23 x 31 cm

ISBN 978-3-03860-311-5

This new book by Labics, one of Italy’s leading architectural firms, is devoted to the country’s architecture of public space. Squares, galleries, loggias, porticoes, and courtyards, are the elements that characterize Italy’s historic towns and cities—and that make these places so endlessly attractive to visitors. Yet the volume does not feature new designs by Labics themselves: rather, Maria Claudia Clemente, Francesco Isidori, and their collaborators set out to explore these enchanting spaces, to analyze their history and typologies, and to document and describe them through newly taken as well as historic photographs, plans, and diagrams.

The Architecture of Public Space forms a captivating collection of visually explained characteristics of these core elements of Italian cities. It highlights the architectural solutions from the thirteenth to the twentieth centuries behind the particular spatial quality of these urban structures, and sets out how they are being established for and used by the people.

Maria Claudia Clemente and Francesco Isidori are the founding partners of Rome-based architecture firm Labics. They also lecture and serve as guest critics at international universities, such as Cornell University’s School of Architecture in Ithaca, NY, and Rome.