From Wayfinding to Placefinding: Orientation and Alterity in Urban Spaces

In the semiotic theory, the city is considered as a text, a weaving made of practices, ideas, discourses. This leads to questions about the dialectic between identity and alterity, which is often left aside by the design theories, that mainly focus on identity. What we call ‘identity of a place’ is its ability to synthetize the diversities that populate it. This paper presents some reflections based on the following scientific hypothesis: the in-depth study of orientation systems can also lead to the definition of the character of an urban space. Orientation systems should be thought not only to help people finding their destination, but also to build the user’s mental image of that place, making it recognizable and identifiable. The first objective of the research is to question both the environmental complexity and the cultural multiplicity of a place. To reach this objective, the adopted methodology has been the observation and analysis of an urban area in Rome, Ostiense.