New book by DPU's Prof. Camillo Boano published
14 December 2020
The book, published in Italian, is titled 'Progetto Minore.ÌýAlla ricerca della minorità nel progettoÌýurbanistico ed architettonico', which translates into English asÌý'Minor Design.ÌýSearching forÌýminority in the urban and architectural project'
![camillo](/bartlett/development/sites/bartlett_development/files/styles/large_image/public/img20201214122436.jpg?itok=2l1lEg-I)
The book is in some ways the continuation of Prof. Camillo Boano'sÌýThe Ethics of Potential UrbanismÌý(2017) in the identification of a possible destituent thinking on design.ÌýMinor Project reflects on design practices and thinking,Ìýexcavating differentÌýtraditions from philosophy to cultural studies, from anthropology to the decolonialÌýapproach, placing at the center the importance of minority as a possible statute of the project. The minor, framed with the thinking of Deleuze, Kats, Grosz,Ìýis not to be intendedÌýa reduction, but a difference in status and therefore an intensity.
It is not a trivial call to arms, a request for action and to get one's hands dirty in a new functional operation. On the contrary, it is aÌýpowerful destituentÌýproposal.ÌýNew thoughtsÌýto think about the project and its development in crises, which takes the form of an inversion of its own meaning, an operator of criticism and resistance with respect to a totalitarian, greater, dominant horizonÌýidentifying some fugitive lines. The book deliberately frames a minor project inÌýthree declinations: inoperative, destituent and decolonial. These three intensities are used to think about the minor project and also constitute the articulation of the text. Each of them serve as Ìý"shadow image", a political illumination.
While deliberately shaped in the realm of theory and theory of architecture and urban design, Prof. Boano’s book emerged from his research in Myanmar, Lebanon and Chile in the multiplicities of alliances developed as well as in his pedagogical work at the DPU and in the MSc Building & Urban Design in Development especially.ÌýProgetto Minore, soon translated in English, suggests a re-centering the project with its decentralizationÌýthatÌýperhapsÌýis able toÌýreturn to an idea of planning capable of dealing with its own crisis and with the multiple crises thatÌýshape the urban planet.ÌýA refocusing on the making of the project, not autonomous andÌýoperativeÌýbut heterotonomous andÌýinoperative, immanent and therefore potential in the plural forms of liberation that do not find a definitiveÌýformalÌýcomposition.Ìý
Progetto MinoreÌýhasÌýalsoÌýhighlighted the need to undertake a serious andÌýurgent decolonialÌýaction of urban planning and of the various planning activities, not escaping into other disciplines but remainingÌýsomehow,Ìýinoperative. The book is available hereÌý