Abstract

Contemporary human environment is characterized by a composite multi-layered structure and its original setting that has progressively been blurred and camouflaged. Each specific site cannot be deeply understood and described by means of traditional tools of urban design. Ignasi de Solà-Morales suggests the use of topography as a design tool: topography describes the complexity of reality in a phenomelogical and scientific way, providing an interpretation model during the design process. The recognition of ‘circumstances’, as the Portuguese architect Fernando Távora named the combination of all the factors affecting every man, can be investigated using this topographical practice at different scales. The replacement of traditional settlements, grown over centuries, with an accelerated model of urbanity, highlights topographical conditions and renders them explicit. At a large scale, topographical analysis recognizes the specific condition of an architectural field intended as a unity of objects, the surrounding landscape and the forces in action in the space between. A “thick topography” is the unity of these events taking place in a space between the ground on which humans, actions and architecture lay on, and the horizon, which in an urban context is replaced by the skyline. At a small scale analysis, the topographical practice affects designers in many ways. The ground becomes an element to model and an instrument to influence movements and users’ perceptions. The skyline at this scale is intended as the morphology of the building, expressing the characteristics of the ground-natural and human-as horizontal relations, in opposition to urban verticality. Hence topography can direct human environment towards a more natural use of the soil, resources and circumstances, transforming constraints into opportunities.