Flavio Martella | Università degli studi Roma Tre (original) (raw)

Papers by Flavio Martella

City. Analysis of Urban Change, Theory, Action, 2024

This research explores the relationship between urban environments and unintentional landscapes i... more This research explores the relationship between urban environments and unintentional landscapes in Rome, emphasizing the significance of spontaneous nature within the city’s cultural narrative. To do so, it empirically hypothesizes that the temporal dimension, considering the historical context, plays a crucial role in shaping public acceptance and legitimization of these landscapes. By drawing on urban ecology experiences from Central Europe, the research aims to provide a modern interpretation of unintentional landscapes as valuable urban planning tools for Rome. Rome has many gardens, parks, and villas, but it also has a unique relationship with spontaneous nature, a phenomenon that is deeply rooted in the cultural narrative. It is visible in a number of historical engravings, paintings, and academic studies, which illustrate the intricate interactions between urban neglect and the unintentional landscapes. These landscapes contribute to a diffuse and heterogeneous natural fabric that enhances the ecological potential of today’s existing green spaces. The paper posits that, over time, spontaneous nature has blurred the boundaries between the natural and built environments, fostering a paradigm of coexistence that promotes a more-than-human city.

Housing, Theory and Society, 2020

The boundaries between domestic and urban environments are increasingly blurred. Until the contem... more The boundaries between domestic and urban environments are increasingly blurred. Until the contemporary era, the house acted as aquite autonomous microcosm and the city as its receptacle, but today this distinction is not so sharp. Various changes are transforming both domestic and urban life. Many activities, events and rituals usually associated with domestic space today take place often outside, scattering the home throughout the city. Meanwhile, domestic environment is increasingly accommodating some urban functions, changing its traditional meaning and giving rise to hybrid situations. Domestic and urban environments are merging in asymbiotic way; it is then necessary to rethink their spaces in order to respond to their contemporary and future evolutions. The paper aims at introducing the main facts about the contemporary blurring of the boundaries of domestic and urban space, explaining how this is currently affecting the architecture of both the house and the city.

REIA, 2019

There is a fundamental relationship that links the domestic space with cultural transformations i... more There is a fundamental relationship that links the domestic space with cultural transformations in progress and the urban. This connection is not just formal, but comprehend all the aspects of the society from the human behavior to the economy, passing by the architectural traditional dogmas. The living room, as it is architectonically structured as one of the home's private places with more urban and social influences, it is taken as a prominent case to study the connections between the domestic space, the urban and the social changes. Through the living room it is possible to identify the actual meaning of " living" in relationship with the space, both in the house and in the city, focusing especially on how the contemporary connection between domestic and urban is able to influence the very nature of the architectural needs that exist between the house and the city, thus involving a radical change in their traditional roles and meanings.

Housing Studies, 2022

The dwelling always held work activities. However, with the emergence of capital, work spread mor... more The dwelling always held work activities. However, with the emergence of capital, work spread more and more in the city, abandoning the dwelling due to new dynamics of mass production and accumulation that were no longer suited to the small scale of the house. It resulted in a gradual rethinking of domestic spaces, leading to the definition of the established duality of home/work. Instead, the digital revolution and the advent of capital’s ‘immaterial work’ in western countries placed the domestic space as the potential epicentre of capitalist production. Immaterial work is not bound by spatial constraints and can therefore be carried out anywhere, even and especially at home. The insertion of production dynamics within the domestic sphere is generating numerous spatial-temporal conflicts of traditional places and functions, leading to new everyday life and new spatial needs. The paper therefore analyses the changing dynamics of the home and its spatial possibilities emerging from the potential merge of immaterial productivity with domesticity.

