«Cinema -the Italian art historian Carlo Argan used to say in the 60’s speaking about “Urbanistica e Cinematografo”- predigests reality». A movie, we can say, interprets reality just like a planning design does: observing actual facts, reconstructing previous stories, building new images. What is specific about a filmed interpretation of reality is its obvious connection with the public. In the history of urban planning during the last century, more than once planners have decided to use a movie to communicate a new project for the city. Those documentary films correspond to one of the conditions necessary to transform the lived environment: the building of social consensus. At the same time, and in a less obvious way, filmed representation of planning design, while simplifying objects, facts and projects using a mass language, creates a unique opportunity to avoid the traditional separation between the analytic and the designed dimensions in town planning. A movie representation, looking for an internal coherence, presents itself as an instrument able to discover a reality which was not known before. A movie, we could say, is able to force an architectural design to justify itself (designs not usually being cognitively expressed) and a planning program to show the physical forms of its prescriptions. In this essay, an interpretation of the script of some historical “planning” documentary films will be an occasion to reflect on this, to find new instrument for urban design and planning.
Film Works Wonders: Analysis, History and Town Plan United in a Single Representation
CIACCI, LEONARDO
2010-01-01
Abstract
«Cinema -the Italian art historian Carlo Argan used to say in the 60’s speaking about “Urbanistica e Cinematografo”- predigests reality». A movie, we can say, interprets reality just like a planning design does: observing actual facts, reconstructing previous stories, building new images. What is specific about a filmed interpretation of reality is its obvious connection with the public. In the history of urban planning during the last century, more than once planners have decided to use a movie to communicate a new project for the city. Those documentary films correspond to one of the conditions necessary to transform the lived environment: the building of social consensus. At the same time, and in a less obvious way, filmed representation of planning design, while simplifying objects, facts and projects using a mass language, creates a unique opportunity to avoid the traditional separation between the analytic and the designed dimensions in town planning. A movie representation, looking for an internal coherence, presents itself as an instrument able to discover a reality which was not known before. A movie, we could say, is able to force an architectural design to justify itself (designs not usually being cognitively expressed) and a planning program to show the physical forms of its prescriptions. In this essay, an interpretation of the script of some historical “planning” documentary films will be an occasion to reflect on this, to find new instrument for urban design and planning.
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