Abstract:

The paper presents the first outcomes of a multi-disciplinary didactic experimentation carried out "on site" in the MItigation Risk Design (MiRiDe) workshop promoted by the School of Architecture, Urban Planning, Construction Engineering of the Politecnico di Milano and aimed at developing some life skills to enhance self-awareness considering the risks underlying relational dynamics.

The transversal theme is represented by the investigation of the places of living with the aim of identifying (starting from different disciplinary perspectives) the elements of uniqueness and the characteristics that make a place unique. By consciously crossing, visiting and inhabiting a geographical space, it is transformed into a place and allows one to initiate a process of knowledge of the place that is able (through a process of analogy and similarity) to initiate a reflection on the individual participant. The history of the city becomes the history of men and women, the phases of city construction can represent the seasons of a person's life, wars and destructions are metaphors for labours, wounds and failures.

The work is organised in four parts:
- The first part, after introducing the MiRiDe Workshop, presents the motivations that led to the conception of the CityTelling training course. The specific objectives of the course, methodological approach, and chosen didactic forms emerge from the disciplinary comparison between architecture, the history of the city and the territory, psychology and philosophical anthropology.
- The second part brings together the theoretical references of the individual disciplines with the aim of understanding the specific elements that make up the multidisciplinary project. Some of the themes introduced are: places of abandonment, caring, the relationship between memory and remembrance, and the recovery of identity.
Particular attention was paid to the theme of the reconstruction of identity after a traumatic event: preserved, accepted in its gaps, lost, transfigured.
- The third part presents an itinerary in the historical centre of Bergamo Alta (a town in the north of Italy) created during the workshop. Going through the city, stops were identified at some significant points, where multidisciplinary activities were proposed to experiment how the investigation of the city's buildings can become an opportunity to investigate oneself. A particular study was made considering the interventions on Bergamo's historic centre starting from Luigi Angelini's recovery plan carried out between 1926 and 1938. The comparison between the pre-intervention situation, the realisation of the interventions and contemporary reality allowed aspects and themes to emerge such as: changes, mutations and transformations, the traces of history between permanence and variations, time and needs.
The various materials for presenting, supporting and re-elaborating the activities are collected and illustrated, specifying the role of the individual contributions.
- The fourth part summarises the reinterpretation of the course and presents the effects on the participants' training (in terms of "change of gaze", aptitude for critical observation, skills relating to the narration of the city and one's own personal history) and identifies possible developments of the training course.

Keywords:

City history, awareness, self-knowledge, life skills.