Līmĕs vs Līmĕn. Architettura, infrastruttura, paesaggio/Līmĕs vs Līmĕn. Architecture, Infrastructure, Landscape

This essay explores three conditions of limit among the many possible ones related to the reflection on architecture, infrastructures, and landscape. The analysis of some texts from the literature and the comparison with some examples of realized (or just designed) works will support the critical comparison between limit typologies, intervention strategies, and effective results in physical and spatial terms. Of course, this theme can be discussed on multiple investigation scales and in multiple fields. The theme of the limit belongs to various sectors of scientific research, philosophical speculation, the phantasy of literary invention and poetic sensitivity, energy and environmental problems, and to our way of being in the world itself. At the same time, it is evident that, even though conditions and definitions of limit influence each other and there is no univocal one, here this term is intended in its strictly architectural-spatial meaning. Of course, this requires necessary selections, schematizations, omissions, and sometimes abrupt deletions. The reflection on the theme of the limit can be divided into three steps: the first one is introductory and definitional, establishes its original etymology as an operational lexicon; the second one is central and more complex and individuates, analyzes, and compares the different possible spatial conditions; the third and last step proposes three possible design actions, through the exemplification of direct cases, intervention modalities in which the concept of limit is discussed and overcome.