Redefining modern housing settlements. The hypothesis of “adequate discontinuity”

This contribution reflects on regeneration’s interventions on the last discontinuity experience following Modernist urban canons: huge public residential architectures isolated in nature that make public settlements realized in 60s-80s of the twentieth century. In Europe, deep social contradictions happened in these settlements are linked, for public eye, with setting of urban and architectural project. In this way started a very lively debate about European modernist experience value. The discussion, often rhetorical and ideological, focuses on the premises of these projects: architectural scale, architectures and open space dis-measure (big size, out of proportion), mono-typological choice. In general this critic involves consequently discontinuity conditions and in this way denies premises of the modern - the isolation of buildings, the land value - which represent the great advances in urban culture and the main contribution given from Twentieth Century to renewal of idea of the city. The ongoing critical opposition appears a historical retreat to hypothesis following nineteenth-century ideas, as morphological continuity. It is known that the specialist literature, referring to possible intervention strategies, assumes two conventional categories such as densification of discontinuity and rarefaction of continuum. These categories recognize the importance of density. Here it highlights a different way to approach the theme of discontinuity. We don’t discuss about value of discontinuity in these neighborhoods and we propose an “adequate discontinuity” concerning not only the theme of density and connections. A manifesto that recognizes the real value of existing architecture and answers and hinders nostalgic trend, romantic and regressive, that proposes the idea of “small village”.