Professor Sergio Porta
Architecture
Prize And Awards
- ICE Reed and Mallick Medal
- Recipient
- 6/6/2023
- Chalmers promotion case: Meta Berghauser-Pont
- Recipient
- 4/4/2023
- ARRS Slovenia: member scientific committee for peer-reviewing national research proposals
- Recipient
- 16/2/2023
- Michael Breheny Prize 2022
- Recipient
- 4/10/2022
- MIT promotion case: Andres Sevtsuk
- Recipient
- 20/11/2021
- World Architecture Festival 2019, Best Project of the Year, Future Project Masterplanning: Svobodny Strategic Master Plan 2030. Shortlisted.
- Recipient
- 4/12/2019
Qualifications
Professor of Urban Design, Director of Urban Design Studies Unit.
Former Head of Department (2011-2014).
Publications
- Plot-based urbanism : towards time-consciousness in place-making
- Porta Sergio, Romice Ombretta
- Dortmunder Vorträge zur Stadtbaukunst [Dortmunder Lectures on Civic Art] New Civic Art (2014) (2014)
- Networks in urban design. six years of research in multiple centrality assessment
- Porta S, Latora V, Strano E
- Network science complexity in nature and technology (2010) (2010)
- Elementary processes governing the evolution of road networks
- Strano Emanuele, Nicosia Vincenzo, Latora Vito, Porta Sergio, Barthelemy Marc
- Scientific Reports Vol 2 (2012)
- https://doi.org/10.1038/srep00296
- Optimizing urban structure: toward an integrated new urbanist model - urban nuclei and the geometry of streets: the 'emergent neighborhoods' model
- Mehaffy Michael, Porta Sergio, Salingaros Nikos, Rofè Yodan
- 17th Congress for the New Urbanism (2009)
- The network analysis of urban streets : a primal approach
- Porta Sergio, Latora Vito, Crucitti P
- Environment and planning (2012) (2012)
- Correlating street quality, street life and street centrality in Tripoli, Libya
- Remali Adel Mohammad, Porta Sergio, Romice Ombretta
- The Past, Present and Future of High Streets (2014)
Research Interests
My research sits in three areas: 1. Urban Morphology and Street Network analysis, 2. Construction and Therapy, and 3. Urban Design. Overall, I am trying to set up a scientific approach to urban form production and evolution, with a focus on people/environment relations and direct community construction.
More in detail:
I conduct joint research on street networks and spatial centrality with physicists like Vito Latora, Luciano Da Fontoura Costa and Marc Barthelemy. This research is about mapping centrality in urban spaces and establishing correlations with relevant dynamics such as land-use, vehicular or pedestrian flows, crime and real-estate values. A summary of this stream of research has just been published (http://www.udsu-strath.com/5-publications/5-1-articles/articles-2010-networks-in-urban-design-six-years-of-mca-research/).
I also like to think of street network as one of the many characters of urban form. My recent work is increasingly about the quantitative, systematic and comprehensive approach to urban morphology in a truly evolutionary perspective. That entails the statistical definition and characterization of different types of urban forms (urban form taxa) in order to measure their similarity and ultimately infer “parental” relationships between them; this is named Urban MorphoMetrics. Our first foundational paper in this area is here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/2399808317725075, and the link to urban form resilience is here: http://www.urbanform.org/online_public/2017_1.shtml. But the best is coming up soon. Stay tuned!
I work with students and communities to the real construction of buildings through a process of direct and collective design/construction, named Construction and Therapy, inspired by Chris Alexander. The involvement of end-users throughout three phases (Land Exploration, Pattern Language and Conception&Construction) is a crucial step towards "healing the people and healing the land" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksQ3DSu-X44). This generates a radical re-think of architectural education, that I am experimenting at: www.BuildingBeauty.org.
In urban design and masterplanning, my latest research links up to Urban MorphoMetrics by exploring sustainable/human/resilient urban analysis and design. The theoretical development of my ideas on urbanity and change, as developed thrpugh about 15 years of academic work with colleagues at UDSU (http://www.udsu-strath.com) is presented in Masterplanning for Change, our new book soon on shelves (June 2020) for RIBA Publishing. Preliminary papers are here: http://www.udsu-strath.com/3-research/masterplanning-for-change-design-as-a-way-to-create-the-conditions-for-time-sensitive-place-making/; http://www.udsu-strath.com/5-publications/5-3-udsu-wp/working-papers-2011-plot-based-urbanism/).
Professional Activities
- Proposal for the World Government Summit 2024 organising committee.
- Consultant
- 12/2/2024
- Interdisciplinary Design for the Built Environment
- Participant
- 6/7/2023
- Gathering evidence for policies
- Participant
- 29/6/2023
- Viva of Alain Chiaradia
- External Examiner
- 29/6/2023
- National Slovenian Research Agency (ARRS) (External organisation)
- Advisor
- 2/2023
- Strath Methods series of seminars
- Invited speaker
- 1/9/2022
Projects
- KTP - ADAM Architecture Ltd
- Porta, Sergio (Principal Investigator) Romice, Ombretta (Co-investigator)
- 01-Jan-2023 - 30-Jan-2025
- Advancing a model for transformative cultural heritage development
- Porta, Sergio (Principal Investigator)
- Bid to H2020 "Transforming historic urban areas and/or cultural landscape into hubs of entrepreneurship and social and cultural integration" (Call: H2020-SC5-2019-2).
- 31-Jan-2020 - 31-Jan-2024
- The Urban Form Resilience Project:
- Porta, Sergio (Principal Investigator) Romice, Ombretta (Co-investigator)
- Resilience and urban form: assessing the resilience of spatial systems in cities at the neighbourhood and district scale
- 01-Jan-2017 - 30-Jan-2020
- A new dimension for data-driven urbanism: studying the form of preference
- Romice, Ombretta (Principal Investigator) Porta, Sergio (Co-investigator)
- 01-Jan-2016 - 31-Jan-2017
- Doctoral Training Center in the Built Environment Futures
- Porta, Sergio (Academic) Bradley, Fiona (Academic) Agapiou, Andrew (Academic) Clarke, Joseph Andrew (Academic) Bellingham, Richard (Academic)
- The projects achieved funding for the creation of a new Doctoral Training Center in the Built Environment Future at the Department of Architecture
- 30-Jan-2014
- L'Abitare Futuro (The Future Dwelling)
- Porta, Sergio (Academic) Vigano, Federica (Academic) Rosina, Alessandro (Academic)
- Commission from National Consortium of Construction Cooperatives of Italy for a research on the future of construction cooperatives in Italy.
- 16-Jan-2013 - 31-Jan-2014