Catalogue of the TECHNOSCAPE exhibition, which will be held at MAXXI in Autumn 2022, focusing on the relationship between artistic and scientific disciplines, nowadays closer than ever, and the consequent contacts between technique, creativity and social awareness. Architecture, engineering and science have overlapped on numerous occasions during the 20th century. First in the heroic phase and then in the mature phase of the reinforced concrete, then with the affirmation of hi-tech construction methods in the 1970s and 1980s and finally with the eruption of digitally controlled technologies. TECHNOSCAPE explores this alliance, responding to MAXXI's mission to look towards the future of our planet and the disciplines that modify its spaces. The volume follows the dual register of the exhibition, first dealing with how technology is making architecture, urban planning and other related disciplines more aware of their technical and scientific responsibility and capable of opening up new lines of research. The focus shifts then to structural engineering, comparing current masterpieces with previous historical modernist examples.

This book examines the transformation of the Italian city from the 1950s to the present with particular attention to questions of identity, migration and changes in urban culture. It focuses on two phases of that transformation: the years of accelerated industrialisation in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and the period of de-industrialisation and postmodernity beginning in the 1980s. It shows how major demographic movements and cultural shifts threw into relief new conceptions of the city in which old boundaries had become problematic. Design, fine art, literature, youth culture, film and social history all provide focal points. The contributions bring specialist expertise to each area while the extensive illustrations give a vivid picture of the contemporary visual culture for which Italian cities are famed. This is a genuinely interdisciplinary approach by Italian and English-speaking historians and scholars of urban studies, literature, architecture and design which introduces new debates and research to an English-speaking audience for the first time. Extensive illustrations provide a vivid picture of contemporary Italian visual culture.

Giada Ripa’s photos form an itinerary of landscapes traversing Italy, North to South, focusing on five regions: Friuli, Lombardy, Tuscany, Abruzzo, and Sicily. This account is not limited to a photographic album; rather, it calls upon champions from each area who, through engaging interviews, describe the positive impact on its territory of the commitment of an important local business. Concrete examples of this cooperation are the environmental revival carried out in the Prealpi Giulie Nature Reserve in Friuli, the conservation of local species of flowers carried out with the cooperation of the Botanical Gardens in Palermo, and stretches of land made available and leased free of charge. Thus, The Thin Line represents a hope, but also an awareness of the territory and of those who not only inhabit it now, but will come to inhabit it in the future. Text in English and Italian