EFA studio di architettura

Spa
and architecture

Projects technologies strategies for a modern spa culture

Emilio Faroldi, Francesca Cipullo, Maria Pilar Vettori
Maggioli Publisher
Sant'Arcangelo di Romagna (RN)
2007

ABSTRACT
The cultural and disciplinary scenario that characterises the current debate on the environment, the city and architecture, justifies in-depth studies of a specialist matrix that, in paradigmatic terms, highlight the evolution of thought inherent in the modification of the territory. The transformation of the instruments in charge of controlling and managing environmental resources favours the perimeter of possible solutions to face the qualitative inflection found in the urban and suburban contexts of the city. The exploration of thematic areas concerning the relationship between architecture and places of health makes it possible to outline spatial, functional and technological conceptualisations that arose together with the birth of man, aimed at satisfying the innate desire to guarantee society and the individual high, lasting and ethically shareable qualities of life. The research and design actions chase each other, based on design concepts aimed at highlighting aspects of a spatial and constructive nature, to underline in a broad form the cultural, historical and innovation roots that every transformation phenomenon implies. The management of the thermal theme, in its symbolic, architectural and managerial assumptions, constitutes the incipit through which to encourage and stimulate actions of cultural and urban requalification that society, and the places in which it resides, recall with declared strength, complexity and articulation. The profound anthropological and scientific background that the theme expresses, accompanied by new economic and productive instances, reinforces the significance of an investigation aimed at recovering the principles that thermal architecture has always embodied within the man-made territory and the systems of relationships established within it. The book is divided into theoretical and design discussions, to arrive at the definition of the main guidelines for the strategic planning and management of the system, through integrated and transversal disciplinary contributions, in a logic of enhancement of cultural, environmental and material resources. The territory, architecture and technology are the keys to interpreting a phenomenon that is clearly evolving, starting from the historical reasons for thermal architecture and arriving at the definition of management and governance policies for territorial systems, with the aid of updated techniques for the analysis, valorisation and promotion of cultural heritage. Spa architecture, its spaces, and the representations that derive from them, exhibit new planning, evidence of a renewed concept of modern well-being that contemporary society is demanding. The work investigates the new architectural, functional, technological and managerial scenarios concerning the spa system and its architecture, analytically exploring the design, construction and management phases of a process of redefinition of highly complex contexts and places, in order to contribute to the spatial and social qualification action underway. The territorial and district contexts are the horizons with which the architecture of wellness is confronted, introducing opportunities and logics of physical, economic and social enhancement of a dynamically evolving reality: analysing the relationship between thermal baths and architecture means confronting one of the founding themes of the city's history, through the reinterpretation of a cultural infrastructure as an expression of contemporaneity. The spa city constitutes the palimpsest of the rites and history of civilisation: its architecture, its character, narrate its identity.