The Face of the City

The evolution of European cities continues to oscillate between the essence of the “emotional city”, and the potential of urbanal scenarios. Historic, newly built and radically transformed urban fragments coexist within a city and seek to fit into an urban structure that tends to redefine itself integrating discontinuities and a changing urbanity. A current review of European transformed cities through specific urban scenes allows a reading of the urban space and the role of architectural languages. The dialogue between the built environment (ville) and the character of urban life (cité) reveals how cities are inhabited, and how the architectural forms draw a face of the city defined by “cosmetic techniques”. Due to architects’ trust in the possibilities of architectural language, a display of a cosmetic refinement enhances the subjectivity on the urban readers. Architecture approaches again the old debate between poetry and rationality. In the urban debate, the language and image of the architectural objects are key for the urban identity and centres the debate between cosmetic subjectivity and scientific objectivity. Exterior and interior appearances define the links with the city. Specifically from the outside, architectural objects can choose to be contextual, autonomous or indifferent, to their surroundings. The study of urban scenarios in the European city looking at new or transformed fragments, analysing the use of cosmetic techniques that sheds light on the potential and limitations of each specific context allows to assess the ability of architecture to collectively or individually build the identity of a city.