Conoscenza e progetto nei quartieri d’autore.Tecnologia e ambiente negli interventi di Luigi Cosenza / Knowledge and design in the authorship of social housing. Technology and environment in the works of Luigi Cosenza

Contemporary examination of the Neapolitan residential districts designed by Luigi Cosenza in the period of post-war rebirth, reinterpreting some of the most interesting cases of Italian ‘au- teur’ neighbourhoods, in the light of environmen- tal issues. Here, the development of knowledge concerning the built environment takes an ‘environmental technological’ approach, reading the heritage in performance terms, but no longer considering the issue in terms of mere technical data. The work proceeds through retrieval and examination of archival documents, bibliographical research, and case studies of environmental analysis. Applying these knowledge-recovery tools, we aim for a reading that can decode the ‘reason’ of modern- ism that was once the basis for conceiving these complex ‘machines for living’, and so understand and then improve their behaviour. The approach is based on a systemic vision of the neighbour- hood, one that connects the data on construction technology with the underlying design logic, and opens to the kinds of reasoning matured in other disciplinary sectors.