See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/321756647

Lecture Notes in Civil Engineering

Conference Paper · December 2017

CITATIONS READS

0 5,351

1 author:

Michela Rossi
Politecnico di Milano
94 PUBLICATIONS   28 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

Rilievo e analisi della Chiesa di Santa Maria del Quartiere a Parma View project

Architectural Drawing in Milano's school View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Michela Rossi on 15 October 2018.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

Lecture Notes in Civil Engineering

Giuseppe Amoruso Editor

Putting Tradition
into Practice:
Heritage, Place and
Design
Proceedings of 5th INTBAU International
Annual Event
Lecture Notes in Civil Engineering

Volume 3
Lecture Notes in Civil Engineering (LNCE) publishes the latest developments
inCivil Engineering - quickly, informally and in top quality. Though original
researchreported in proceedings and post-proceedings represents the core of LNCE,
editedvolumes of exceptionally high quality and interest may also be considered
forpublication. Volumes published in LNCE embrace all aspects and subfields of,
aswell as new challenges in, Civil Engineering. Topics in the series include:
– Construction and Structural Mechanics
– Building Materials
– Concrete, Steel and Timber Structures
– Geotechnical Engineering
– Earthquake Engineering
– Coastal Engineering
– Hydraulics, Hydrology and Water Resources Engineering
– Environmental Engineering and Sustainability
– Structural Health and Monitoring
– Surveying and Geographical Information Systems
– Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC)
– Transportation and Traffic
– Risk Analysis
– Safety and Security

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/15087

Giuseppe Amoruso
Editor

Putting Tradition
into Practice:
Heritage, Place
and Design
Proceedings of 5th INTBAU International
Annual Event

123
Editor
Giuseppe Amoruso
Design
Politecnico di Milano
Milan
Italy

ISSN 2366-2557 ISSN 2366-2565 (electronic)

Lecture Notes in Civil Engineering
ISBN 978-3-319-57936-8 ISBN 978-3-319-57937-5 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-57937-5
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017943072

© Springer International Publishing AG 2018

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part
of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations,
recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission
or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar
methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from
the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this
book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the
authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or
for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to
jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Printed on acid-free paper

This Springer imprint is published by Springer Nature

The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Foreword. A Formidable Opportunity to Affirm
the Unity of Culture and the Art of Building

The fifth INTBAU International Annual Event “Heritage, Place, Design: Putting
Tradition into Practice” encompasses the cultural framework that UID (Unione
Italiana per il Disegno) has been promoting since its foundation, about forty years
ago.
Many of the International Network for Traditional Building, Architecture &
Urbanism activities are critical to UID mission, among them: technical training,
dissemination and promotion of design traditions; support of visual arts and design
know-how, traditional construction techniques and maintenance of the local char-
acter of sites.
For this reason, our scientific society has conceded with conviction and pleasures
its patronage to the important event organised by INTBAU Italia. The meeting
marks the first decade of intense activities of INTBAU Italia, developed through the
promotion of workshops on documentation and valorisation of cultural, architec-
tural and urban heritage. Among them, the Summer Schools on historic centres
documentation, urban representation, communities and traditional construction
technique and UNESCO heritage documentation.
Moreover, the INTBAU meeting is the most important event among those we
gave the patronage; thanks to the commitment and the efforts of our colleagues
from diverse Italian university, we are more frequently promoting several inter-
nationals meetings, in different geographical contexts.
This is the reasons why the INTBAU meeting in Milan has had a large and
qualified audience within our members, and more generally within the scientific
field of drawing of which UID is expression. This is demonstrated by the fact that
almost half of the papers received for the ten interesting sections in which the event
is articulated are attributable to UID members or professors of this field.
It is particularly significant and positive because it also states the pursue of
cross-disciplinary and multidisciplinary exchanges among our colleagues. The
individuals’ aspiration demonstrates how critical is the need to assess their scientific
argumentations; their cultural and scientific growth cannot only take place through
the academic community encounters that scientific societies periodically are used to
promote.

