| Popis: |
Aim of this essay is to propose a reflection on the role of journals in the renovation of architecture. For this purpose an excursus through specific episodes in the nature and history of the communication of architectural theories and practices is attempted, from the first treaties to the birth of magazines at the end of the XVIII century. The theoretical elaboration of architecture in the past was concentrated in treaties, but when modernity manifests itself in new phenomena of transformation involving the whole human environment, other instruments become necessary to reshuffle the cards of knowledge and make it possible to understand what has been going on for a long time, but is difficult to “see”. Works “to establish principles”, “propose rules” and “fix taste”, as Marc-Antoine Laugier asked in 1755. And catalogues, repertories, and magazines are among these instruments. Prominent is the case of “Sammlung Nützlicher Aufsätze und Nachrichten die Baukunst Betreffend. Für Angehende Baumeister und Freunde der Architektur”, the first issue of which was published in Berlin in 1797 on the initiative of David Gilly. Its short life and influence were similar to other magazines that came out in the first decades of the XX century, all of which had a fleeting life and were run by “militant” architects rather than generic directors or editors. “Casabella-Continuità” proved to be a place of reflection, professional renewal and cultural struggle and, somehow like Gilly’s “Sammlung”, will be the cradle of a new generation of architects who developed the most important part of their training within it; as a whole it will constitute a real instrument of cultural re-foundation. The most incisive journals have never been the first promoters of new seasons, but rather careful and selective collectors of what the world was expressing: new needs, new instances, new sensibilities, new projects; moments, at the same time, of rereading the past and of critical reading of the present, particularly careful to use the specific point of view of architecture in all its potentiality, to strengthen it, and to transform the particular ability of architects to intervene on the form of the world into a useful and conscious instrument of improvement. |
