Time to act

In June’s Domus editorial Nicola Di Battista affirms that architecture must be describable and that a project should always belong to a theoretical apparatus that determines and sustains it.

We have long maintained in this magazine that everybody’s priority is to be as contemporary as possible. Firstly, so that they can live their lives fully and with the keenest awareness. Secondly, in order not to continue to pursue facile nostalgias for this or that past, or to become useless prophets of this or that future.

This is a civil necessity, to live the time allotted to us in the best possible way. Depending on the job we each do, it is also a disciplinary necessity. If, moreover, the job happens to be that of an architect, then what we have said is true to the umpteenth power. For this reason many of our reflections have been mainly focused on the conditions attached to our time. These identify the urgencies, but also the weaknesses, that would enable us to choose how to live in it, and not simply to submit to it as an unalterable reality. As these reflections of ours gradually proceed however, there emerges a striking anomaly which is noticeable depending on whether they are approached from a civil point of view or from that of our discipline. In the first case we could rely on an extensive debate and on an equally extensive literature. These sufficiently precise and defined viewpoints could be accepted or confuted. In all events, these were always indispensable materials, available to anyone wishing to concern themselves with such matters.

The lack of a conscious and militant criticism has for too long deprived us of something that is instead crucial to our craft

Conversely, this did not happen within the disciplines that deal with design in the broad sense of the term, where literary output remained nevertheless high and many-coloured in terms of quantity, though unfortunately very much inferior in its contents and reliability. In this case the lack of a conscious and militant criticism has for too long deprived us of something that is instead crucial to our craft. This criticism has been constantly missing for a long time. So far however, scant attention has been paid to that absence, engaged as we have probably been in grappling with issues considered more structural, such as the economic crisis, the modernisation of the professions, or the advent of new revolutionary technologies on the market. Indeed, precisely this lack had seemed to many to be actually a good thing. They felt that it would allow them a greater freedom in their work, as something that would not restrain their inspiration and creativity. Not having to submit to any critical judgement, while answering for their work only to themselves and not to others, seemed almost a liberation.

Today, instead, when we begin to see around us a new and more aware atmosphere, favourable to change, long awaited and now seemingly at last within reach, not to be able to count on real criticism has become intolerable. We cannot go on thinking we can get away with anything or its opposite. Until just recently, with no new era, fresh start or new possibilities visible on the horizon, we were only complaining of a lack of criticism without stressing its urgency. Now that the conditions for change exist again, this absence has suddenly become more irksome and acute, aware as we are that it might not only be of no help to the change in progress but actually cause it to fail, making it ineffective. If these are the conditions of our time, it is from them that we need to start again. We have to take stock of these conditions and, where necessary, try to change them so that they do not obstruct our endeavours. Our actions must move back onto the centre stage and what we do, what we can do under the set conditions, must become our true touchstone, identity and value. The product of our deeds must be our sole means of actively participating in the dynamics dictated by the times that we live in.

To put things in their proper order, more than a decade has passed since the beginning of our century. Yet, the passage from one century to another seems to have been marked only by staggering technological advances. In this same period, the quality of people’s lives seems to have been marking time. Not always have changes actually improved our lives. Particular interests have prevailed over collective ones. Walls are back, new barriers have been erected, and hard-won freedoms have been restricted. In a word, people are worse off today than a while ago; or rather, they have ceased to cherish the hope of living a better life. The dire economic crisis, as too the existential one, that has so deeply affected our recent years, has also completely reversed the point of view, the expectations of progress cultivated and pursued by humanity, to the point where many have again raised issues to do with “what” needs to be done and “why”.

We cannot ask architects to step into the critic’s shoes as well. Since it is important at this time to act, we need to understand whether there is anything architects can do straight away

People have realised that a true civilised and united progress can come only from a major change, capable of embracing the whole of our lives and not just the profession we practise. For some time now, our attitude to the present has altered radically, as have our expectations for our future. The political and institutional failure of public, national and international bodies to provide convincing and plausible answers to the conflicts and to the grievous problems afflicting humankind today has created a sort of collective and fairly generalised feeling of deep mistrust in the capacity of today’s consolidated power to cope with the issues facing it and to make the right choices. It is a sentiment that has risen from the grass roots, independently in different countries. Although it has not flowed into a single movement, it is essentially agreed on the necessity to urgently find a new way forward for our civilised living, for our coexistence. To achieve that end, it is necessary to totally reconsider our lifestyles and our models of development.

It is clear now that all this has profound repercussions on our lives as well as our professions. In particular, it deeply affects all those disciplines concerned with habitation. Among these, architecture is the one most affected by what is happening around us at present and the theme Reporting from the front chosen by the 15th Venice Architecture Biennale directed by Alejandro Aravena, which opened recently, clearly bears witness to the historical moment in which we are living. Going back to the present absence of a criticism to analyse, discuss and judge what a discipline produces, it is easy to note the difficulties encountered by architects in finding their bearings and responding through their work to the multiple public and private needs specified by their various clients. At the same time, however, we cannot ask architects to step into the critic’s shoes as well. Since it is important at this time to act, we need to understand whether there is anything architects can do straight away and it is important that this be done. So this brings us back to that collective sentiment described above which, coupled with a new awareness – likewise now widespread and shared –, compels us to no longer disregard the obligations and duties attached to our habitation on this earth: from the consumption of land to that of energies and to a renewed attention to public space.

We are under an obligation to protect and look after the places and territories we live in, being uniquely unrepeatable and passed down to us by others. It would be disastrous to lose them and it is also our duty to prevent their loss as best we can, by all available means, critical or not critical. It is indispensable for architects, like other professionals, to know their craft inside out but this is not enough because, as we have seen, they must be as closely attuned as possible to their times. They cannot be either nostalgic or futurable but only contemporary. While others need not necessarily be contemporary, architects are compelled to be so, on pain of decadence. Only the spirit of their times can inform the architect on what to do and what not to do. Only after a decision has been taken can they at last concentrate on their work with dedication and passion, guided by their craft and its rules.

If architects want once again to be authoritative, if they see their craft as a civil service, they must first of all describe what they do

Action is indispensable to the architect. Only by doing and from the fruit of what they do can they grasp the sense of their work and the verifications they were looking for to answer their queries and doubts, their perplexities. Only the fruit of their work, once completed, will enable them to produce another. In this eternal repetition, the role of the critic is clearly important because it adds meaning to the inherent sense of their efforts and compares it with similar works done by others. Architects cannot pretend to act as this would be discovered immediately. They can only develop projects, with or without clients. With their work they can transfigure into architectural forms the contents proposed by their times, the contents elaborated by the spirit of their times, defined and made available to all. At the moment, and under the given conditions, if architects want their work to be once again a protagonist of human life, if they want once again to be authoritative in what they do, if they see their craft as a civil service, they must first of all describe what they do In the absence of criticism and pending its desired return, the architect can, as of now, make their work more intelligible, simply by describing it.

The mere fact of being able to describe their work would be a useful step forward. It would also regain trust and credibility in their efforts, no longer the fruit of a momentary and inexplicable creative raptus but rather the result of a long, lasting and for the most part describable work; never a bizarre and strange act, but always a pondered and conscious effort. The describability of a project is certainly no guarantee of its quality but a project that cannot be described, that defies description, is certainly a bad project or at any rate a project of no interest to us. We think that the describability of what we do today is the zero degree of our endeavours, below which we cannot descend. This must be expected, just as a project should always belong to a theoretical apparatus that determines and sustains it. But that is another story.