Un modello insediativo per il turismo

Investigating Michele Busiri Vici’s work in the field of environmental design and tourism development of coastal areas implies above all an analysis of a long-lasting professional career performed with great commitment and consistency for over fifty years. It also leads to the recognition of the originality of research that has informed a working method constantly suspended between two operational scales: the large-scale, inclusive of landscape design, and the small scale, mostly expressed through the various configuration of private residential spaces. In the first area, especially in the post-war period up to the end of his activity, Busiri Vici worked on the spatial plan, assigning to urban planning, quoting Giancarlo De Carlo, ‘the appropriate relevance in contemporary society’. A design approach that ‘no longer derives from individual architectural projects but is instead the principle unifying them’. In the second area, he always sought to establish instead a conscious relationship with the history and the identity of place, to include territory and landscape peculiarities in the guiding principles of architectural intervention. The thread linking all territorial and urban projects can be found in the organization of physical space in relation to landscape, an element that in Busiri Vici’s spatial plans, is the most important on any scale. Architecture and town planning, urban space and landscape were complementary aspects of the same design practice and theoretical reflection. This led to obvious repercussions in the creation of shapes and fostered a continuous reiteration of the same themes – composition, color, flora, landscape, geology, and exposure – expressed and developed in what was only apparently a different manner or in light of a certain circumstance.