As part of the PhD program, dissertation defense presentations are open to all. Given this, Antonio Latini will be presenting his dissertation work and all are invited either in person or online for the public presentation, which should last about an hour.

Title: Rules of Form: Harmony and Variety in Urban Design Guidance.
Zoom link: https://uoregon.zoom.us/meetings/96915433365/invitations?signature=4nI_oMY82JbMJ6mUKT0dR-UeB0Mm4K-QulNpnn7XMzU

Abstract: This dissertation deals with the aesthetic quality—the beauty—of the places where we live, its ecological value, and how both the beauty of the built landscape and its positive effects can be fostered by “rules of form”. I consider “rules of form” both as morphological regularities and as the urban design regulations generating them: guidance tools such as form-based codes; aesthetic, design and elevation controls; design guidelines, codes and manuals; architectural pattern books, and other typomorphological normative systems. I try to contribute to provide these tools and their practice with a more systematic and interdisciplinary conceptual background than available today. Do rules—regularities—in the formal composition of our οἶκοι, our common homes, promote aesthetic pleasure, well-being, psychological restoration and indeed “a promise of happiness”? Thus, can we design rules—regulations—to promote a more beautiful and healthier habitat? Although urban design, the field of discussion, generation and management of the built landscape, remains my disciplinary background, to answer these questions I combine literature from diverse fields like design history and theory, speculative aesthetics, experimental psycho-aesthetics, and neuroaesthetics to argue that:

• rules of form are historically associated to environmental aesthetics;
• environmental aesthetics and its guidance are fundamental factors of human ecology, generally promoting pleasure, happiness, well-being and health;
• the combination of harmony and variety—a.k.a. order and complexity—is a factor of beauty in the legacy of both humanities and sciences;
• rules of form as regulations can “ontologically” promote harmony and order, while allowing variety, complexity and wealth of individual choices, as a review of both “modern” foundation cases and recent developments shows.

Form-based regulations are increasingly popular among scholars, professionals and administrators alike, but we need a deeper, inclusive, and systematic awareness of their conceptual background. While our habitat is increasingly both chaotic and monotonous, regional and urban planning suffers uncertainty and crisis because of its overly rigid, generic, totalitarian, formless, and negative character. Considering the unprecedented challenges that both traditional and new settlements are raising globally, rules of form might support innovative techniques for unexplored ecological strategies and alternative solutions based on specificity, flexibility, sensitivity.

Committee

• Professor James Tice. Department of Architecture, University of Oregon (chair)
• Associate Professor Mark Eischeid. Department of Landscape Architecture, University of Oregon
• Professor Ihab Elzeyadi. Department of Architecture, University of Oregon
• Professor Mark Gillem. Department of Architecture, University of Oregon