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Extract from the foreword: As can be seen from the foreword extract, this is a complex and well-built book, handling a multi-faceted and complicated subject like today's architectural research in Italy. It is a difficult topic, since it is a "work-in-progress" - it is the reality we are experiencing in these years so that we have no temporal distance to allow us to do a critical historical survey. The text was written by different authors: Luigi Prestinenza Puglisi, Marco Brizzi and 2a+p. The latter (a group of young graduates) had the task of developing a strategy for analyzing Italy's architectural scenario, by defining a series of "coordinates" leading to an "operational geography" which also served to the selection of the 14 project groups of which 2a+p also helped write the profiles. The described scenario is wide and heterogeneous, made up of a number of projects, events and relationships not immediately easy to understand. The aim here was to take stock of the situation, rather than to be exhaustive. The critical essay by Prestinenza and Brizzi has the form of an e-mail exchange - it is not the classical essay but a dialogue and an exchange of views via mail. At the beginning of the book, some features of this "generation" are underlined: young (even if this is not always the case), educated by means of foreign publications, journeys abroad and thanks to competitions giving the possibility of measuring oneself. And, obviously, the new information technology: the network. Internet gave the possibility of establishing relationship in different ways and with different languages with respect to previous generations. A community is being founded thanks to the network, and like in any group of friends, there are people often meeting, those who meet every now and then, and so on. A group of people gathering around webzines and forums and writing e-mails to each other A common purpose can be found, as it can every time a community is born: in this instance it is all-round research and experimentation, where everyone is looking for his/her own path and there is a dialogue - together with the risk of being criticized. Some plunged deep down into the virtual world, some others kept a certain degree of concreteness, but the whole group is aware that they are sharing the same atmosphere. Topics about "virtuality" are but a pretext on which to reason on, and today, as never before, the talk is about Matter. In any case there is neither fear nor fanaticism; a critical and aware use of information technology means is here looked for. All this ferment and creativity are slowly bringing our country up, making it emerge from the "black hole" in which Italian architecture has tumbled into for some decades now, as the critic William Menking maintains. According to Puglisi [the theory being also accepted by Brizzi] suck "black hole" is to be identified with University and with an academicism that is not able or does not want to innovate, to be questioned, withdrawn on imaginary defences. The world of university is not working to develop a critical sense and a project culture and this is happening right in a period in which architecture itself is redefining its own nature. On the contrary, there are clear signs of traditionalism without research, as is evident from magazines and exhibitions (like the latest Biennial). The main problem of such a "Restoration" is that it is causing a situation which sounds like "if you cannot beat them, make friends with them!" Some are involved, others are left outside. It's like in the primary school, where the blackboard is divided in two: the good and the bad. The "good" are obviously taken on by the institution, the "bad" end up in a corner and gather dust. As Brizzi notes as a closure, the problem is not so much that of marginalization, rather than that of homologation. The academy is fed on Avant-garde and destroys its own poets... That's all true. That's all right. Or maybe it is not? Is it possible that all these brilliant beginners are so easily absorbed by the black hole, after the many efforts made to get out and after all attempts to escape? Since many "young" graduates had or still have working experiences at university (as professors, assistants, researchers, teachers or pupils in workshops and seminars...) one would have to talk about Academy-virus epidemic... I do not believe that our generation is the victim of a virus. I think it is a simple, aware choice, made partly out of convenience (a fixed salary at the end of the month, prestige, contacts, a "golden shrine" avoiding them the difficult problem of "building") and partly out of a sincere will to give back dignity to universities, believing in the role it plays in research and education. I can understand those who avoid the Faculties because what they experienced was asphyxiating enough and because the work at university would leave them less time for their job, but it will not be through them that our universities can become furnaces of ideas again... I think this network generation loves and hates at the same time
this institution adrift. An institution which they would like to see rise from
its own ashes: our University has not always been a black hole, and let's hope
it won't be such forever...
translated
by Michela Lucchini
GR
-- la generazione della rete Sperimentazioni
nell'architettura italiana 2a+p --
Marco Brizzi -- Luigi Prestinenza Puglisi Ed.
Cooper Castelvecchi Euro 18.00 |
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[03-2004] |
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