Morfologia urbana e linguaggio dell’architettura

Starting from the difference in origin between the urban morphology studies based in Milan and the tradition established around Muratori, the essay addresses the relationship between urban studies and architectural language, and suggests how the current decline of the former closely follows the withering of linguistic research in architecture. Both morphology studies and linguistic research rely on the concept of the city as an artefact – if architecture ceases to address the city as its privileged text for linguistic questioning, urban studies equally lose their role. Both urban morphological research and linguistic research should question themselves about this changed scenario in order to understand whether the relationship between architecture and the city is still viable, and whether what we insist – a little warily – on calling urban project can still generate a transitive knowledge with respect to what is historically determined.