Spazio urbano come luogo. Camillo Sitte e il ruolo della visione nella Modernità

This paper would like to suggest that what Camillo Sitte put forward in his famous book is not simply an operative theory of urban design, but more significantly an art theory of urban form. The first one that was constituted, probably, independently from the architectural artistic discourse. Sitte was familiar with the 19th century epistemological discoveries on physiological optics, as the G. Collins & C. Crasemann Collins, D. Wieczorek and others have already noticed. What this paper illustrates is a more detailed reconstruction of his process of theorising, with the aim of making evident how indebted his theory was, both in physiological and psychological terms, to the new discoveries of an optically constructed space. Such an understanding may allow to place Sitte and his art theory of urban form in Modernity and to throw new light on the reasons that led Albert E. Brinckmann to so strongly criticise him and more contemporary architects and planners to periodical reappraisals of his work.