ARHITECTURA POP-UP
POP-UP ARCHITECTURE

THE TEMPORARY PUBLIC SPACE

Summary/Abstract: Pop-up architecture is steadily gaining recognition as a viable answer to the the slow death of public space already announced by many philosophers, culture and architecture theorists, disguised by a fervent and nostalgic celebration of the public-space-that-should-have-been – a choice subject of pluri- or interdisciplinary research. Derived from the craft of creating books which, once open, reveal ingeniously fabricated three-dimensional images, pop-up architecture is a new breed of soft, movable, flatpack, put-it-together / take-it-apart, nomadic way of space-making. Like the books, whose allegedly bi-dimensional pages hide whole worlds rendered in 3d miniatures, pop-up architecture enriches public spaces through its mere physical presence, and completes it by adding multiple registers of significations and social practices. The typology and morphology of this type of architecture are varied in the extreme, running the whole range from wandering parks and plazas, small cultural or commercial functions (cafés, libraries) to itinerant mini-exhibitions. This paper is an investigation of the concept of pop-up architecture in its most frequently used forms, and of the way in which such economical, small-scale, fast-implementing, people-oriented interventions can create a network of public spaces with one main purpose: social cohesion, aggregation, interpersonal relationships and communication.

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