This photo series was taken in the Nizza Millefonti neighborhood in Turin. It introspectively represents the reality of small neighborhood businesses that currently populate the streets of the area. The resilience of retail trade in urban settings is a story of constant adaptation and resistance to adversity. It embodies the vitality of urban communities, adding diversity and authenticity to the fabric of the city and contributing to the construction of strong and inclusive communities.
The process of urban fragmentation, driven by the abandonment and emptying of certain activities, negatively influences social cohesion. The lack of connection and interaction can lead to a decrease in the sense of belonging and shared identity, contributing to social isolation and compromising the construction of an inclusive and cohesive city.
Buildings, as individual entities and then as part of a larger system, are nothing but organisms that incubate a set of functions and reflect a varied amount of social dynamics.
At a spatial and architectural level, the emptying of ground floors deprives the building of its connection with the urban fabric. In fact, photos of closed shutters highlight how a curtain of blockade and limitation is created, making only the two-dimensionality of space perceptible. Conversely, it's the three-dimensionality of space that has always represented the epicenter where activities take place.
Thus, within the now disintegrated tower, a mirror of the weakness of urban fragmentation and an impoverished system, one can distinguish the potential of empty spaces. These belong to the Third Landscape, as defined by the landscape biologist Gilles Clément, which is "a territory of choice for diversity, hence for evolution, favoring invention, opposing accumulation. The Third Landscape can be seen as the part of our living space entrusted to the unconscious. A depth where events accumulate and manifest themselves in what appears to be an undecided manner."