History, geography, morphology: materials for constructing a city        

original article at Ceramic Tiles of Itally

Architect, urban designer, university lecturer, theoretician and architecture critic, Vittorio Gregotti has worked in fields ranging from the planning of urban spaces and interiors to industrial and graphic design. His projects reveal a meticulous approach based on his firm’s experience, rejecting the eccentricities and extreme formalism of contemporary architecture in favour of architectural quality and an acceptance of the responsibilities of the profession.

The controversy surrounding the latest Venice architecture biennale curated by Betsky demonstrates how unclear the boundaries between architecture and the visual arts have become. Have the identity and role of architecture been confused?
I wrote the book Contro la fine dell’architettura [Against the end of architecture] (Einaudi, le Vele, 2008) to address precisely this problem. I attempted to analyse the meaning of theory in architecture and that of interdisciplinarity, distinguishing between the human sciences and the so-called exact sciences, and the interdisciplinarity that instead exists between the arts.
I wanted to explain that in our profession the relationship between the arts is very important and has contributed significantly to fostering specialisation of the various fields. But in order for this relationship to exist, identities must be preserved, otherwise it is pointless. A dialogue is possible only between two different identities. Throughout the centuries, architecture has always been closely linked to the visual arts. In mediaeval times, architecture and sculpture were closely related, then the Renaissance brought a major convergence between architecture and painting. But this does not mean that each of these activities has given up its own identity. An architect can also work as a painter, he can interact with other activities, provided that when he works as an architect he maintains his focus on poietic building. In this regard my book concentrates on the identity of architecture because in the current cultural context I believe it is more useful for languages to discuss their differences and their potential to influence each other.

So the confusion surrounding the issue of interdisciplinarity distracts architecture from its responsibilities?
I believe so, because habitability, construction and the relationship with the land, the context and history are structural elements of architecture but not of other activities. Unlike artists, architects have a role in a kind of collective artistic practice. We work for long periods of time on projects that are subsequently converted into constructed reality; there are differences, divergences between the project and the finished work. This kind of complexity is specific to our profession.

Air France offices in Montreuil, Paris

Your position appears to me to be more optimistic than that of La Cecla in his book “Contro l’architettura” [Against architecture], which diagnoses the sickness of architecture as its reduction to designer labels, to a media tool?
La Cecla is an anthropologist, not an architect. He should have written a book against architects, not against architecture. If he had directed his criticism at architects, I would have agreed with him. Today our profession is experiencing a kind of degeneration. At the end of the eighteenth century the Enlightenment brought major progress in all fields of artistic production, and the arts embarked on a mission to plan society. This approach persisted until the end of the avant-garde in the middle of the last century. Architects have always been critical of painters, of men of letters, of other architects and of society in general, and have tended to be revolutionary in their way of thinking. This at least was the situation until the mid fifties and sixties, after which, with the advent of capitalism, architecture reversed its position. It abandoned its critical role and became a celebration of the status quo. This attitude spread from the major capitalist countries of Europe and the United States to the new rich countries such as China, India, the Arab states and Russia. Architecture has become very popular through the media, image has invaded the world, resulting ultimately in the paradoxes of the Arab states and their extreme manifestations of luxury, of grand scale.

Tafuri wrote of the crisis in the capacity for representation of architecture and of the critical gap created by new buildings. How can this gap be filled?
It’s a problem that is impossible to solve. The “reference point crisis”, to use Tafuri’s words, is a problem that first arose in the sixteenth century and derives from the lack of a direct relationship between political thought and thought about art in general, particularly that of architecture.

You wrote: “the project must become material for the generation of form”. What do you mean by this?
First, I am critical of the excessively widespread use of the notion of “creativity”. Although I am not a Catholic, I agree with Saint Augustine who said that it is only God who creates. Everyone else makes something from something else. There is always something that we have to take account of: our history, the past, the conditions in which we work, ultimately society itself. We proceed by making alterations. We should be

Accademia Carrara di Bergamo Gallery of Modern Art, Milan

Siemens Group headquarters, Milan

more modest: we do not invent the world each time we carry through a project, we merely alter it – hopefully for the better. But how do we alter it? By collecting and selecting materials. The materials we use are those I have already mentioned: the political condition, history, economics, the practical problem we are addressing, the place in which we are working. These issues become the “materials” that we work with, transforming them into an architectural fact, the form of the project. What counts is the architectural form that the project assumes. This way the mechanism of the project establishes its own rules. These rules must be interpreted and understood to the point where form solidifies. It solidifies “momentarily” according to our intentions, then in the future it may be interpreted in other ways.

So “tradition”, “history”, “geography” and “morphology” are categories that provide a constant reference point for your approach to design…
It is important to acknowledge that we build on the earth, that we are supported by the earth. In this context, the word “foundation” expresses two different but similar concepts. The earth is not only the “natural” earth, it is also the “historical” earth, geography that takes form. Ultimately, the whole of nature has become history. The earth on which we stand does not tell us where we should carry out a project, leaving us great freedom. However, freedom is not just absence of obstructions. Freedom is a project, but absolute freedom is empty. Absolute freedom is not possible because we have memory, history, things we love or hate. Our creative process is therefore a process of alteration rather than a process of creation. I have never tried to impose a form in advance in any of my projects around the world; I have always sought to establish a dialogue with the existing features.

Is this also true of the plan for the new city of Pujiang in China? I thought you had proposed a European city model?
No, I didn’t impose a European model. I am writing a book about the Chinese city that will be published in the next few months [provisional title: L’ultimo hutong. Lavorare in architettura nella nuova Cina, Skira, Editor’s note]. It is very difficult to understand the scale and meaning of Chinese civilisation, the only great empire that lasted for four thousand years. It is an enormous entity that requires considerable humility to relate to. This city that we are planning originates from a seminar organised for the university on the relationship between the ancient Chinese city and the ancient Greco-Roman city. I noted some common aspects, such as geometry, the square, the Hippodamian town plan, the system of the Roman castrum. The regulations governing the foundation of Chinese cities are very old, precise and extremely rigorous and have been observed for thousands of years. They all had the same basic form because they were administrative rather than commercial centres, which governed large areas and sometimes constituted strategic military points. So we endeavoured to create a relationship between these two urban systems. We were subsequently asked by a minister to take part in a competition for the construction of one of the nine planned cities with a hundred thousand inhabitants, not enormous compared to the eighteen million of today’s Shanghai. We won not by imposing a model but by proposing characteristics for creating a social space, a functional space with recognisable geometry.

Grande Theatre in Aix-en-Provence

The city is located on sparsely populated agricultural land with an extensive system of canals.
The canals are an aspect of variation that we have maintained, an extremely important geographical element given that water is an essential commodity for an agricultural country like China. So the combination of the materials I discussed above, which are the foundations of the European city, and the specific Chinese requirements, as well as compliance with the geographical condition, together contributed to the creation of a city without skyscrapers.

Your latest project to have been completed is that of the theatre in Aix-en-Provence.
Being my youngest creation, it is the one I am most fond of, particularly given my great love of music. It is also rather special: along with the large concert hall it also offers various opportunities for outdoor performances. It has more the appearance of an earthwork than an actual building, of an element drawn from the geography of the location. Aix-en-Provence grew up along an axis that splits the city in two, at the end of which stands a square and our theatre. After a year it has become a landmark in the city. The city has reabsorbed it as if it were something natural that people grow fond of. This is the first time that this has happened to me: architects generally have to fight hard battles.

Photos, unless otherwise stated, courtesy Gregotti Associati Intenational