It has happened before that we paused to reflect on the phenomenon of globalisation and its effects. We have deplored the fact that it refuses to come to an end, leading to a delay in the advent of a sorely needed cultural change.
Yet in view of what is happening today in our now global world, it is worthwhile to devote still more thought to the matter, from an architectural point of view. Compared to the past, our contemporary society is the first to be completely globalised. Whether we like it or not, this is today’s main condition of us being on this Earth. We are global because everything by now is within reach. But we are coming to realise at our own expense is that the extent of this condition does not belong to us as individuals, as living beings. As a person, a human being is indissolubly linked to his physical and intellectual capacities, which are very limited compared to the immensity of the world. Indeed, we know that the world belongs to us only as a cognitive fact, and we also know that we live on an earth inhabited by over 7 billion human beings, each one absolutely different from the next, forming an interminable chain of uniquely dissimilar individuals. Faced with this evidence, we cannot but feel a profound sense of bewilderment caused by the fact that during our lifetime, we will have contact with, get to know, work and live with only a few hundred, at most with a few thousand of these persons – almost none compared to all the others that we will never meet.
A shared point of view is the requirement for architecture to be able to exist
It is so important today to return to a dimension compliant with people’s lives and their primary needs
People visiting and living in Rome must take care of it
But as we were saying, this condition alone is not enough. To take care of the city, one by one, no-one excluded, is a necessary but not sufficient condition. For a rebirth of the city, for what the city has been, for what it represents in the world and could still be today in our contemporaneity, at least one other condition needs to be fulfilled, namely that Rome can, and must, continue to be Rome. Rome cannot afford to be interrupted, and anybody responsible for causing that to happen would pay the consequences. They would be liable for having broken off the age-old construction of this city, its true vocation, its true raison d’être for all humanity. Rome must absolutely be continued; it cannot afford not to. It is not possible to halt this incredible and immense history, unless our contemporary epoch wishes to bear the shame of such a crime and to become for posterity the epoch that killed Rome by its failure to continue it. To continue to make Rome is not an issue of interest solely to Romans or to Italians; it is a question of interest to all. Not taking care of it might one day be recognised as a crime against humanity.
Continuing to make Rome is not a technical or practical issue, but chiefly one of civilisation and culture. In illustration of this, we shall conclude these notes by quoting Thomas Bernard: “Rome is of all cities the most congenial to the mind: it was the ideal city for the ancient mind, and it’s the ideal city for the modern mind – precisely for the modern mind, given the chaotic political conditions that prevail here today. No other city, not even New York, is ideal for the mind, but Rome quite definitely is, beyond all doubt.” [1] To continue to make Rome is our urgency.
1 Thomas Bernhard, Extinction: A Novel, Random House, New York 1995. Originally published in Germany as Auslöschung by Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1986