v
vi Foreword. A Formidable Opportunity to Affirm the Unity of Culture

Unfortunately, since there are no more “International colloquia on Castles and

Fortified cities”—that Aldo de Marco promoted biennially over the last thirty years
(for more than 20 years)—significant opportunities are now unusual in Italy. Of the
many, perhaps too many, conferences and seminars that take place in the field of
architecture and civil engineering are few appointments that can successfully pursue
the overcoming of bureaucratic cultural and scientific divisions, promoting the
encounter of different disciplinary areas, such as representation, history, restoration,
technology, design, topography, construction, composition, estimate and archae-
ology. Although, in most cases, this encounter is almost troubled.
For this reason, I hope that the INTBAU meeting in Milan can achieve relevant
scientific outcomes taking advantage from the dialogue between different cultural
areas, because the ineffective knowledge fragmentation is one of the worst wounds
we are experiencing in and out the university community.
There is the right framework, and the conference topics are appropriate to
investigate techniques of communication, representation and valorisation of cultural
heritage and urban historical landscapes, place-making and design methodologies
that promote local traditions. Accepted papers are addressing multidisciplinary
practices for cultural traditions and diffuse heritage maintenance, which require
tools for knowledge and regeneration of places and their economies.
The debate, therefore, could be significant from the scientific point of view,
supported by the wide component of colleagues (almost 30%) from abroad where
knowledge fragmentation is not comparable to Italy. It could be another formidable
opportunity to begin a happy and fruitful season, in order to encompass all the field
of knowledge into few and comprehensive expertise areas; an urgent need to affirm
the unity of culture and art of building.
I therefore congratulate Giuseppe Amoruso, colleagues from Milan who pro-
moted the organisation, participants and all those who have submitted contribu-
tions, for their profound commitment.

Vito Cardone
Unione Italiana del Disegno Chair
 Learning from the Past: Water Heritage.
Landscape Patterns Around Parma

Michela Rossi(&)

Department of Design, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy

michela.rossi@polimi.it

Abstract. Landscape bears the layering of settlement’s thousand years long

history. Canals around the city of Parma show patterns that express the survey
tools and the relationship between the city and the territory. There are not many
documents about the works carried out by the Romans, as well during the
Middle Age. The landscape itself testifies its far past in architecture and in the
design of water management, which witnesses a carefully controlled execution
of hydraulic works. Different patterns represent three historical phases,
according with the survey’s concept and water management design. Canals
show the reason behind patterns that identify the main phases of landscape
transformation. Landscape geometry tells the history of settlement in the concept
of human transformations. The layering of historical maps and landscape built
signs is the basic instruments of territory knowledge and transformation.
A sustainable landscape management follows the development of the environ-
mental legacy.

Keywords: Landscape pattern
Urban pattern
Settlement history
Landscape

design
Landscape history

1 The Landscape Signs

This paper summarizes some of the material processed in the course of a wider research
that started with the study of the waterways around Parma, to track the landscape
heritage. It begins with the search for traces of inner navigation facilities, focusing on
regular and ordered signs that draw the landscape, to understand the settlement matrix
and the city layout, as well as the formation of its productive sectors along the sides of
the channel. The research was conducted as part of the survey on the industrial
archaeology, starting from the comparison of historical maps with the signs of the
landscape, to detect the traces of project interventions that have shaped the forms of the
country in a recognizable cultural landscape. The base is a technical and design rep-
resentation that shows the stratification of the landscape transformation in the long run,
providing a teaching to preserve, enhance and upgrade the territory through inter-
ventions that ought to be organic with the environment.
Channels design the country with patterns that are characteristics of Po valley
landscape. They affect the architecture of this territory, where the environment is
“artificial” because of the human settlement, which has interacted for millennia with
water. [1] Everywhere the human settlement creates distinctive landscapes, in which

