(Dis)continuity fury: digital fragments for townscape narrative

Contemporary cities appear as fragmented and discontinuous organisms, shaped by heterogeneous temporalities and overlapping spatial conditions that escape any unitary reading. In this scenario, architectural drawing can no longer aim at objective or definitive representation, but becomes an active and critical practice capable of translating dynamic perceptions into new visual narratives. Rapid digital survey techniques intensify this process, enabling the capture of urban complexity through accelerated, selective, and often unconscious acts of acquisition. This paper presents the outcomes of the international educational and research project SPEEDY – faSt Photogrammetry and lasEr tEchniques for Digital urban surveYing, which investigated rapid urban documentation as a tool for knowledge, interpretation, and reactivation of historic public spaces. Through an intensive didactic workshop, students employed fast survey methods and digital drawing practices to produce point clouds, simplifi ed models, digital collages, and immersive virtual tours. These outputs were conceived as open and interpretative images, capable of revealing latent spatial qualities and supporting critical narratives and design hypotheses. The research highlights how rapidity, understood as a cultural and cognitive category rather than a merely technical one, fosters selective observation, synthesis, and a simultaneous imagination of urban space.