LUNGOMARE

SEAFRONT Most coastal cities and towns have a seafront that is regarded as of special importance. Some are just as famous as the towns where they are found. However, assessing any urban seafront entails a reflection on the relationship between the sea and the town. In the Mediterranean, the connection between coastal towns and the sea has been a difficult and ambiguous one. The universal flood myth, which we find across cultures and in ancient legends, albeit with certain variations, attests to it. In such legends, the destruction of the world by the fury of the seas and oceans is total, save for the plants and animals of every species, as well as for a few righteous human beings. Hence, it is not surprising that populations living in coastal areas carry some sort of an ancestral fear of the sea. The discovery of the sea in a positive sense is but recent history. Between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, middle-class families discovered seaside holidays, which rapidly led to the construction of resorts. Besides holiday homes, the urban changes also included the construction of various buildings, tree-lined avenues, parks, gardens, tennis courts, a golf course and the significant coastal road. In the 1960s, the towns of Rimini and Riccione became a model for contemporary seaside resorts. They also created a new typology of seafronts featuring hotels and other lodgings, together with restaurants, and night entertainment venues. Today, such seafronts are viewed as giving additional value and personality to coastal cities. A great many of them have infused new meaning and value to otherwise rundown port areas. Ports and seafronts are able to offer a synthetic and representative image of coastal cities not just for visitors who arrive from the sea, but also for their own inhabitants. - monography: LANDSCAPE AND URBAN STRUCTURES This volume draws from 3 different fields of research, which found some common ground during the last year of the Master of Architecture programm, which focuses on garden art and landscape architecture, and where student learning is workshop-based. The necessity to bring together three different disciplines entailed selecting a suitable urban site that everyone could agree on, and where the landscape project could actually be based. The plane of Palermo, which was identified as the area to carry out the landscape project, was read, described and modified with procedures, criteria and outcomes that are completely different. Yet there were some areas of agreement regarding fundamental matters such as the current state of the city, as well as the sense of the project in the face of urban decay and lack of resources. The answers are extremely varied, and so is the meaning given to the project. They can take one of three forms: a comprehensive solution whose center is found in the reciprocal relationship between its parts, and where the landscape becomes its conceptual representation; a solution whose main goal is the architectural outcome, and the landscape its support; finally, a solution where the narrative is prevalent, and the landscape is its instrument. (M.A., G.G., G.L.)