© Springer International Publishing AG 2018

G. Amoruso (ed.), Putting Tradition into Practice: Heritage, Place and Design,
Lecture Notes in Civil Engineering 3, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-57937-5_103
1002 M. Rossi

natural elements blend with artificial ones, establishing an organic equilibrium to sites
that affect the environment in a sustainable manner. The landscape denounces the effort
to impose an order that is functional to the settlement needs and to the environmental
features in the overlapping of organized signs, which refer to a planned design. The
hydraulic projects have been one of the most effective works in the anthropic modelling
of the territory.
The introduction of techniques of water regimentation drives since remote times
supports the attempt to improve the agriculture. Even if the excavation of channels and
the construction of embankments alongside other constructions are not architecture in
its monumental meaning, they become so in the relationship with the landscape
transformation. The adaptation work determines the presence of specific artefacts,
which are organized in systems that are organic to the territory morphology. The waters
system is the first infrastructure network of the city and it affects and characterizes the
urban fabric. The pattern of artificial waters denounces the succession of large-scale
interventions that tell the evolution of the land settlement culture and its conception,
which is expressed in the most important creations of mankind. The implementation of
major projects gave some indelible geometry to the country, whose patterns follow the
methodology and the methods of surveys that preceded the imposition of the new
order. This causality between the survey and the design expresses the idea of a special
relationship between the city and the territory, between the man and his environment.
In the landscape around Parma an orthogonal grid of streets and canals keeps alive
the memory of the Romans’ centurial. Towards the Po, forms become less rigid
because the low plains was not plotted although it was inhabited. There, even the
design of the landscape is the result of a long sequence of drainage works and flood
protections. Around the city, the orthogonal grid overlaps the radial design of medieval
canals, which converge on the city from the mountain and from there they head
downstream. These signs, respectively arranged in lattice and radially, are the legacy of
the continuing search for a controlled water balance, running after the attempt to
reorder the environment with its hydraulic reorganization. The different patterns are the
expression of different ways to take action on the waters that have characterized the
Roman era and the late Middle Age.
The designs reflect two different ways of conceiving order as well as the rela-
tionship between the city and the land, as a result of the institution of government (the
Roman state, the late medieval municipality, the modern duchy). They are also the
legacy of survey and tracking techniques that are functional to the adopted layout.
Therefore, the channel system highlights a net relationship between the survey and the
design implemented through the hydraulic reorganization of the territory and it reveals
various topics of interest with respect to the technique and the history of surveying, as
well as to the territory transformation and its representation. In large scale there are two
different drawings that are governed by imperfect geometries. They identify the suc-
cession of the three stages, corresponding to three different administrative concepts that
led to the today landscape. We have no survey or project documents of the oldest
interventions, but only the actual landscape design.
Many works from Roman and Medieval times are documented by the historians
and are confirmed by indelible tracks that imprint the landscape. The “topological”
survey of the network of canals and irrigation and milling channels reconstructs the
 Learning from the Past: Water Heritage 1003

ancient reorder interventions in the signs marking the territory. In turn, these works
demonstrate the ability to plan and implement large-scale projects. The channels are
actually the concrete demonstration of a preliminary project and a properly driven
survey, which proves the existence of a working cartography of which no trace
remains. The centurial and the medieval excavation show the availability of reliable
tools and the development of a good survey practice, as well as the existence of a
measured cartography. The persistence of the marks left by the hydraulic works in the
Parma plain confirms the skill with the slopes survey, which ensured a sustainable
water management, and the design was durable because it was organic to the natural
morphology of land. That testifies to the understanding of natural features and the
acceptance of the environment requirements as a project precondition. On the opposite,
the hydraulic work performed after the establishment of the duchy are well documented
by the cartographic collections preserved in the State Archives of Parma. Those maps
show accurately the works and the technique of survey and cartographic restitution.
The graphic documentation attended to the implementation of a third phase in the
landscape redesign, consisting in the environmental remediation that followed the
founding of the modern state. It was the last intervention of a broad scope. As a result,
the delicate balance of the modern reorganization broke with the alteration of external
factors and weather conditions. In particular, the climatic changes and the adminis-
trative organization were not neutral with respect to the design concept.
The Parma landscape, with its canals acts as the main document of its own history;
its design overlaps the geometry of Romans’ intervention that “put order” in the land
and the hierarchical pattern of the medieval reorganization that claimed the dominant
role of the city; finally the survey was the modern reclamation tool, which is not
expressed in the imposition of an abstract formal order, but in the reorganization of
pre-existences, with a mending work of previous centuries legacy. It is noteworthy that
in the long period since the organization of the duchy, there was not any other doc-
umented landscape interventions, despite running or designing numerous river pro-
tections (Fig. 1).

