Fragility is the outcome of a set of aspects related to and dependent on environmental, social, economic, political and institutional factors that require specific interpretation skills and novel operational attitudes and that can manifest themselves in very different situations, places and environments. Fragility can characterise isolated environments, with resources that appear scarce and non-existent, or with a strong imbalance with respect to neighbouring and competing places that conversely appear dynamic and robust; it also characterises abandoned places or, on the contrary, subject to the wear and tear of excessive pressures, as well as places exposed to known or unexpected risks. Fragilities often depend on phenomena that produce changes in a gradual, non-obvious way, on dormant situations that can flare up in an unpredictable and unexpected way. They depend on time and change over time; understanding them requires a process of historical interpretation and conjecture about future conditions. If we consider resoluteness as an attribute of robustness and thus as the antithesis of fragility, we would have to agree that in fact the landscape is a constitutively fragile material, since it is incessantly subjected to processes of change that make its assets fatally mutable and provisional, whether they are semantic and morphological, productive or physiological. Changeability and instability are in fact inescapable features of the landscape, which cannot escape actions that act on its forms and structures, biotic and abiotic, of human or differently induced morphogenesis, sometimes peremptorily and instantaneously, sometimes very slowly and incrementally. The landscape always wavers, oscillates, is a succession of mutations. Therefore, in a perspective that contrasts fragility with the characteristics of stability and durability, the landscape gives itself as a privileged platform for verifying the conceptual and operational tightness of design positions in relation to fragility.
Metta, A., emilio alvise longo, A. (2024). Fragility as a Condition: The Landscape Perspective. In D.C. Francesco Curci (a cura di), Fragility and Antifragility in Cities and Regions Space, Uncertainty and Inequality. London : Edward Elgar Publishing.
Fragility as a Condition: The Landscape Perspective
annalisa metta;
2024-01-01
Abstract
Fragility is the outcome of a set of aspects related to and dependent on environmental, social, economic, political and institutional factors that require specific interpretation skills and novel operational attitudes and that can manifest themselves in very different situations, places and environments. Fragility can characterise isolated environments, with resources that appear scarce and non-existent, or with a strong imbalance with respect to neighbouring and competing places that conversely appear dynamic and robust; it also characterises abandoned places or, on the contrary, subject to the wear and tear of excessive pressures, as well as places exposed to known or unexpected risks. Fragilities often depend on phenomena that produce changes in a gradual, non-obvious way, on dormant situations that can flare up in an unpredictable and unexpected way. They depend on time and change over time; understanding them requires a process of historical interpretation and conjecture about future conditions. If we consider resoluteness as an attribute of robustness and thus as the antithesis of fragility, we would have to agree that in fact the landscape is a constitutively fragile material, since it is incessantly subjected to processes of change that make its assets fatally mutable and provisional, whether they are semantic and morphological, productive or physiological. Changeability and instability are in fact inescapable features of the landscape, which cannot escape actions that act on its forms and structures, biotic and abiotic, of human or differently induced morphogenesis, sometimes peremptorily and instantaneously, sometimes very slowly and incrementally. The landscape always wavers, oscillates, is a succession of mutations. Therefore, in a perspective that contrasts fragility with the characteristics of stability and durability, the landscape gives itself as a privileged platform for verifying the conceptual and operational tightness of design positions in relation to fragility.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
