Now that the celebrations surrounding the thousandth issue of Domus are over, we are left with a vivid awareness of the extraordinary human adventure undertaken by this magazine throughout its almost century-long history – an adventure recognised for the occasion by the large community of Domus as well as by a wider world.
I would like therefore to publicly thank first of all our publisher, Maria Giovanna Mazzocchi Bordone, and then those who have edited this magazine before me: Alessandro Mendini, Mario Bellini, Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani, François Burkhardt, Deyan Sudjic, Stefano Boeri, Flavio Albanese and Joseph Grima, who readily and enthusiastically contributed to the preparation of its issue 1000. To all of them I am profoundly grateful. Last but not least, I am particularly indebted to my indefatigable editorial staff. Month after month, they enable an impressive number of people and scholars to make their invaluable contributions to Domus, transforming contents, copy and projects into well-composed pages ready to be printed, so that each new issue can, nearly always on time, reach the newsstand and our readers. I want to express my gratitude for their marvellous work. The landmark number reached by this magazine in March was greeted first with jubilation, but also with a degree of perturbation. For its history, albeit written and vigorously endorsed by eminent figures from our recent past – and starting from Gio Ponti and Gianni Mazzocchi – belongs by now to each and all of us without exclusion.
I would like this Domus to be defined as “the magazine that tells stories”
A renewed role for criticism is essential today, on a par with the change that we would like to see in the field of architectural design