan" grid and modularity.During the Covid-19 lockdown, the connection with the house-our own home-intensified proportionally to the time we stayed inside it.Analysing the way we live and use domestic space, what aspects would you emphasise from that experience given the importance they acquired?OSP -It's very interesting to analyse how the way we use the home changed after the pandemic.I believe that the home must be interpreted, above all, in terms of places and spaces, rather than functions.Perhaps this is one of the values that the pandemic has restored.I still connect with the work on adaptability of spaces in the homes I did with Bruno Melotto: neither machinism nor technicalities to produce flexibility, rather spaces to be used in several ways.While "flexibility" denotes something mechanical-as it refers to the movements of opening and closing-"adaptability" also concerns the use of the spaces over time.Reference has often been made to Kollhoff's seminal essay 15 explaining why a 19 th century house, with a sequence of spaces that are all the same, is far more adaptable than the modern house, in which every space corresponds to a function and that function cannot be modified later.