Opinion. On the subject of Domus: dialogue between Luigi Prestinenza Puglisi and Stefano Boeri
from PresS/Tletter n° 2-2006

LPP: Dear Stefano You know I think very highly of you and appreciate your work but publishing Casamonti twice in Domus and neglecting the rest of young Italian architecture is suicide.
You’re too intelligent and informed to know what Casamonti means in the Italian panorama: a bridge to the academic quagmire. And even if some of his designs are quite nice, they demonstrate uncommitted eclecticism.
Of course I don’t want to demonise anyone and I actually quite like Casamonti on a personal level. But cultural choices are quite another thing and this approach contributes to serious work on experimentation resulting in nothing, opting for a kind of drawing room avante-garde.
Yours
Luigi

SB: Dear Luigi, calm down
Does it really seem to you that I am neglecting young Italian architecture? Do me a favour. And 2a+P? and Marazzi? and Baukuh? and Librizzi?
Who are they? Finnish fifty year olds?
We can talk properly about Casamonti. If you really want to
Ciao, with regard and sincere friendship, s.

LPP: Dear Stefano
I know you have published a few Italians and you have been right to do so (even though perhaps I wouldn’t have published Zucchi who is a good architect but traditionalist and would have expected Servino to be published because those incomplete buildings shifted attention from architecture to other things). The point I wanted to make is something else. If someone does not deal in a systematic rather than sporadic way with the Italian situation (for example with enquiries into the state of architectural research in the various Italian cities or major geographical regions), in the end this phenomena will be dealt with only by Area or better still, by A. You might say there’s nothing wrong with that. But it is wrong because it does nothing but fuel the skilful strategy of cultural politics that Casamonti, with his Piacentinean spirit is putting into action. A strategy that tends to place on the same plane Portoghesi and Koolhaas, Gregotti and Herzog & de Meuron, the most closed tradition and the most interesting innovation. And at the same time attracting architects with infinite flattery, dilute your debates, it seems to say, because we live in a world where everything is licit as long as it has a minimum of compositional quality. A highly dangerous argument, to my mind, because it skates over contents and that ethic of writing that represents the only available road for architecture that is not just an entertainment park, a kaleidoscope of superficial effects with form. And so we contribute to the emergence of cultural hypotheses that we had ditched with such great effort; like those of Purini who looks with extreme interest at this Casamontian game because one lacks technical and economic means – in other words the magazines – and the other cultural synthesis – in other words a historical critical reasoning worthy of such a difficult task – to substantiate it. History unfortunately tends to repeat itself – all this happened in the 1930s with the rationalists – think of the end of Miar and advance of Rami – and then in the 1970s with the selling out of the avant-garde to post-modern disengagement and the then Portoghesi system. The fault of our drawing room avant-garde is that they try something new superficially but then once they have a professional commission are they willing to disown everything? Yes, even that... But it is also the fault of the critics and those who manage the information. That’s why I see with extreme worry this practice that now has various sides to it, including Darc, the universities and a not negligible number of magazines. To speak of the conferences about the Italian-ness of Italian Architecture and the dazzling rise of the magazine Area. Domus, for which I held out such great hope (finally an aircraft carrier in the hands of a good editor), what does it do? It tends to skate over architecture. It publishes little and even less that is Italian. But little even of foreign architects that are not part of the Star System. I realise that some stars you have to include, for sales reasons. But is it possible that in this moment something new isn’t happening abroad that can be placed, like a healthy system of anti-bodies, within the feeble Italian system?
My feeling is that Domus is an aircraft carrier that could have an extraordinary power for cultural fire and instead is just outside the port doing some practice. This feeling – few will let on to you because they tend to avoid these kind of conversations with the interested parties – is shared by a number of people with whom, in my travels around Italy, I have had the chance to talk. And this being arm in arm with Casamonti – who I repeat, on a personal level I like, but here the debate is not on a human level but a cultural one – is also talked about.
So here’s what I wanted to say, with sincerity, regard and if I may, a certain affection.
See you soon
Luigi