2 The Landscape Pattern Between the Country and the City

The Romans gave a new structure to the landscape. Extensive drainage work alongside
the centurial design imposed a regular pattern to the territory, which recalls the one of
the city. [2] in the theoretical conception, two orthogonal axes were referred to cardinal
points, but they adapted to natural slope in the practice. Helping the drainage of waters,
they are an element of continuity between the land morphology and its re-design. The
Via Emilia was the supporting axis of the project. It contemplated a dual conveyor
system, canals and roads, in which the water was the main axis of penetration into the
plain. The land division and the land reclamation were the two complementary aspects
of a single design, linked to a settlement culture of colonies with a common formal
structure, controlled by a centralized but distant administration power.
The ordered geometry marked by the modular colonies pattern reflected the survey
by the groma, which grounded on the tracking of orthogonal arrays starting from the
colony and allowed the measurement by coordinates of the irregular physical elements.
1004 M. Rossi

Fig. 1. The signs of landscape: waters and productive settlement.

The channels system of the centuriations was the first element of a large-scale ordering,
even if the Po plan had a more ancient hydraulic culture. The channels ensured the
transport along the main river to the Adriatic, canalizing the water according to the
natural land slope. In addition to drainage and irrigation, they became the basis of the
link between the countryside and the city. [3] their role as the primary infrastructure
was implicit in the general conception of the settlement project. The unequivocal sign
is the correspondence of the main axis of the colony with the “Naviglio Navigabile”,
which was for centuries the main connecting element between the city and its ports on
the Po River. The origin of the channel is controversial. It is likely that it dates back to
 Learning from the Past: Water Heritage 1005

