Paola Viganò will make you fall in love with the periphery, that undefined territory she explores with such interest. This summer, at the invitation of A and Bozar, the Italian architect and urban planner – a lecturer, researcher and co-founder, alongside Bernardo Secchi, of the Studio practice – is turning her attention to Belgium. Our country, which she has been exploring for over twenty years to shape her thinking and her projects, will take centre stage in a three-part programme comprising an exhibition, a conference and a summer school dedicated to the ‘horizontal metropolis’ – a vision of the future that is said to be already taking shape across our regions.

Elodie Degavre (A+) – Paola Viganò, you took an interest very early on in areas that had been neglected by spatial planning professionals. To better understand your approach, we need to take a step back. You are an architect and urban planner. What lies behind the combination of these two terms?

Paola Viganò (PV) – In my view, there is a tradition – Italian, but no doubt more widespread – of continuity between architecture and urban planning. I often say that my first experience of a so-called ‘territorial’ plan took place in the province of La Spezia, with Bernardo Secchi. I had no idea what a provincial territorial coordination plan was. I approached this topic without knowing either the procedures or the planning tools. For someone coming from a background in architecture – and who therefore has a curiosity about space and its various scales – the best starting point for approaching urban planning is space itself, with its tangible objects that embody practices and imaginations. And not the mechanisms and rules of a ‘discipline’ or established procedures. I’d say it’s fair to say that one becomes an urban planner from being an architect, and that urban planning is the gradual development of an understanding of space; it’s not a hat one can simply pop on one’s head. In my view, there is no divide between these two worlds, architecture and urban planning. A project does not belong to one field or the other.