Frontiers of Architectural Research, 2019

This paper discusses a contemporary design strategy to deal with urban spaces. In 21st century ar... more This paper discusses a contemporary design strategy to deal with urban spaces. In 21st century architecture it is possible to recognize the existence of several projects that consist in doing almost nothing, carrying out only minimal modifications to their sites of intervention. In present-day architecture, this approach is considered useful sometimes to respect the surroundings and sometimes to improve them through the smallest and tiniest actions. Doing almost nothing is a strategy that can unfold in many ways. It can mean opting for inaction and thus not modifying a place at all; or designing a temporary project intended to occupy it only for a limited period of time; or also carrying out a particularly small but permanent intervention. Depending on the circumstances, it is an approach that can help architecture protecting a place, reclaiming it or reactivating its latent qualities. This strategy can be implemented both through a single intervention on a specific place, or through a network of coordinated projects in different locations. The purpose of the paper is to present this approach in the context of 21st century urban architecture, through cases studied from the last two decades.

UrbanNext, 2022

The digital revolution produced and is generating new lifestyles that are being reflected in a ne... more The digital revolution produced and is generating new lifestyles that are being reflected in a new urban revolution that blends the domestic space with the city. These lifestyles lead to a dissolution of the strictly defined spaces and uses to create hybrid places that colonize the urban environment. In this way, the meanings of public and private, exterior and interior, work and leisure, man and woman, house and city, are changing. The traditional urban organizational structure is undergoing a strong shock to its foundations towards a radical change in its nature that involves new relationships between people, city and technology. The city is therefore an environment that sees, that feels, that increasingly behaves like a living being made up of a community of technological devices. A living city capable of seeing and feeling is a revolution in terms of optimization and efficiency of its own structure through flow studies and big data, but it also pushes a drastic change of its own hierarchies, constructions and structures. It transforms the very meaning of the architectures that built it, entailing a profound rethinking of its places and of the meaning itself of urban environment.

Arquitexto, 2020

Desde su terminal, cada persona establece relaciones con el resto del planeta para desarrollar un... more Desde su terminal, cada persona establece relaciones con el resto del planeta para desarrollar una cotidianidad aumentada que le facilita encontrar su propia identidad. La libertad se instala en la vida cotidiana y la expansión de la diversidad es ilimitada, ¿dejamos de creer en tipologías que verifiquen las igualdades y somos flexibles ante el descubrimiento de las diferencias de los otros? Vivir sola es la constatación del éxito de la revolución de género; el escenario de vivir sola se relaciona con valores de la contemporaneidad: la libertad, el control personal y la realización (Klinenberg, 2012). Paradójicamente, no existen regulaciones para las nuevas domesticidades, aunque desde la academia insisten en que el envejecimiento de la población, la disminución del número de hijos, el aumento de los divorcios, la diversificación de los grupos temporales de convivencia y el aumento de los hogares unipersonales hacen necesario desarrollar un estudio interdisciplinario de la domesticidad.

Home Cultures, 2022

The social and technological revolutions, combined with the recent crises, have again brought att... more The social and technological revolutions, combined with the recent crises, have again brought attention to the housing issue in the main western urban environments. More and more people are moving to cities, reopening the architectural debate of the Existenzminimum and the Minimum Living Cell to cope with an ever-increasing demand and ever-less available space combined with the desire to provide decent housing solutions for emergent lifestyles. A contemporary living cell that, after the second wave of the feminist movement and digital technologies, often coincides with the bedroom and that is supported by a plethora of shared domestic uses on a more urban scale. It is an emerging and often informal domesticity that has the potential to influence the architecture and perception of the house. It does not necessarily imply that the houses should be smaller or that the bedrooms bigger, but that new domestic hierarchies are emerging and shaping spatial relations and necessities.

UrbanNext, 2018

The dominant relationship between home and city has always been one of the less obvious, but more... more The dominant relationship between home and city has always been one of the less obvious, but more significant, factors that can promote and permit generalized social change. In the contemporary era, changes in family structure, in the organization of work, in technologies, in communities and in communication are being reflected in a new urban revolution that blends domestic space with that of the city. Thus, the meanings of public and private, exterior and interior, domestic architecture and city architecture are changing. The urban organizational structure that has accompanied us in the last century is undergoing a strong shock to its foundations, moving towards a radical change in its nature that involves new relationships between man and city.

