Saverio Muratori: towards a morphological school of urban design

Abstract

Muratori’s series of urban projects demonstrate both his growing appreciation of the city and his developing perception of its formative logic. Growth and maturation are evident in his work, arguably culminating in his Venetian projects for the Barene di San Giuliano in 1959. A kind of cultural progression is evident in which an awareness of the significance of crises in the way in which ideas and phenomena develop leads to his ‘discovery’ of morphology. There is also a development from the bringing together of theory and architecture (in which architecture is seen as the science of design) to the conception of morphology as a planning discipline. This paper considers the development of this key aspect of Muratori’s thinking between the late 1940s and the beginning of the 1960s – a development in which the basis for a morphological school of urban design can be clearly recognized.