This book constitutes a first step in the dissemination of a research project led by Maurizio Carones for several years at the Politecnico

di Milano. The work has as its subject the contemporary city,

in this case applying to an area of Milan – and aims to propose effective descriptive tools useful for the project and for teaching. In relation

to the tradition of urban studies the relationship between place

and project is addressed, indicating how the project is an opportunity

to describe places and define their condition of “context” each time. Every place becomes a context only when it is described by the

design process. The representation of the territory declines

in multiplicities determined by the intersection of design problems

and descriptive techniques. In this sense, the contemporary city is both an object of study and a descriptive parameter of the territory.