Reconstruction is an exquisitely cultural issue

The reconstruction in the territory of Amatrice, devastated by the quake in August, should be afforded having previously seriously defined what does it mean.

This article was originally published on Domus 1006, October 2016.

Once the tragic events that struck Italy in August, spreading death and destruction, once again drew worldwide attention, dramatically and violently, to the beauty and to the extreme vulnerability of our land.

The brutal earthquake that killed people and destroyed homes, was also however a heartrending cry from the earth itself, an unappealable act of accusation against the nation. Against politics, but also against communities, institutions and administrators; and in reality, against each and every single one of us. The painfulness of what happened sparked an immediate, incommensurable and deeply moving act of human solidarity. In the face of such harrowing destruction it meant, first of all in a manifestly physical, material and visible endeavour, to concentrate solely on rescuing the people still buried alive and then gradually, with the utmost pity, on recovering the bodies of victims. The people engaged in saving the lives that hung by a thread from their arms and from their desperate efforts, their toil and sweat, turned the whole upheaval into a togetherness, an extraordinary collective deed; the first grand gesture of comfort and closeness to the living, the survivors, and to the whole community now forced to resist the aftermath in order to carry on their lives. These early stages were followed by others that were more to do with news and information. Thus day after day we listened to and read numerous reflections on the tragedy.

