The Experience of the Piper in Leonardo Savioli's academic Activity

Abstract

The experience of Leonardo Savioli's laboratory focused on the Piper project started with a profound reflection on the conception and use of space. Students of the 1960s felt a growing gap between their outdated environment and their changed aspirations. Traditional space seemed to them like a social imposition, incompatible with the aspirations of the Baby Boomer generation.

Such standardized space with stereotyped gestures was authoritarian and frustrating, no longer in line with their needs. The educational experience of Piper turned into an opportunity to develop a new idea of space, suitable for this emerging generation, by representing a revolutionary urgency.

In particular, the Piper type offered the possibility of devising spaces that could interact on a psychological and physical level, allowing young people from different social backgrounds to come together. It was also an opportunity to explore how to attribute aggregative features to a predefined space, as well as the need to fragment the physical unity into psychically distinct focal episodes.