If Milan could regain its former self

September’s editorial explores the idea to build a  cultural community of people that first of all wish to share our need to forcefully assert the rights of the common good in terms of habitation today.

This is an invitation to work on the construction of a fresh start with the capacity to overcome once and for all a hefty chunk of our recent past.

This is precisely from whence we wish to start, placing emphasis on the urgent need to identify, express and pursue the terms of this resolution to be implemented as soon as possible, quickly, because our contemporaneity is very complicated. Too many things have accumulated in recent years and have together created an inextricable quagmire that is out of control and bloated beyond all limits. What is needed is a burst of pride, to start afresh from the good things we have available around us, leaving everything else aside.

The first action to be taken is to define the terms of this new road to travel. We are not proposing a movement or a new ism, a new fashion or trend, at least not for the time being, but simply a way of being, of living with our times, in our places and with our professions in a dignified and bold manner. In other editorials we have expressed the determination of our magazine, and of us with it, to build a Domus community: a cultural community of people that first of all wish to share our need to forcefully assert the rights of the common good in terms of habitation today.

We know that this community is already beginning to exist and becoming increasingly numerous, and although it may not yet be organised and materially visible, it is already alert and busy. For the moment, each of its members is expressing himself on his own, attentive and on the lookout for opportunities to start the task, roll up his sleeves, put himself to the test and try his strength.

We have also already manifested the need for our magazine – whose subtitle Domus la città dell’uomo (“the city of humankind”) was chosen to make its intentions clear – to undertake departures from the editorial office to go directly to the places, territories and institutions of interest to us.

As a matter of fact, this is what we are already doing. This month, two international summer schools organised by three Italian universities – Pescara, Cagliari and Alghero – are dedicating a whole day to Domus along with hundreds of students and teachers. It will be a break in their study days that is full of events and guests, serving to compare notes and discuss with honesty and sincerity the issues that are closest to our hearts, firstly as citizens and then as architects. The subjects are connected to the condition of living in the best way possible today.
Domus 994, editoriale
Domus 994, editorial

As we are tenaciously trying to do, it is essential for us to build a cultural community if we want to find new roads to travel that are better suited and more appropriate to our times. We cannot afford to shirk this duty; we must rise to the challenge individually through personal commitment, and together in a joint pledge.

We are not proposing a manifesto to be taken up and adhered to, but a path to be followed. For now, we can only talk about the actions, materials and ideas that can be implemented immediately as the mainstay of this endeavour. To that end, our first concern must be to redefine our belonging to a place, a land and a country.

. After decades of us living under the banner of globalisation, this word has become devoid of meaning in today’s world. In the past, it clearly identified a major phenomenon, but it never went beyond merely having named and expressed it without becoming substantial content in the new world that was being configured. For this reason, now that the phenomenon has practically run its course, it has lost its meaning completely. By contrast, we now have to look around, beginning from our closest surroundings – from our home to the countryside, town or city of which it is part, up until the nation and civilisation to which it belongs.
If we were to join Valéry and define the function of Milan, we might say that it “bears the sceptre of good living”
Of course this is not an invitation to endorse localism in opposition of globalism, for that would only lead to the same results described above in reference to the latter. On the contrary, it is a call for every human being to consider the importance of being fully aware of his belongingness. Belongingness is never given once as a final act, but it is instead something that each of us must seek, recognise and negotiate time and again. Only after each of us has performed this task singly, on his own behalf, will we be able to understand to what community, to what people we belong, and how we can feel fulfilled, live together and collaborate with other men and women, other communities, other populations.

In this very same issue of Domus, we are republishing a famed and extraordinary essay on Paris by Paul Valéry – not about Paris in general, but about its function, which makes it unique and different to all other cities. Valéry does not talk to us about the real Paris that is made up of visitable monuments and places, but about its function, which is of “a more subtle order” than the functions that characterise other cities. It is a function necessary to Parisians, to the French, to the Europeans and to all humankind. Over the course of time, it has even acquired it own autonomy. These considerations are now useful to us in asking ourselves what the function of our country is, the function of Italy in relation to Europe and the rest of the world.