Specialists arrived: geologists, engineers and others, all of them to tell us, as always, the same thing: that the buildings which form part of our heritage, both past and present, must be rendered antiseismic. Next came the politicians, to measure the mood of the local citizens and to take primary decisions. Initially they were all united by the emotional impact of the event, but this gradually transformed into the usual attitudes of people who don’t know but talk regardless, worried for the most part only about how to exploit the situation to the best advantage for their respective political colours. And where, among all this, was culture? Where were the intellectuals? But are there really people out there, in 2016, who still think that reconstruction is simply a technical matter? That all we need to do is rebuild “as and where it was”? Can such vital issues really be dismissed so carelessly? Are there still such naive and unprepared people around who think like this? Probably yes, if the situation is the one before us. But such thinking cannot be tolerated anymore; it must be ignored.
But are there really people out there who still think that reconstruction is simply a technical matter?
Our country has been waiting long enough for a material and moral reconstruction, which it badly needs. That time has now come and cannot be further postponed. We are a nation that has only partly accomplished its modernity. And today we find ourselves for the most part still living in the pre-modern. Italy today is a country still waiting to become modern. But it is also a country which, having evolved and become conscious and alert, has no desire to build its modernity at any cost, as is the case in emerging nations. It knows instead that by now it can only do so on certain conditions. The new worlds are today subjected to a frenzied contemporary modernisation, dictated by finance and technology and certainly not to satisfy the needs of citizens and communities. Contemporary Europe knows the phenomenon all too well., and for that very reason, it cannot feign ignorance. It cannot go on using these means, as unfortunately most of the world does. For the growth of our countries, Europe with its history is duty bound to seek and adopt solutions which are suitable for our time, to find alternative ways to progress. These must be shared and jointly agreed, beneficial for the majority and not just the few. Such alternatives, moreover, should also aspire to address the world as a whole, in the conviction that a new life, better than today’s, is possible.
To come back to our own country and its role in the world, we realise how very small we are compared to the immensity of the populations inhabiting the earth today: a tiny, infinitesimal entity. Nevertheless, we should not forget that we are among those that have, over the course of time, brought about and created places, constructions and admirable landscapes for humanity to inhabit. We have built cities and stretches of countryside that to this day enchant, astonish and thrill people the world over, who respect and admire the creators of such marvels. Hence also our current responsibilities, even more serious than than for others: of not having continued to take care of our places – and I refer certainly not only to crime and corruption, but to everything else; to the responsibility of those who remain unconcerned because they don’t even know what the problems are in the first place, or what issues really need to be addressed. Indeed, they don’t even know that a problem exists at all: that of having incurred a gigantic debt to our most precious common good; our earth. Such people thought they could leave it at that, or at the most delegate the task of finding the right solutions to technology. Basically, they failed to realise that all this was first of all an exquisitely cultural issue. Only after it had become an idée fixe, to be tackled through pondered and shared decisions, was it also perceived as a material issue to be resolved at this point by exploiting everything which the best technology of the time could offer.
What to do and why, at this moment, is much more important than how
Today, faced by this latest, immense tragedy, the most wounding and sad thing to note is the sickening unawareness of what has really happened and of the problems dramatically raised by this upheaval. The unawareness of what it means to reconstruct places is embarrassing, and I refer here to two kinds of unawareness: a collective one, expressed by the institutions, and the individual one, ad personam, expressed by people. Oddly however, people always and only talk about institutional responsibilities – as if these were not formed by persons, by individuals; whereas what ought to be more worrying is the unawareness expressed by each and every person, regarding what to do. This is the yawning gap expressed by our era when it comes to habitation as a whole. This is our big issue today. But, if we do not know what habitation actually means, and above what it means nowadays, here or there, how can we presume to materially and physically reconstruct places momentarily destroyed by incidental and occasional situations like those caused by an earthquake? In recent times we have frequently paused to reflect in this magazine on the conditions of our contemporaneity, on the period in which we are living. And in the process, we have reached the conviction that we live today immersed in a sort of almost immobile state of waiting, in the awareness that what existed in the past, what we have inherited, is not in itself enough for us today. But also, that what we need now is no longer there, and that we don’t even have a clear idea of what we actually really need.
What to do and why, at this moment, is much more important than how. The how will become essential just as soon as we have decided what to do, but not before that. And from this point of view it is easy to see how very weak we are, with all our inadequacy and approximation towards the urgent issues of the present, pending answers that we do not have. On the other hand it also has to be said that all this is principally the result of what happened in our recent past. Completely engrossed by the deep economic crisis that hit the Western world like a bomb, we were too short-sighted and incompetent to notice the equally devastating crisis, the crisis of civilisation, that had struck on a parallel level. So far nothing new. Instead, the real novelty was that – as we have frequently underlined – the long-awaited change is by now in the offing and at last within reach. The status quo around us is no longer an ineluctable, unchangeable reality, but something that can now be radically reconsidered in order to live our present better. This collective sentiment currently assumes various aspects. But what we wish to stress here is the different perception that we have of what is happening around us. If only a while ago, catastrophic events like an earthquake filled us with anger and indignation against what had not been done to prevent and in part to mitigate the havoc wrought by these disasters, today this is not enough. Now we cannot resign ourselves to living our lives in opposition to nature, without being able to improve them. We want instead to muster the most vital forces of our country, to fill the hearts and minds of new generations with expectations by which they can imagine for themselves, and for everyone else, a better future.
What is the idea of a home that best matches the expectations of the social class to which it belongs, to what idea of living does all this answer
For all these reasons we are so irritated and offended by the deafening silence of contemporary culture with regards to what to do. True, culture stepped in bountifully after the earthquake. But as in the majority of cases only to lengthen the now interminable list of things that aren’t right with this country, with little or nothing to contribute in terms of concrete proposals from which to start again. Naturally, we are glad that high profile figures like the architect Renzo Piano, or the Rector of the Milan Polytechnic, the engineer Giovanni Azzone, have been approached. But this is not enough, we need more. We need a collective surge, a drive to mobilise the whole country, to stir the nation’s conscience. We know such things are very hard to achieve. However, we do need to believe in them, to keep trying. We owe it to the numerous dead, but above all to the living, to them and to our future. Today we have an entire country waiting to be modernised. And the incredible thing is that we do already have everything necessary: the people, the skills and the enterprises, the industry and economies. What is really missing is the will to do so in earnest, to believe in the possibility of doing so and in its necessity.
So if we do not want the “Casa Italia” project to become yet another political and media success slogan, we must try starting for once from contents, to fill it with contents. For example, by asking ourselves what the word house or home means to us today, what the idea of houses represents for us, and our relation with those already built, passed down from our ancestors, and with those that we ourselves have built and continue to build. What is the idea of a home that best matches the expectations of the social class to which it belongs, to what idea of living does all this answer. And also, what does the word Italy represent to us today, what is Italianness in the contemporary world, what sense of identifying and belonging does it convey? This would entail a major civil exercise, capable probably of reawakening that collective intelligence which we so badly need, and which a nation like ours cannot surely have entirely lost. This umpteenth catastrophic event, in all its dramatic evidence, confronts us once again with choices that will gauge with precision the state of our contemporaneity. The answers that we come up with will tell us whether Italy has changed gear by responding adequately to its current urgencies. Domus is here, and will be keeping its eyes peeled to see what the disciplines of architectural design and its representative institutions do or don’t do, and we shall continue to keep our readers informed accordingly.  
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