the land division because of its “design”, which confirms the testimony of Strabo, who
writes that Scaurus drained the north of Parma countryside with two canals from the Po
to the city. The first one is recognizable just in the “Naviglio Navigabile”, which marks
the main axis of the Roman colony; the second one has not been located, because the
neglect that followed the empire fall altered the drainage system of the plan, erasing its
mark. [4] during the Middle Age the river was still the main penetration way, with
regular transportation to and from Venice.
Inland waterway was flourishing thanks to constant water flow by the Apennine
tributaries and cities opened new links between old Roman roads and the Po banks.
There were the ports that guaranteed the river crossing. With the millennium the tillage
started again requiring irrigation and land reclamation. Meanwhile the city prevailed
over the countryside and the population growth required new water projects. Civic
associations and municipalities, which had acquired strength from the urbanization,
promoted the digging of new channels. During the communal period begun the
foundations of the Po embankment system. In three centuries the water’s activities
changed the landscape design. The rebirth of the city was linked to the excavation of
channels carrying the waters to the city centre for the accomplishment of hygienic
requirements and transportation. Furthermore water acted as a driving energy, with the
establishment of many manufacturing activities. According to tradition the barbaric
emperor Theodoric would have been the promoter of the two main channels that served
the city of Parma: the “Canale Maggiore” and the “Canale Comune”, which come
together in the “Naviglio Navigabile” just north of the thirteenth century city gate.
They belong respectively to the bishop and to the municipality. According to histori-
ans, the link to the Po helped the emergence of cities on the territory. [5] later the water
transport between the Po and the cities went more difficult because of reduced rainfall
and strong deforestation, which changed the climate and ruined the territory. To
improve water connections the city dug the “Naviglio del Taro” and the channel “Otto
Mulini”. Both of them were intended to mark the land in a different way. The medieval
channels resume the course of the Roman ones, resulting in a radial pattern, which
emphasizes the role of the city as a centre of economic and political interests of an
autonomous administrative authority, meant to take over other municipalities. The
medieval design focused on the city; it reflected the survey technique with tools that
derives from the astrolabe, which measured the distances by graduated triangles with
the vertex in the surveyor’s eye, put in the centre of the area to be surveyed.
With the duchy foundation, the new state inherited a bumpy land. The country was
subject to frequent floods, because of the previous deforestation that had helped the
slopes erosion. Aware of the importance of the hydraulic control for the local economy
development, the Duke promoted the country remediation, starting from a major survey
campaign. The maker was Smeraldo Smeraldi, who reorganized the hydraulic design of
the duchy in strong connection with a wide survey work. The expert guessed the need
of a unitary intervention. The duke understood the importance for the territory
development. The charge and the fulfilment of the task demonstrate their awareness of
the importance of the territorial reorganization and the following need for a deep
knowledge that required a reliable cartography.
The following survey interested almost all the flat part of the country, with a careful
measurement of inclines and gradients of those streams that were meant to be used for
1006 M. Rossi

navigation. The Smeraldi’s skill as surveyor and as engraver, documented by his maps
and by archive documents, was praised by his contemporaries for the precision in the
maps drafting. He conducted the survey with updated methods, checking the inter-
section forward with the measurement of distances along triangle side with tools he
made by himself. Then he proceeded to drawing in the right scale, before the “clean”
copying. [6] the Smeraldi’s diary and reports of his inspection that are enriched by
sketches, tell the birth of the first mapping of the territory. The entire cartographic work
is remarkable for the quantity of information as well as for the graphic quality of maps.
During his long career, the expert gave body to the first measured mapping of the
duchy, carefully surveyed with integrated methods to reduce errors and then always
drafted with the reduction scale in the label.
The Smeraldi’s seventeenth-century cartography show clearly the survey and the
draft work, starting with a net campaign drawing with measures and notes, then the first
pencil restitution with the compasses in an approximate coloured map, up to the final
ink one with the cardinal orientation and the scale of Parmesan miles. The final drawing
was draft with the Indian ink and then sometimes coloured with watercolour. In pencil
drawings you recognize the survey alignments with coordinates or triangulation
measurements and they often show the compasses returning the measurement. The
third phase of the regional planning is therefore well documented. The historical
documentation provides mode and time in the sequence of interventions, which have
left their mark without the imposition of any geometry. No abstract order matches to
the survey rigor because the design pursues the reclamation by the slope control and
channel management, without the imposition of any pattern to the land. The survey
itself became the essence of the territorial management and was the basic foundation in
the success of the new state.

3 Conclusions

The attempt to keep alive an efficient transport network between the city and the sea
failed, but the dream of inner sailing provided a productive development. The use of
water as a driving force, with the settlement of mills along the canals, supported the
productive activities that would characterize the local economy. The artificial waters
were the primary settlement infrastructure that granted the formation of first specialized
manufacturing districts. The network of the channels influenced therefore the growth of
the city and the shape of the urban architecture. Parma shows a relationship between
the channels and the building porticos built along the street and near the city wall as a
consequence of productive activities on the edge of the city. This suggests that their
building followed the enlargement of the walls between the twelfth and the thirteenth
centuries, when all European cities experienced an expansion. The urban fabric of
medieval terraced houses and the few extant porticos, always included in the penul-
timate gate, confirm this hypothesis. [7] along the canals prospered proto industrial
activity that, with the medieval spread of water mills, developed some manufacturing
specialization in the city. Urban mills were closed to monasteries and convents.
 Learning from the Past: Water Heritage 1007

