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The work of the architect, as it was considered in the beginning of the Twentieth Century, gradually started to lose importance, to fade and to become empty. In order to react to this situation a deep reflection is required. Perhaps the “new architect”, reinvented and updated to the needs of our time, could become a friend, a scientist and a philosopher suited for the art of caring, required for the survival and the clever fruition of our huge historical, artistic and material heritage.

Four years after the 2012 earthquake, the PA in Ferrara is analysing the targets achieved during the emergency stage, and what has still to be done. Specifically, future plans concern investments in the improvement of monumental assets, through the use of funds for post-earthquake reconstruction already allocated by Region Emilia Romagna.
In recent years the critical phase of an instant design has been determined by emergency criteria, but at the same time with a forward-looking perspective. Such interventions would have spaced in time and formed a huge potential for the valorisation and the recovery of building heritage, characterised by outstanding historical and cultural value, heterogeneous and marked by time. With this in mind, the city now moves towards the operational side of these construction sites, and on the other hand the scheduling of successive phases aimed to improve exhibiting capacity and attractiveness of museums, which shall be connected programmes of high interest.
Hence, a number of development and restoration strategies of many museums in Ferrara have started. Among these, the Palazzo Bevilacqua-Massari and Palazzina Cavalieri di Malta complex, which is part of the new ‘Polo Museale di Arte Moderna e Contemporanea,’ has been undergoing proposals for extension that involve the nearby Palazzo dei Diamanti, Palazzo Prosperi Sacrati, and Palazzo Bevilacqua.
The restoration intervention then is planned according to the provision of funds. That is, the 1st area, currently under tender for the allocation of work—therefore to start immediately—aimed at repairing and improving structural post quake along with the restoration of the exterior facades; the 2nd area, consisting of five excerpts, intended gradually to the realization of the project of restoration and functional adaptation of the museum complex, for which the preliminary design has already completed, and for which the PA offices are preparing to processing of the executive one.
The preliminary project has concerned the entire development and involved a number of issues, and many stakeholders on multiple fields. Structural studies, detailed analysis of decorated rooms for the characterisation of materials and detection of installations problems, stratigraphic and historical researches, geological surveys and archaeological research, were aimed at understanding the complex evolution of the building, and to tackle with awareness and specific scope the project of redevelopment and restoration.

Big data are an increasingly pervasive presence in contemporary cities: on the one hand, the devices that can track movements, preferences and consumptions are growing; on the other hand, continuous is the development of analyses that use these data to represent urban phenomena with increasing precision. Beyond the enthusiasm for the new analytical and operational opportunities made available by technologies, it is important to investigate what kind of city big data describe and help to create. The increasingly massive use of algorithms to elaborate information and provide solutions raises some issues on the value of big data for urban problems, especially as for the completeness and the plurality of the representations they provide. While cities are continuously changing, the exclusive use of big data may instead limit the variable nature of the city as a place of continuous experimentation and free expression.

“Si faccia di mattoni grandi ... i quali si murino con quello spinapesce sarà deliberato per chi l’avrà a conducere … e murisi con gualandrino con tre corde…”, quote from Rapporto dei Provveditori of 24th January 1426.
This paper focuses on how the brick bond and masonry pattern are configured inside the dome of the Santa Maria del Fiore Cathedral in Florence, Italy.
“Herringbone” is the word that’s always used to describe it, but there’s hardly a mention of the true nature of the three-dimensional layers of bricks in the dome’s spatial geometry. This paper intends to address these issues and provide a likely and plausible hypothesis. Said hypothesis is founded on a very special three-dimensional, reciprocal interaction of its bricks, and is verified by virtual models and physical prototypes. The questions this paper intends to answer are:
_How to reach static equilibrium of masonry with or without the contribution of mortars, or else before the final (very slow) setting time of lime mortar – just by relying upon  their three-dimensional reciprocal bonding.
_How to lay such three-dimensional reciprocal bricks on a ring bed with a centre around which all the bricks are aligned, and thus build a shell as a solid of revolution. This the only kind of dome which may be constructed without scaffolding or ribs, as testified by Leon Battista Alberti in De re aedificatoria, Lib.III Cap XIV.
_How to lay these bricks using a very particular device, the so-called gualandrino (a kind of geometric square rule with three rulers not just the usual two), in order to obtain spatial coordinates beyond those two in the plan of brick layers. From this point of view all former and current references to Brunelleschi’s masterwork do not refer to normal, traditional bricks. Instead we discuss the the very unusual, outsized bricks which he himself designed and modelled by cutting experimental shapes from enormous turnips. Their design was so particular that he oversaw their manufacture personally, even as far as the furnaces.
This research indicates a possible procedure that would allow the construction of whole or parts of masonry domes using a non-traditional type of brick, through mountable and demountable reciprocal interaction. Moreover we have employed a parametric modelling software which enables us to generate different shapes by varying the ruling algorithm.