The idea of a “campus” or protected place where students can learn, derives more from the recent American examples than from those of the European universities. The project of a campus is basically that of a theme park, even in the most literal sense of the integration with the greenery of structures devoted to education and study. On the contrary, the Italian model is that of a miniature city devoted to a specific discipline; for example, we speak of a citadel of music or sports, and the reference model has more of an urban than of a natural setting. The most significant examples from this standpoint are the construction during the Fascist era of the “University City of Rome” and, after the war, of “Cinecittà”, where the suffix “city”, beyond the mere terminological aspect, referred specifically to the model of an orderly group of buildings arranged along streets and plazas, while the thematic and mono-functional aspect was guaranteed by an actual enclosure around the perimeter of the area. The issue appears to concern completely different landscapes, therefore, just as the different ways of living may refer in one case to the agricultural world linked to the countryside, and thus to low-density models, and in another to the life of a community that makes vicinity and intensity a precise advantage in favor of social and cultural interaction. Between the two poles, there is a wide range of cases and examples that affect a project in interactive or hybrid dimensions depending, obviously, also on the location of the structures with respect to the context. In any case, the word campus almost always refers to a complex dimension of living connected with the activity of performing – in the same area or even in the same building – many everyday activities beyond the main educational function, such as sleeping, eating and studying, and may also include spaces for engaging in sports, leisure activities and amusements.

From a purely “stylistic” standpoint, we have the early examples, dating from the late 19th century and early 20th, where the decorative aspect and ornamental design of the buildings expressed the high cultural but also social level of the “college” intended for the “high-born” children of the wealthier classes, while more recent cases have been obliged to reduce the costs of building and maintenance, resulting in a more economical architectural trend which mirrors a mode of conduct lacking in distractions and exclusively devoted to education.

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