Modellazione e Simulazione: la rappresentazione alla grande scala tra tradizione e innovazione

Urban planning and landscape has traditionally made use of the construction of visual and morphological models required for checking the third dimension relations between contexts and projects, more profitably than the “zenithal” mapping. Physical models, the maquettes, built with traditional technologies, can now be integrated with other devices that allow to improve and broaden the field of investigation, in a plurality of forms of representation, which extend from the physical to the digital model: this has allowed us to enhance the effectiveness of the physical model, as well as the more usual concept phase of the project and morphological checking of spatial relationships, to the control of relations between planimetric structure and three-dimensional shape, between perception and vision of overall volumes, enriched by the dynamic representation of the conditions of solar radiation at different stages of the year. The use of traditional models integrated with urban and environmental simulation techniques today is therefore a useful experimental field that is based not only on their empirical use, but explores new potentials, enriched with technology upgrades; simulation - in all experimental fields - in fact makes use of the models, including in the term "model" a wide variety of objects, from simple acts of visual communication, to the symbolic reproduction of complex systems. But "simulation" also means to achieve the effect of something else, go beyond immediate appearances, which often deceive, and a model as a symbolic representation of the current situation, can be used in relation to certain aspects, instead of given situation. The simulation runs all therefore the reality by means of three basic functions: the reduction, simplification, prediction. So the urban and landscape simulation models allow to support the exploration of components primarily visual, along with other aspects that may return a larger number of parameters to test its overall sustainability. «Humans perceive their environment through their senses – wrote Bishop e Lange -Commonly these are distinguished as an auditive system (the sense of hearing), a tactile system (the sense of touch), a kinesthetic system (the ability to sense and coordinate movement), a vestibulary system (the sense of balance), an olfactory system (the sense of smell), a gustatory system (the sense of taste) and a visual system (the visual sense): Visual is easily the dominant component.» There are historical reasons for which Western culture has been mostly dominated by the sense of sight, it is a clear sign for example, the predominance of "perceptual parameter" about the idea of landscape, even at the urban scale. If the visual simulation, therefore, allows the reconstruction of present conditions of existence prior to the implementation of the project, other simulations over the "visual", the test of other sensory perceptions, including, touch, and hearing they broaden the range of laboratory tests.