The Architectural Review, 2020

The pandemic abolished public space in an instant, promptly labelling it as dangerous and harmful... more The pandemic abolished public space in an instant, promptly labelling it as dangerous and harmful to health. Parks and squares were fenced off to avoid gatherings of people, all spaces with commercial activities closed, as well as recreational ones, while streets are now quickly crossed, avoiding human contact at all costs. The only form of public activity to remain unchanged is that of home deliveries: Glovo, Deliveroo, Amazon, are the new citizenship. Covid-19 has seen health prioritised, sidelining the old queen, the economy. The mantras of ‘just do it’, of ‘stay hungry, stay foolish’, have been replaced by that of #stayathome. Our world of exteriors is transformed into a world of continuous interiors, as expressed in Piranesi’s Campo Marzio where the city is drawn as a sequence of buildings, without streets, without squares, without facades.

UrbanNext, 2019

The reintroduction of spontaneity in contemporary architectural processes can represent a new for... more The reintroduction of spontaneity in contemporary architectural processes can represent a new form of interaction to create a new urban environment and lead to a rebalancing of internal hierarchies. The city of Almere is a pioneer in this field, especially in the experimental district of Oostewold where it seeks to promote a new system of building the city based entirely on bottom-up processes. This initiative radically reverses the consolidated urban development processes, starting the creation of relationships based on a contemporary understanding of the city. An understanding that includes the citizen in the construction of the city, integrating the participatory process model with that of the construction of the city itself, trying to arrive at the creation of a more vital, inclusive neighborhood in which the inhabitants not only feel belonging, but which give it its real identity. A new way to build the city.

El Primer Congreso internacional feminista de Arquitectura y Cuidados es el inicio de una serie d... more El Primer Congreso internacional feminista de Arquitectura y Cuidados es el inicio de una serie de encuentros que, desde un enfoque igualitario y holístico, profundiza diversos conceptos a través de binomios temáticos. En esta primera edición, dedicada a la arquitectura y los cuidados, se ha pretendido crear un ámbito interdisciplinar de debate en torno a la importancia fundamental de la gestión de los cuidados, lo que consideramos que sigue siendo una asignatura pendiente en las agendas políticas de muchos países. El congreso, de formato híbrido, ha aunado las características de un foro de debate y conversatorios; asimismo, ha sido heterogéneo por su modelo de presencialidad y virtualidad. Estas actas son un vestigio de esta actividad universitaria relacionada con la igualdad de oportunidades entre personas a través de los CUIDADOS, que se consumó con la celebración de un congreso compartido, en su segunda sesión, con la red sola_s

Books by Flavio Martella

Loneliness and the built environment, 2021

The information revolution of the late 20th social existence in space and time, transforming our ... more The information revolution of the late 20th social existence in space and time, transforming our relationship with the city and our nearest environments, including dwellings, internal/external, public/private, man/woman and work/leisure dualities are becoming less clear and tend to disappear within a reality that is simultaneously material and informational. This also affects the generation of data, information and knowledge, in a process of continuous work in progress, or knowledge in 'permanent beta', as José Pérez de Lama calls it. Our time is characterized by the emergence of new desires and capabilities based on new relationships and agencies between machines and people. That is why today we can talk about techno-persons, and even techno-animals and techno-vegetables. In fact, the techno-body hybridization affects not only human beings, as Donna Haraway already argued when talking about cyborgs, but every living being in general. Today we can distinguish between life and life on-line (on-life or techno-life), understanding the latter as a set of processes and technological, informational and digital interrelations between diverse entities. These processes are developed in the third environment, that is, in a new techno-social space-time superimposed on the biosphere and on cities (second environment). These new relationships provide some solutions to loneliness in cities, but they also generate new forms of loneliness that affect especially those without access to these informational worlds or, having access, without awareness of who they are while there.