Complexity/Continuity. The city, the landscape. The ancient Bab Al Anba as a thresold to new urban relationship

The paper summarizes the results of Architectural Design 2 Atelier, where students explored, through manual drawing and models, the theme of establishing university residences and services in the Porta Mazara area of Palermo. It outlines an extensive marginal system, densely layered between the University campus on Viale delle Scienze and the old city, which, on one hand, attests to the idea of the city as a continuously evolving collective construction and, on the other hand, paradoxically highlights the distinction between what is “outside” and what is “inside” — both conceptually and physically — in relation to the historical center system.