SB: Dear Luigi, I have only just got round to answering you today, after being “ditched” by 3 weeks of pneumonia...
And I am answering you, with great affection and regard, to say that it’s not on. I declared my project for Domus right from the cover of the first issue, dedicated to De Carlo and the Triennale of 1968. There I tried to talk about how architecture today has to have a role that is not exhausted in just the architectural construction. Of how there is a need to believe in the social utility of our profession, not just because it can change the space we live in but also for its capacity to generate awareness regarding the places dedicated to urban life. Awareness of details, particulars and the marks left by approaches to inhabitation that serve to decipher contemporary social life. Awareness of facts, behaviour, needs, that only an eye that is alert to the wrinkles of local space, such as that of the architect, can offer today. And I am also convinced that this awareness of the physical surface of the world produces an “excess” of information on local space that is relevant not just to the practice of designing. It can and must find other outlets; research, criticism, journalism, non-academic teaching, communication, visual arts, even politics. Because I firmly believe that today space is the best metaphor of our society. This does not mean at all that I don’t consider the crucial dimension that the profession continues to have in the life of an architect. Anything but. I am and remain an architect who attempts to do his best at the job of architect. The fact is that if their is an impassioning aspect to this profession, today it is exactly that of trying to accommodate alongside a sphere of technical and exquisitely design related knowledge, a sphere of awareness and curiosity linked to an examination of the space we live in, to a reading “by signs” of the territory. And I believe that it is exactly our possibility to accommodate two such different and even conflicting spheres such as research and design (that, incidentally, I have never believed can be placed in a relationship of cause and effect) represent an extraordinary resource also for architectural design. It feeds it with continuous ideas, cues, criticisms. Social utility and effectiveness increases. So, at the expense of hoping for a condition of (fertile) schizophrenia, this is my idea of the social role of the architect today. An intellectual of local space, who knows how to scrutinise, imagine and modify the physical conditions of urban life. It is for this reason that Domus today deals with social studies, relationships between politics and architecture, news, visual arts, photography etc. whilst always continuing to observe local space. Because it is the only way to talk about the context, the conditions and prospects of the job of architect today.
Domus follows a precise idea on the possible future of our profession. I really don’t believe that you can say that Domus doesn’t do architecture. Please. And then what does doing architecture mean today? Publishing projects, projects, projects? You must be joking. I, we, follow a much more ambitious, noble and strong idea about the role of architecture. Debatable, but clear and explicit. An inclusive idea of architecture that has also been the prerogative in other periods in the history of this magazine. The best ones.
And yet I still can’t understand how you don’t understand what our position is on Italian architecture. This is something I also made clear in Domus. I repeat, I do not want in any way to make the magazine (that I would like to remind you sells half its copies abroad) a kind of “Indian reserve” where we safeguard and promote a protected species in danger of extinction that is Italian architects. This I leave to other magazines who believe that the number of pages is a necessary condition of “proof”.
In these two years we have published a great many Italian architects, from various generations (incidentally, what is it with this insular, self-destructive, petty generational paranoia that is totally Italian? I CAN’T STAND ANY MORE moaning and division by age! And then we are surrounded everywhere by very young eighty year olds and obsolete thirty year olds – let’s end once and for all the generational auto-classifications where everyone raises the threshold of what is “young” Italian architecture to suit themselves – its so sad...). We have published Servino and 2a+p, Fuksas and Navarra, Archea and Librizzi, Godi (thanks to you) and Rota, Branzi and Baukuh and many more.....Using what criteria? Simple, quality and interest in the context of international architecture, that is the plane of comparison, measurement, that a magazine like Domus always has to take into consideration (from this point of view I ask you to reflect on the Italian architects that Domus has NOT published). So, enough with the “protectionist” platform and give way to a careful research of Italian experiences of quality and their presentation on the pages of Domus, a presentation editorially ON THE SAME LEVEL as architecture by the big stars. If you take a good look at the magazine, we have the same attitude to the young (in terms of fame) international architects. We give the same space to Ma as to Zaha Hadid, to Abalos & Herreros and Herzog & de Meuron...to Nishizawa and Nouvel (who was taken out of the January issue)...
As far as being “arm in arm” with Casamonti is concerned, there’s not much to say: after a long period of explicit meetings on themes and questions that are still a long way off, I simply saw in Casamonti two things: an indisputable quality of design and an indisputable generosity in opening up themes and opportunities for comparison in Italian architecture. Something, the latter, that as you well know – being also yourself an exception – is very rare in our world, populated by colleagues that care, care again, embellish, perfume their own navels. Besides, only a few understand how generosity can today be a formidable resource for legitimising and verifying individual ambitions, if only founded...
That’s all.
As far as I’m concerned, as far as we are concerned, we still have a lot of work to do... we move forward talking together, like we are, even more so; and trying to make public this dialogue, if you like even starting with this “uncensored” conversation. What do you say?
With great regard for your work, a big hug, Stefano