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OMA Rem Koolhaas
Toyo
Ito
Zaha Hadid
MVRDV
Massimiliano
Fuksas
Renzo Piano
Norman
Foster
Peter Eisenman
Frank
Gehry
Steven Holl
Jean
Nouvel
Herzog & de Meuron
Alvaro
Siza
.....
...
These
and some other names stand out in very large letters on magazine covers, most
of all the glossy ones; magazines that turned to be a kind of investment in a
world where the number of copies decrease day after day and the costs, in spite
of the contribution of the advertisers, remain very expensive. No one means to
contest the quality of their works, on the contrary it is evident and right that
they should enjoy a certain visibility. The problem is that if you look in the
Italian magazines you get the impression that just what we call “the star system's
pack of cards” really exists. Just the old same pack of cards that they shuffle
and reshuffle to present month after month a different combination trying to satisfy
readers and advertisers. The latter can sometimes influence the editorial lines
of the few editors in chief that would like to try alternative and more intellectual
cuts. Sponsors are not interested in a new target that could appreciate such a
kind of editorial line, they look for professionals that can afford to buy their
products. This way there is not much place left to be dedicated to young architects,
the ones that never stand in the spotlight, and to their original ideas. This
very attitude created a gap between the Italian society and the contemporary culture,
a gap that has characterized our country in the last fifty years. Abroad the same
phenomenon is less evident, maybe because all over the world a propitious cultural
contest helped the development of good architecture. Maybe it is time to change
our perspective. In Holland an average family moves in a new house every seven
year; the Dutch architecture is fresh and original and reflects a society always
looking for the new. Abroad the architecture magazines are not read just by the
architects, but also by different kinds of interested people. People are apt to
a more modern taste. The Italian cultural contest is on one hand flattened by
the weight of its own historical inheritance on the other hand it feeds the love
of the average through magazines, that combine kitsch, vernacular and ethnic modes
to give birth to real domestic monstrosities.
It exists also a thick nebula
of hundreds pseudo magazines with a limited circulation that use the publishing
trade as a mean to promote themselves. Unfortunately a lot of academic magazines
written in the architecture departments in the Italian universities belong to
the latter category.
A Flood of publications that made our country worth to
be listed in the Guinness World Records as the country with the biggest number
of architecture magazines. What a satisfaction. Fortunately there are exceptions
as Parametro, Gomorra and
2A+P.
The
digital world, in spite of the convenience and practicality of the mean presents
a paradox, the number of architecture sites is a big deal smaller. The prevalent
attitude has mainly a functional character leading to the mere absence of critical
contents. You can find also database websites that are updated in a chaotic way
by the users and become a maze of information without any hierarchy. A different
kind of small web communities is represented by “webzines”, sites created to offer
different and alternative contents from the ones you usually find in the press.
Internet grew in an exponential way in the last years allowing the circulation
of an amount of ideas unthinkable in the past. The value of the webzines is now
acknowledged, they are called “digital magazines” and their user are consequently
called “readers”. After a phase of scepticism and mistrust between the press and
the web today we witness to a phase of melting .
In the last years we witnessed
to a real exchange: on one hand the web organized events, conferences, international
festivals, and also printed its own paper collections like the one published by
Archphoto, on the other
hand paper magazines started to develop their own websites with good results and
quality like Domus or remained
faithful to their editorial line and didn’t enter the new media like Casabella.
This
choice is not easy to understand if we think that in 2011 the New York times will
exist just in its digital form.
In this report we can’t omit the importance
of Luigi Prestinenza
Puglisi who whose news letters and his websites cleared the way for the digital
universe in the architecture world. His fame as a critic and divulger, a fame
due to his book “Rem Koolhaas trasparenze metropolitane”, increased through the
net, allowed him to publish with even more success his following books.
To
complete this review we have to pay attention to the other media as television
with the satellite channel n° 850 "ACM
Architecture Construction Materials Channel”, which, although with at the
moment limited broadcast programming, provides interesting services, or as the
radio on line "Good Morning
Architecture" directed by Luca Molinari
Our magazine Channelbeta is
to be collocated inside this editorial world. We can boast a six year experience
and have an archive with hundreds of pages and thousands of news.
Renewed
in its structure, with a new editorial
board, more interested in architecture than in architects, presenting the
works of promising architects and of totally unknown ones beside more famous names,
without any prejudice. We will continue to exist providing our critical approach,
and as it always happened when necessary we will disturb the too easy praising
of the main line. We will carry on with our Copy-free politics and make our contents,
both in texts and imagines, always available to our readers. Finally I take this
occasion to greet and thank the former editorial board. A particular thank goes
to Andrea Pinna who now directs with Tommaso Michieli the very successful digital
magazine Under-Construction.
I thank also Anthony Bellezza and Emanuela Bonvecchi whose engagement turned out
to be very important for Michela Lucchini by her translation work; thank to her
Channelbeta reached the goal to have a rate of foreign readers of more than 50%,
giving young architects the chance to achieve a deserved visibility.
Gianluigi
D'Angelo Translated
by Pietro De Berardinis
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