Abstract
The editors would like to thank every professor, tutor and student participating in OC 2016. The seventh
edition of the OC Open City International Summer School in relation with the new Master in Sustainable
Architecture and Landscape Design open at Piacenza Campus from the 2016 focus its attention on
landscape design.
The landscape, from the theoretical-practical relocation carried out in recent years, is considered a
dynamic and productive entity that becomes “medium” of transformation. For this reason, for the 2016
OC Open City International Summer School edition was selected as title Landscape in Motion.
Within the workshop the expression “motion” has been understood and interpreted in several ways.
Between these, two cases can be considered as predominant. On the one hand, the landscape is connected
to an image that works at a double speed: a slow one that follow the transformations of the place in the
long period and a persistent one, able to supply the change and constantly capable and able, even in
precipitous or catastrophic events, to be adaptable to the contemporary changing conditions.
On the other hand, “motion” is referred to the concept of flow. Real and virtual flows of people, goods,
and information emphasize and increase the importance of connections.
Piacenza is a paradigmatic case study able to synthesize on its territory these two general points of
view of the motion idea. The city is both a logistics pole and a hub of a complex European infrastructure
system, and a dual speed landscape where the presence of the river Po and its variability is the starting
point for rethink the buffer zone that lies between the city and the banks of the river.
In that space in between the city and river, it is possible to identify different juxtaposed and conflictual
landscapes. Currently along the river still lies natural landscape, but it is also disseminated by military and
industrial ruins. In the central part, the crossing and overtake the Po is aggravated by the infrastructural
flows that characterized the landscape. Lastly, in the southernmost part the landscape is characterized by
a mix of urban and rural features by the presence of several places waiting for a new identity.
Unstable places subject of continuous changes that occur uncontrollably and unpredictable. The landscape
is left increasingly fragile and without a glance to the future
The 2016 Summer School”s goal is to encourage students to think to a new project idea that is more and
more deviating from a fixed and unmistakable image defined once and for all, rather than approaching a
process idea over time. This approach is capable of losing parts, but still capable of maintaining its own
recognisability and structure. A process based on structural invariants but at the same time internalizes
movement, emergency and deformation as project variables.
This book, aimed to give a point of view about the topic, collects both the answers given by the students
and the theoretical thoughts of scientific directors and professors who have guided the students during
the workshop. A heartfelt thanks to all the guests who come to the OC International Summer School
giving an incomparable contribution to focus the main issues through conferences, debates, revisions
and critics.