Thought and Design
Thought and Design
lecture series
Curated by
Riccardo Butini
Lina Malfona
IN/ARCH Tuscany
The recent loss of a number of internationally renowned Italian architects, such as Paolo Portoghesi, Vittorio Gregotti and Andrea Branzi, intellectuals who embodied the myth of the demiurge author – historian, critic, magazine editor, school founder and cultural promoter – seems to mark not only the demise of an irreplaceable generation of masters but also the end of an era.
In a cultural landscape dominated by new environmental, social, technological and geo-political paradigms, authorship seems to have dissolved into the dynamics of teamwork and collectives. This lecture series aims, on the one hand, to critically analyze this condition and, on the other hand, to explore the relationship between research and project in some contemporary architects who operate as authors but are prepared to revise, redetermine, and negotiate the very condition of being an author.
In 1975, art historian Filiberto Menna wrote that some artists were taking an analytical stance, shifting procedures from the immediately expressive or representational plane to the reflective one, engaging in a discourse about art at the very moment they concretely make art. What Menna defined as the "analytical line of art" describes that condition in which authors reflect on their own making. These thought may be useful to introduce the work of the architects featured in this lecture series, as well as many others, who work between past and present, between the study of history and the operational use of history, who develop their own philosophy of design rather than merely expressing a point of view about designing. LM
Events
Orazio Carpenzano, April 18, 2024
Junko Kirimoto, May 16, 2024
Michel Carlana, May 23, 2024
Paolo Zermani, May 30, 2024
