Layered Morphologies and Topographic Structures. Substrata and Design Writing

Abstract Considering the site as a ‘tabula plena’ rather than a ‘tabula rasa’, design is in no case the colonisation of a void but rather a new writing on an existing text, often miscellaneous, that requires to be red, interpreted and consistently continued. This knowledge posture deriving from the Italian tradition of urban studies and urban architecture manifests a tendency towards continuity that, although manifold and originally in either opposition or in continuity with the Modern Movement, fi rmly relates architecture to the meditative thought which produces advancements through a continuous refl ection on previous ideas and physical ‘substrata’. After establishing an ‘urban science’ based on the typomorphological bi-univocal relationship, analogic transpositions in urban discontinuity, ‘città per parti’, and fi rst inquiries in the territories of topologies, present interpretations underlying the notions of layered palimpsest, stratigraphic readings and substrata, reinforce a tendency in which architecture and the city are mutually defi ned. The concepts of layered morphologies and latent topographical structures form a conceptual device that challenges the condition of the city as assemblages of assemblages, operating on the degree of integration or dispersion of its components, the decoding of latent structures and traces, the readability of morphologic-semantic units and rewritability of superior-grade fi gures. In Chinese contexts, where historic space is often the space of latency under multiple incoherent texts, simply juxtaposed, the hermeneutic work of decoding and recoding acts as a carrier for constructing a contemporary cultural relationship with the site by stirring a multiplicity of meanings and resonances that enriches both situated memory and the narrative introduced by the new work. Advancing critical-theoretical propositions while verifying their operational tool through research-based case studies, the paper explores some principles for reading, decoding and interpretative rewriting in multi-coded compromised Chinese historic sites: re-signifi cation, re-structuring and re-morphologisation.