The first urban mill was the one of the nuns of St. Quentin, followed by that of the
Benedictines of St. John and later by the bishop’s ones and others. Even the activities
that were headed to the civil power, such as the mint, were located along a canal. Most
of the mills were dedicated to milling, but in the thirteenth century the paper manu-
facture spread from rags soaking, and its quality made the city famous. The old
toponymy stresses the distribution of special activities, such as the salt, coal and
gypsum repositories, the harvesting of saltpetre (to make gunpowder) and rags
washing, besides tanneries, foundries, forges and finally the office to pay taxes on
milling. [8] main duke’s manufactures were on the west bank of the river, near the
“Naviglio del Taro”: a pottery, the candle factory and the ducal foundry. This area was
the first specialized sector of the modern city, while paper activity was sent away the
city gate. They settled along the “Canale Maggiore”, developing a district in Porporano
that survived up to recent times. Many cereal mills settled in the country. A 1765 map
shows groundwater and city channels with 14 active mills. Many of them are docu-
mented since the Middle Ages. They are recognizable in the eighteenth century land
registry for their irregular plan, which characterizes the urban fabric with large
courtyards and pools. The urban mills remain from the nineteenth century since the
Middle Age, when they were used to produce the electricity for the lighting of the city.
All major mills are still along channels, on the same site of ancient ones, despite the
change of energy sources (Fig. 2).
In conclusion, the landscape summarizes its history in the stratification of the
transformations made by people. Artificial signs tell human relationship with the
environment and the balance between the city and the territory. Around Parma the
landscape shows patterns that show three stages in the country transformation,
exemplifying three management concepts:
– The orthogonal pattern of Roman land division, which defined a regular mesh
homogeneous in the territory of the colony;
– The radial pattern of late medieval channels focused on the city, which emphasized
the urban polarity in the territory;
– The re-design by the sixteenth-century survey, which sewed past fragments into a
new unified project.
The permanence of geometries in the landscape, which express different balances
between the city and the territory, shows that the knowledge of environment is the
starting point of a sustainable management. Design shall balance the settlement needs
with the specificity of the territory in a new artificial equilibrium in which flows the
legacy of the past, which teaches that when Man pursuit the satisfaction of its need
without breaking the natural flows, the artificial design generates a hospitable land-
scape, where People find home. There is no absolute recipe, the absolute conservation
is not a definitive answer because human necessities change, requiring new solution.
Design means looking forward without forget our past.
1008 M. Rossi

Fig. 2. The Smeraldo Smeraldi’s surveys of the territory around Parma (1588–1628).

References
1. Rossi M (2004) Strade d’acqua. Navigli, canali e manufatti idraulici nel parmense: dal rilievo
del territorio al disegno del paesaggio. Mattioli 1885, Fidenza
2. Grandinetti C (1939) Ricerche sulla centuriazione romana dell’agro parmense. In: Archivio
storico per le province parmensi, IV serie, pp 1–44. Deputazione di Storia Patria, Parma
3. Tozzi PL (1974) Saggi di topografía storica. La Nuova Italia, Pavia
4. (2000) Un Po di terra - guida all’ambiente della bassa pianura padana e alla sua storia.
Diabasis, Reggio Emilia
 Learning from the Past: Water Heritage 1009

5. Benassi U (1906) Storia di Parma. Forni, Parma

6. Forbes RG (1961) Energia Motrice. Storia della tecnologia, vol. II, p 613. Boringhieri, Torino
7. Corini F (1980) Dalla rappresentazione alla organizzazione del territorio: le opere
cartografiche e gli interventi di bonifica. In: Io Smeraldo Smeraldi ingegnero et perito della
congregazione dei cavamenti. Officine Grafiche Step, Parma
8. Conforti P (1979) Le mura di Parma. Battei, Parma

View publication stats