ZEMCH 2015 - International Conference Proceedings | Page 154

Introduction. From the theorisation of university models to the Green Campus
The image of the monastic cloister surely constitutes the project archetype of the university
building as a circumscribed place where small communities of learners can discuss and share
their knowledge.
Such idea has remained rather unchanged until the “modern” age, consolidating, especially in
central and southern Europe, in architectonic organisms greatly integrated with the town and
their economic/social apparatus, sharing the facilities, public green areas, the commercial fabric
and, eventually, the residential system (Baratta & Carlini 2012).
In England and especially in America [1],on the contrary, the university institution was shaped,
except for a few instances, on the principle of colleges: actual settlements, substantially isolated,
marginal with respect to the urban context and independent from the system of the social relationships of the town (Chiarantoni 2008).
From these two behaviours it is possible today to derive two different settlement models that
identify the university campuses: the “Anglo/American campus”, originated from the Anglo-Saxon
college, and the general “European”, seen as natural evolution of the long history of the athenaeums, forced to communicate with the towns they are located in (Chiarantoni 2005).
With respect to these two cases, the middle European model, to which we shall refer in the following, due to its particular proximity and ability to interfere with the urban development processes,
can be divided into two further sub-models in function of the major or minor concentration of the
structures within the urban fabric: the concentrated model and spread model (Baratta & Carlini
2012).
The concentrated model involves all the academic and research buildings as pavilions subsequently distributed within a “closed academic fence” and organised according to a plant, derived from a
master plan, that alternates closed spaces to open collective spaces and promotes the exchanges
and the interdisciplinary dialogue among professors, students and researchers.
The spread model, instead, is characterised by university structures raised in the urban centres
and then developed through the successive acquisition of buildings, even distant among them,
although arranged within the same town and very often shared with the urban community.
In both these models, in a paradoxically opposed condition compared to the Anglo/American
campus model, it can be seen, moreover, that the university residence, technically designed to
compose the basic fabricof any pseudo-settlement system (Caniggia & Maffei 1979:122-165; Caniggia 1981; Rossi 1966; Falasca & Carbonari 1987), plays a marginal role within the university system, appearing as an autonomous reality, more or less integrated in the urban neighbourhood
it belongs to.Such behaviour is probably derived from the lack of vocation of middle-European
University Center to act as pseudo-settlements, contrarily to what happens to the “university settlements” of Anglo/American campuses.
Hence the research, hereof summarised, of a developmental model of the university systems that
interferes directly with the urban structure, sharing the infrastructures and the primary services
to optimize and maximize its efficiency of use.
The experimental value of such an integration would affect significantly the implementation of
sustainable facilities and practices within the urban environment and the social, cultural and economic enhancement of the urban settlements.
At the same time the economies of scale and the variety of facilities in university centres would be
maximized, especially under the circumstances in which the economic autonomy of universities
appears to be rather limited (Coppola Pignatelli 1995).
Even the role of the university residence would tend towards renewal, finding a greater mediation
with the urban context, thanks to the research of specific living mixtures (Macchia et Al. 2012) and

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ZEMCH 2015 | International Conference | Bari - Lecce, Italy