Project “Sotto i portici”

Abstract

At its focal point, this work attempts to reveal the cultural and social characteristics of the Porticoes of Bologna. The research is conducted in three classes of the Comprehensive Institute of Pianoro’s Lower Secondary School, and targets children with cognitive characteristics, behaviors and interests that usually lead them to distance themselves from school. The laboratory approach managed to make such children demonstrate the motivation to learn and evince the sense of belonging to a group. In this project, the architecture of the city is deemed as a stimulus for stories, illustrations, songs and artifacts that have led to the acquisition of a collective consciousness and identity. In so doing, landscape, territorial and environmental instruction becomes strongly connected to active citizenship education, which paves the way for the training of responsible, reflective and participatory subjects, with attitudes, behaviors and activities that characterize citizens aware of their rights and duties.