EFA studio di architettura

Dialogues
Architecture 2nd ed.

Emilio Faroldi, Maria Pilar Vettori
Alinea Publishing
Florence
2004

ABSTRACT
"A reading of the architectural phenomenon aimed at faithfully and consciously highlighting its complexity cannot disregard the "stories" directly told by the protagonists and the "micro-stories" of the individual episodes, in order to involve all the events linked to the design and construction process in a single, multi-voiced narrative. The primary aim of this contribution is to give a picture of the current panorama of making architecture, with a view to interpreting future developments. In particular, the work intends to explore the relationship that exists between the architectural field and the specifically technical field, highlighting at the same time complementarities and conflicts. Knowledge is not only known knowledge: it is a heritage of the soul that remains in some ways latent, until a specific stimulus comes to reawaken its memory. Even in the discipline of architecture, knowledge can only be the fruit of continuous research, both projectual and theoretical, of an ordeal by means of which one approaches, even without fully grasping it, that truth towards which love for philosophy drives us. Architecture, therefore, more than sofia, wisdom, becomes filo-sophia, that is, the love of wisdom. The Dialogues on Architecture are thus an opportunity to trace the methodological approaches that allow a rereading of the events of architecture through a process of "self-analysis" by some of its protagonists. The parallel investigation of the technical-productive dimension and the linguistic-compositional one allows new interpretative keys of the disciplinary tools of exegesis of the project, as well as of its materialisation. This form of criticism of criticism finds its motivations precisely in the rejection of a reading of architecture that focuses exclusively on the outcome. Method and outcome should be considered as inseparable terms, even if the relationship between them is not linear and is therefore difficult to explore. In this sense, the voices of some of the protagonists of Italian architecture make it possible to tie up the broken threads of a story that has become syncopated and one-sided as a result of inaccurate dissemination. This is a difficult and ambitious operation, but one to be promoted. The Dialogues raise a variety of themes, interconnected by subtle links within the articulated weave that is established between the conception, design and realisation of architecture, revealing the different operational and conceptual ways in which the final product is achieved. Franco Albini, BBPR, Ludovico B. Belgiojoso, Guido Canella, Aurelio Cortesi, Roberto Gabetti and Aimaro Isola, Ignazio Gardella, Vittorio Gregotti, Vico Magistretti, Enrico Mantero, Paolo Portoghesi, Aldo Rossi, Giuseppe Terragni, Vittoriano Viganò, are the authors of this narrative."