Designing Antifragile Open Spaces in Contemporary Europe

This paper shows some preliminary outcomes of my ongoing PhD research, which aims to test antifragility (Taleb, 2012) as an analytical and practical design category for the design of urban open spaces in Europe. Indeed, introduced in opposition to the notion of fragility, antifragility describes the capacity of getting better from shocks by adopting a nonpredictive attitude and taking advantage of volatility, disorder, chaos, randomness, and complexity. Holding this perspective–which is different from resilience–, the paper deepens some specific antifragility features whose spatial value and design potential are investigated through the design process and realisation of some remarkable open spaces recently built in Europe. The aim is to show not only the potentialities of antifragility as a design issue but also that open spaces are still the best environment in Europe to activate new urban dialogues, as well as to enhance culture and design of European collective dimension.