Design in Emerging Landscapes. Acting on cultural metabolism of Mediterranean port cities

The thesis deals with the interpretation of the Mediterranean port city landscapes in the occurring transformation process due to the pressing questions of the Global Age, which more than any other age seems to saturate the coast in the envelope of its f lows. Mediterranean port cities in the spaces of their ports and in those boundary areas between port and city are perceived nowadays as remote, ugly and conflict areas. A landscape approach to the design of the ports, which at the time of the start of this research was mostly absent, is an increasingly felt and urgent issue at an international level, which therefore needs to be explored and deepened to provide tangible answers according to the principles of the ELC. It investigates the landscape design chance to create a new system of relations that solves the current fracture City- Port - Sea, not only in a disposal scenario, but even at the very moment of port’s full activity. On the one hand, it examines the identitarian characters of those port cities that established with the Mediterranean a relationship of permanent inspiration for their role, while on the other hand it analyse which they have been the same factors when the 20th-century urban model crashed and replaced this relationship. The study of the phenomenology of the network of public spaces connecting port and city is a key to interpret the system of relationships which constitutes the identity of these urban landscapes. From this reading, we acquire the cognitive and design tools to carry out the inverse operation that sees in the action on the sensitive network of public spaces in contact with the areas of the new ports, the trigger point of the new system of relationships, producing new forms to inhabit these landscapes. The thesis experiments a new approach to the interpretation, definition and monitoring landscape quality that is expressed in the method employing the landscape quality objectives as landscape indicators and triggering tools for the design process. By proposing a set of Landscape Quality Objectives for the Mediterranean Global Port Cities, the thesis provides to landscape design a synthetic, transcalar and constructive tool to trigger sustainable transformation process, opening the way to define sustainable design strategies for each single context.