Self-organization, Spontaneus Consciousness, Crisis and Territorial Cycles. An Interpretation of Saverio Muratori Thought

In the thought of Saverio Muratori, the territory is the organic unity that defines the meaning and limits of reality. In the built environment, nature (interpreted and modified by human activity) and cultural processes achieve the maximum levels of synthesis all those processes that, together, define a civilization. The territory, in its ongoing rebuild, continually redefines the materials and the logic inherited from previous eras. The evolution of territorial structures that arises from this dynamic can be seen as a cyclical process in which the succession of different crisis cause, from time to time, change in the structures of a civilization. In this process, we can identify the dialectic between nature and culture and between technology and ethics. In this paper, we will investigate the role that the processes that the "self-organization" play into this cyclical and relational dynamic of territorial transformation. New forms and patterns (physical and social) emerge trough e relational process. The self-organization processes characterize the period when a settled population build its environment through the spontaneous consciousness. Conversely, historical periods characterized by “crisis” are those in which the self-organizational processes lose their impulse and the control technologies (physical and social) arise together the critical consciousness. The creative role of liberating self-organizational processes so is opposed to the processes of a “planning” authority. The dynamic between freedom and control, and between spontaneous and critical consciousness can be a key by which to read the transformations of territories in the present age of globalization and radical urban transformations.