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
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
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
Top: Maurizio Nannucci, What to see what not to see, 2010, Schauwerk, Sindelfingen, Stoccarda, Germania. Courtesy Galerie Nikolaus Ruzicska, Salzburg