This is (hopefully!) the first of a series of posts on my lectures and experiences from my MSc in Urban Science, Policy and Planning.

Colletta di Castelbianco

Colletta di Castelbianco

Monte Castel Ermo with Colletta di Castelbianco in the foreground (Greg Wilkins)

This Italian village was cited as an example of urban planning’s fascination with technology. Colletta was abandoned in the 1950s and subsequently restored in the 1990s, in both the architectural and the technological. Italian architect Giancarlo De Carlo developed the restoration plan for the architecture. On the other hand, Valerio Saggini reimagined Colletta as a high-tech workplace with furnished with telecommunication infrastructure. The target audience were refered to as white eagles - ‘people who work by themselves and are looking for isolation, but who also use computers and information electronics to remain in touch with what’s happening’ (De Carlo, 2004).

Architectural Restoration. The Italian architect Giancarlo De Carlo published a short journal article describing his experiences and thoughts on the project. The article is surprisingly conversational and definitely worth a read. De Carlo talks about his efforts to balance preservation and renovation - a particularly tangled dilemma for Singapore’s districts that age in place. Some interesting takeaways include his discussions on space and connections, as well as his discovery of the genetic code of Colletta.

It goes very slowly because you cannot go very fast in this case. You have to work on each piece and put together things and stop and understand and start again, etc. It takes a lot of time to make the design of such a humble place.

De Carlo’s parting words on the Colletta project.

Mismatch? Colletta was cited during the lecture as an example of a failed mismatch between technology and urban design. However, as mentioned earlier, there was a rather specific target audience that Saggini had in mind and this 2008 article seems to indicate that Colletta had a fair share of buyers. Although a site advertising rentals seemed to have a lack of visitors (see availability in link), Airbnb rentals at Castelbianco seem to be doing well. So it might not be a failed mismatch, although it is probably not a resounding success either.

Here is a 1998 article reporting on the Colletta project (stored in the Wayback Machine).

  • Charles Booth
  • Chicago Area Transportation Study
  • Geoffrey West

    If you give me the size of a city, I can tell you how many police it has, how much violent crime, how many AIDS cases, what the length of all the roads will be, and so on.

  • Hotelling Beach
    • Convenience Goods vs Comparison Goods
  • Guy Debord
    • dérive
  • Le Corbusier
    • Bijlmer, Amsterdam
  • Subjective Maps
  • What is Urban?
    • Urban vs Rural vs Tribal
    • Shared public spaces
    • Density and Diversity (da Vinci)
  • Hello, R!
  • data.gov.sg