Facies

Facies refers to the ability of architecture to enable, by means of its outward appearance, interaction between the space occupied by the building and the setting within which it is found. Architecture, Gio Ponti argues, is made to be looked at, because through the facades of architecture is a public landscape. The facades are the street walls and a city is made of streets. Restoring the facade to the world of meaning requires shifting the role of the building from object to subject, elevating it beyond the exclusive need to meet a set of requirements. However, architecture, to be recognised as such, shouldn't represent, signify, or symbolise something other than itself, but provide a process generating form that organises and builds its own assumptions within disciplinary autonomy. The world of forms thus refers to the wealth of architectural knowledge from which it draws nourishment and thanks to which it generates new forms.

Francesco Gulinello is Associate Professor of Architectural and Urban Composition in the Department of Architecture at the University of Bologna. As the co-ordinator of scientific research programmes and director of research conventions he has curated various exhibitions and participated in numerous national and international design competitions. His projects, published in magazines and catalogues, have also been presented in major international exhibitions. His research mainly investigates the origins of contemporary projects in light of their relationships with figurative culture. His publications include Guillermo Vazquez Consuegra (Faenza Editrice. Faenza 2002), Composizione e spazio domestico (Faenza Editrice, Faenza 2004), La verde costa adriatica. Studi per il Parco del Delta del Po (Alinea, Florence, 2004), Modelli di architettura (Il Vicolo, Cesena 2005), Figurazioni dell'involucro architettonico (Alinea. Florence, 2010), Abitare a Chandigarh. Residenze progettate da Pierre Jeanneret. Jane B. Drew, E. Maxwell Fry (Clueb, Bologna 2014), Figure Urbane. Progetti per l ex Caserma Sani a Bologna, (Quodlibet, Macerata, 2015), Eduardo Pesquera Gonzalez, 6 progetti (La Greca, Faenza, 2015).