Channebeta - Speciale - (Domus) Dulcis Domus

At last I succeeded in having a copy of Domus yesterday. I cannot but congratulate the new director. I expected a lot less, in spite of my personal consideration for Stefano Boeri, because I imagined inevitable editorial compromise. When I asked the newsagent the January issue, I was distracted by the big font writings on the cellophane, but then I was reassured when reading the names. A bit sceptic, but with the utmost curiosity, I unwrapped the magazine, and Domus's true soul came out of the plastic skin, revealing itself to be totally in contrast with the packaging, full of names and logos. The cover has no special effects and does not attract attention due to bright colours or sinuous shapes or any other aesthetic virtuosity. It's an old black and white photograph: "Milan, May 30, 1968. A group of artists and a hundred architecture students want to hinder the 14th Triennial's inauguration..." The cover picture is spread over two sheets, Giancarlo De Carlo is at the centre of the scene but is not immediately visible: one discovers him when he unfolds the magazine cover, which becomes a self-standing part besides being the content display window. "Better than an editorial. Such cover - an editorial-cover, as I would call it - seems to me an idea worth exploiting and emphasizing," writes Luigi Prestinenza Puglisi with full right on his PresS/Tletter. All in all, the cellophane with printed names and logos can be accepted, if it is the price to be paid for a new editorial space on the cover. This is a choice that could disappoint some of the readers, who could think that the absence of a traditional editorial is a lack, or that the choice of a historical picture is driven by the inability of facing contemporaneity without exposing oneself. These are superficial interpretations that could deceive those who are accustomed to skim through the pages without reading them. Contemporaneity is no temporal concept. That image, together with the few comment lines, is in fact one of the most beautiful editorials in Domus, both for its content and for the synthetic way it is conveyed. And its meaning is full of contemporaneity. Boeri sees the architecture as "the way to understand the world" and displays contents, puts communication upside-down and uses images to underline them. All this is also confirmed by a "small" detail at the bottom left - "monthly magazine of Architecture, Design, Art and Information", where the latter replaces Communication. Two faces of the same medal, but which put a different emphasis on the individual: as an object in the first instance, as subject and user in the second.

But what do we find beyond the cover? I do not spend time on such news as the production diagram, which I consider very interesting and definitely not self-gratulatory, as Luigi Prestinenza Puglisi says, even if I would have rather put it at the end. But I agree with him in that "joining the events calendar to the reviews is an excellent idea, for it eliminates the useless dualism between news and comments." However, these are but details. From this point on, reading Domus is a real crescendo. The guided tour of the Dutch embassy in Berlin by OMA, told by means of the cartoons technique, is original and just appropriate for this kind of article, it brings you inside the building just in the same way as when one read Dylan Dog's stories. This is followed by 10 intense pages devoted to Cedric Price's Fun Palace. A project of the 60s by "one" who declared himself an anti-architect, and another instance of timeless contemporaneity.
With his usual lucidity, Giancarlo De Carlo's essay tells us about the Mediterranean city as an alternative to the Central-European city, of its qualities and contradictions. An objective and aware discourse that covers rationally, synthetically and without generalising delicate aspects of changes in a Mediterranean city like Barcelona, pointing out the role of architecture as an urban element triggering changes in the city, which is seen as a live organism having its own precise identity. De Carlo's essay prepares us from the viewpoint of critic and serves as an introduction to the following reportage, "Urban Investigation: Barcelona Forum 2004" by Matteo Poli and Mirko Zardini with photographs by Olivo Barbieri. Barcelona opens up to another mutation. After the 1992 Olympic Games, the authors maintain that "Barcelona tried to propose itself as European Cultural Capital or as the seat of a new International Exhibition. The aim was that of accomplishing the process of urban transformation, gathering the necessary resources around another great event. Having failed these attempts, Maragall (Mayor of Barcelona at that time) succeeded in making Barcelona host of the Universal Forum of Cultures from May to September 2004."

Cino Zucchi's text on Gino Valle is an aside intended to recall one of the greatest Italian architects of the last fifty years, aside which paves the way to the Mediterranean "Solid Sea", a text about the tragic shipwreck happened along Sicily southern coast on Christmas Eve 1996. The presence of the new director and of his "multiplicity" are felt in this part of the magazine. It seems we are far from architecture, however we are closer than we could figure out. As a matter of fact, multiplicity investigates history in that it is made of faces, of death, of terror; it fully analyses history in order to understand reality and trace its macroscopic paths. Francesco Jodice examines the crime scene of a terrible family homicide ("Crime Spaces: The Crandell Case") in the same way and with the same intensity but with a completely different language. He reconstructs the facts through photographs, maps and direct evidences.

One has to have another break before going ahead with Bruno Latour's philosophy-anthropology essay "Can a non-modern style exist today?". This new Domus is tough, one has to master it. Then the reading becomes more fluent, with Kazuyo Sejima's project "The nest in the plum orchard", a real architectural masterpiece and a great example of harmony between architect and client.
What strikes a lot about this new Domus is the little space devoted to design, in which the focus is not on the object in itself, but on what it represents. Thus, Jasper Morrison tells us about his "household appliances".

Hans Ulrich Obrist's interview to Ludovico Magistretti is just in the middle of the magazine. Obrist is the thread of the discourse, he acts as a network to connect the various protagonists of the issue; he really loves chatting with artists and has done this for many years, often bringing a tape-recorder with him. He was the curator of the Utopia Station exhibition held at the latest Art Biennial of Venice in which there was also Boeri, and "Interviews vol I", a work still in project, ambitious and enormous, including more than 400 interviews to the most interesting front men of contemporary culture, has been recently published. Rather than interviews, these are real conversations in which Obrist himself is involved. Among these conversations are many different names - architects, directors, artists, philosophers - including those featured in this issue of Domus. One of the 66 interviews is on board an aircraft with Stefano Boeri, then with Giancarlo De Carlo, Rem Koolhaas, Kazuyo Sejima and Philippe Parremo, Algerian artist who wrote the next article, "After Effect" (like Boeri, he, too, was invited by Obrist to take part in Utopia Station on the occasion of the latest Art Biennial of Venice), as well as Maurizio Cattelan, who wrote the final piece, "el topo", closing January's issue. The interview to Vico Magistretti in Obrist's style is rather an interesting conversation and confrontation between two clever people.
I would like to conclude stating that it would have been fine to read a final editorial by Dejan Sudjic on Domus December issue; unfortunately, the gist of his discourse was sort of "I worked really hard in Milan for 4 years, travelling around Europe, here and there, always on the move, always on a plane … luckily enough, thanks to this I discovered a lot of interesting things …and I must say that working for Domus, too, was a real privilege, the editorial staff was patient and efficient... … I'm glad to leave this task to Boeri … well, it was hard, but after all it was also funny. I'm going back to London now -things run much better down there... …London is better than Milan…. even as far as fashion is concerned … Believe me, do as I did, come to London."
Sudjic's advice could seem instrumental, but let's take it as it could be true; for the moment, however, let's look elsewhere, where something may be really changing.

Gianluigi D'Angelo

Translated by Michela Lucchini