Foreword

Regeneration of Abandoned Spaces: A New Design Approach is both an imaginative and theoretical book, and also an edifying and practical one. It presents many facets of the continuously transforming study of the built environment by suggesting a layered and multi-disciplinary approach to urban, architectural, and interior design thinking and praxis. Architect and retired full Professor Luciano Crespi who taught at the Polytechnic University of Milan in the Design Department, has published prolifically to test and tackle a variety of questions and situations that allow for representing and recontextualizing what is often overlooked or subjugated to disciplinary silos. His important and timely books and articles boldly integrate theories of phenomenology, performance, exhibition, materiality, atmosphere, ecology, aesthetics, and interiority to explore and express how the socio-spatial conditions of urbanism, interiors, and architecture may be integrated, and also reoriented. Though seemingly general, Crespi’s lens is actually a specific point of view with a generative structure of belief that relies on these varied voices to produce keen observations, analyses, and critiques of places. He carefully brings attention to the many frameworks that surround a design culture of building new, yet with an eye towards recognizing the opportunities for regeneration of existing sites and a reclaiming of their attributes. Therefore, Professor Crespi’s direction implores us to navigate these parameters to expose new methods for urban characterization.

As one of several now working to explore, articulate, and, thus, shift the edges and boundaries of how we study the surroundings and our role in it; we must acknowledge that defining the interior separately from the exterior has become blurred, or even unnecessary, depending on the conditions or issues. One of the main positions Professor Crespi takes in the Regeneration of Abandoned Spaces is to disallow the notion of the interior to be usurped or bundled only under architecture, as expressed by many scholars and practitioners. When reading his eight chapters, Crespi deftly immerses us in a fascinating variety of topics and a range of perspectives to expand the discourse. He provocatively terms potential design “paradigms” as “leftovers” or “abandoned” to develop what he calls “manifestos.” These ideas provide context for the invited opening essay by Martí Guixé who reconsiders what she calls collective interiors, and the later chapter by Davide Fassi on tactical urbanism. All of the writings direct the reader to take hold of a particular design philosophy made up of a series of theoretical explanations set alongside short case studies composed of well-known and what he calls “unheard-of” projects of different scales, types, and landscapes, largely situated in the 20^th and 21^st centuries.

By combining both personal and universal narratives to compel us “to reflect on how crucial it is to take care of what we have,” Professor Luciano Crespi illustrates the wide breadth of his environmental thinking and realization. He leads us towards a “new wave” of innovative design and reuse attitudes that challenge us by optimistically declaring that the “unthinkable can be thought.” Thus, Crespi unabashedly repositions how we might consider developing a conscious and fresh stance on what surrounds us.