It is tritely and vacuously repeated that it is the most important place ever as regards the quantity and quality of cultural heritage created and preserved by humans. The people who say this are content to express a real and effective slogan that is utterly meaningless, for it says nothing about its function in our contemporaneity.

Domus 994, elzeviro
Domus 994, elzeviro

In our search for a new beginning, we prefer to start from something close to us, closer to us than any other thing, something that in our opinion is likewise going through a new beginning. We are referring to a city, Milan, the city where our magazine was born nearly 100 years ago, where it has grown and continues to be published, issue after issue, now approaching the thousandth. This city is the fruit of an incomparable and magnificent ancient history, clearly unique yet similar to many others.

We are not referring to a generic Milan, but to the city that in the past century has managed to fully represent the modernity of that period, and did so on such a high level of quality and with such intensity that it became a reference point, not only for this country, but also for the entire world. Most of all, it did so in the sectors particularly linked to humanity, those concerned with the art of living, with our habitation on this earth.

By habitation we mean not a specific discipline, but a manner of being – in the most complete possible way, a way that embraces and responds to our needs, necessities and expectations both material and abstract – including scientific, humanistic, financial, cultural, concrete and comfortrelated aspects – in a word, the kind of habitation that enables humankind to be its best. Milan was so successful in this respect that it became unique and matchless in the entire world, and in the sphere of living and habitation, it became a universal point of reference. From architecture to design, art to fashion, finance to research, industry to craftsmanship, and from business to the professions, everything converged to create the worldwide legend of Milan as the modern city par excellence.

If we were to join Valéry and define the function of Milan, we might say that it “bears the sceptre of good living”. It must also be said that this sceptre has lost some of its lustre in recent times and has not been as shiny as in other periods. Nevertheless, it is still firmly held.

Domus 994, elzeviro
Domus 994, elzeviro
It is possible that its fame wane increasingly, or even vanish altogether, as has happened with many of humankind’s creations. On the contrary, it might be renewed and nourished by the light of new ambitions, new dreams and targets better suited to our times. Boosted by its past, but not slavishly imprisoned by it, Milan might take up new challenges and ride them again as a protagonist. Maybe it’s the atmosphere brought to the city by the World Expo, or maybe everybody’s wish to exit the long recession that has influenced these past years, or the awareness of living in a complicated period. However, it is also full of hope, the mature awareness that contemporary humankind needs to pursue new lifestyles, and the will to seek, determine and fully experience them. In fact, fresh air is being breathed into the city. A new climate has been wafting through Milan in the past few months.
We are not referring to the real Milan, even though at this particular time such a thing does exist and indeed looks highly industrious, poised for action. We are talking instead about something deeper, about a different sensation emanated by the city, which seems eager to cultivate and foster that sensation after having regained faith in its own not boastful but real and concrete means and capabilities. The men and women ready to achieve this are already here, as are the means. What had been missing to date were the motivations. Now Milan has been the first, as opposed to other cities, to reassert those motivations and appears all set to exploit them in shaping its future.

We know how important to people’s lives the motivations are for doing or not doing a given thing; and we know, too, how no change can happen unless backed by strong motivations. The stronger the change desired, the stronger the motivations driving it must be in order for it to come to completion. After having spent too many years under the sway of various powers, from the political to the economic and even the illegal, to the extent of architects neglecting the need to work primarily toward the good of humanity, the motivations for change are very strong indeed.

The knowledge that a city like Milan could take it upon itself to sustain the search for new lifestyles favourable to humanity today fills us with hope and joy, aware as we are that a country exists and lives on in its cities. We are certain that if Milan could regain its former self, a new season would automatically ensue that is lively, real and promising – for us, our country and for people in general. We architects would then be able to share the task and honour of giving form to all this.   

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