Laboratorio Genova

"...Genoa interests us today [...] not so much for the physicality of its architecture (and there are very good examples, also modern and contemporary) as for the liveliness of its planning culture. Even in a context like that of North America, which we at Kent State University look at with a special eye, where the relations with history, geography and cultures obviously are marked by very different times, scales, natures, and ways of doing things, the case of Genoa can emerge as a model to be studied for the complexity and intelligence of its design"... As the papers presented at our Forum - and now published in this book - show, Genoa offered itself as a workshop/ laboratory for numerous studies of architecture, urban planning, and design. In some ways similar to Rotterdam, it too a port city with an industrial past, but different from it too, since Rotterdam for decades has been an especially fertile soil for artists, poets, and musicians, while Genoa has revealed itself only more recently to be an interesting environment for several generations of creative minds in the various fi elds of design.