Channelbeta - Corrispondenti - culture the first day at palavela

At 10.00 o’clock the gates are opened and the crowd starts going in, then the organizers and the politicians make their appearance and begin to talk with each other under the stage, surrounded of course by journalists and photographers. The architect Badrone, president of the congress, officially opens the Kermesse exposing a number of positive figures that show the Turin Congress as a success beyond the more optimistic expectations; to be honest you could get a different impression if you consider that in that moment the Palavela was half empty. After Badrone the Minister for the arts, Sandro Bondi, takes the word and talks about the beautiful architecture in our country and takes the chance to promise within this summer a new law to support the “good architecture” and to avoid the building monsters that have ruined Italy since the world war II. The minister must often stop his speech because of the audience’s applause. The happy crowd hopes that Bondi’s words are not just sheer propaganda, they hope that the promises will be kept.
Afterward is the turn of the several organizers and Turin local politicians to talk, like Gaetan Siew and Mario Viano, Raffaele Sirica and so on.
After the opening conference the congress addresses the main themes starting a debate on “the language of modern architecture”, moderated by Marco De Michelis and Aaron Betsky, Kengo Kuma and Hani Rashid as guests (Fuskas is not there). De Michelis introduces some questions: how should architecture be defined? How can architecture determine the urban life? How must architecture interact with the environment?
The first to speak is Rashid who list a long series of projects to be realised in the future all over the world. True pieces of design turned into architecture, buildings with different functions and typologies that, at first sight in the different contests, seam to be something like meteors fallen from the outer space. Indeed you can get the impression that such buildings could be set anywhere around the globe. The high graphic quality of the renderings makes look the designs fascinating, nonetheless the audience remains perplexed at the end of Rushid’s intervention, because they haven’t found any answer to De Michelis’questions.
Then is the Kengo Kuma’s time to speak, the participants hope that he can deliver some answers, but like his colleague he presents many elegant projects realized all around the world. The only one that turns this debate in a real talk show as it was originally intended is Aaron Betzky, the chairman of the Venice Biennale. According to him we should look beyond architecture, putting our attention on the problems the people have to face nowadays like the environmental pollution in all its aspects, about this Betzky announces many innovations for the next Biennale.
In the afternoon we assist to the first lectio magistralis of the congress hold by Kengo Kuma. The Japanese architect explains some of his projects, some known and some less known. It is useless now to describe the high quality of Kuma’s design, in each project of his you can recognize the Japanese culture in all its forms: a strong bond with nature, a strong sense of rhythm and spirituality, It is not by chance that Kuma always “look for spirituality using cheap and local raw materials, since it would be too easy to create spiritual spaces using expensive materials.”
Very interesting was the presentation of some by him patented materials that he used in some of his works as for example the “super-organza”, a material similar to organza but thinner and lighter and used in many tea rooms and for the installation of the “casa per tutti” by the Triennale of Milan. Kuma’s dream is to find a new way to build architecture. He presents a water brick, i.e. a brick filled with water that can be assembled following the logic of Lego bricks. This kind of brick allows a better control of the structure’s weight and can be also used as decoration, like a screen and can substitute plumbing equipments. A real flexible system.
Kuma ends his speech reminding us that once each country built using its own local materials and therefore each country had its architectural identity, as for example Japan had wood, Italy had stones etc. We should regain such identities returning to our own materials.
At end of the lectio magistralis the audience leaves the Palavela and moves towards the Lingotto looking for other debates, expositions and conferences.

Davide Di Virgilio - Channelbeta

LINKS:

XXIII UIA World Congress Torino 2008