Architettura e politica-Architecture and politics. Ediz. bilingue

In its concrete forms, architecture constitutes the generative source of an order that is both civic and rational. Its ideational action and its material effects create and organise spaces and areas that also have a political connotation.
Particularly in recent years, great architectural, intellectual and social projects appear to be sustained by considerations that first and foremost demand new guidelines for territorial policies that not only involve all infrastructures and services, but also affect the great issues concerned in protection of the environment and the built-up areas, the creation of multiethnic and multicultural cities, and the significance and prerogatives of their social and living spaces.
If considerations about the relationship between architecture and politics are to take shape around the problematic question of what the current situation really is, it is necessary to stress how the interpretative elements of philosophy, psychology and the social sciences are just as necessary with regard to architecture and the city as are the operational aspects of planning and design. This is essential if broadly accepted proposals are to be formulated and, especially, if they are to achieve improved quality of life for individuals and society.
The volume collects the lectures of the international "Architecture and Politics" congress, which was held at Politecnico di Milano University on 22 and 23 March 2007.
Texts by Antonio Piva, Pier Carlo Palermo, Francesca Bonicalzi, Lorenzo Ornaghi, Silvano Tagliagambe, Franco Purini, Gianluca Bocchi and Mauro Ceruti, Zygmunt Bauman, Alessandro Balducci, Vittorio Cigoli, Silvano Facioni, Maria Teresa Maiocchi, Valeria Erba, Gabriele Pasqui, Carlos Sambricio, Vicente Guallart, Jo Coenen, Paolo Caputo, Jean-Jacques Wunenburger, Gianfranco Dalmasso, Pierfranco Galliani.