The research subjects summarised by the acronym HEADS correspond to the main areas of interest of our group, which points out the main problematic knot – inclusive and interdisciplinary – in the connection between natural data and human activity, and places architectural design and its civil responsibilities within a broad, interconnected system of relationships.
Environmental protection, sustainability, circular economy: while these indicate the more general objectives to which communities are called – regardless of their size – on the other they find their claim in the construction of historic rural territories, in the architecture of cities, in the great constructive ideas that, in the examples we admire, express them at a higher and more complete level.
HEADS's activity develops starting from this point of view but it is aimed at the multiple issues dictated by what is required by the current transformations, in the awareness how cities and territories are formalised constitutes a substantial discriminant for the quality of life (economic, social, cultural etc.) of those same communities.
Among others, HEADS addresses:
- The connection between natural places and construction, as well as natural places and cultivation, investigating their forms and relationships in different geographical and cultural spheres, starting from places where the contradiction of transformations is more severe (consider how infrastructures “rest” on landscapes, and how they are incapable of constituting their backbone, the problem of water etc.).
- The excellent traditions imprinted in the historical design of the territory (and of the city) seen as human works capable of bringing us back to the substance of our profession and which constitute the "visible part of our future".
- Aspects related to the project formalisation process, the study of the different forms of architecture processing, concerning the development of tools and devices for the design of the architectural space.
The connection between public and private spaces of the contemporary city, understood both as a relationship between residence and places for leisure, and as a study/design of the shape of the space of emptiness.