AN OVERVIEW

Pier Alessio Rizzardi

NOWADAYS REALITY

The numbers of the urban development in Asia considering the European one are incredible: 5 times faster (in 20 years happened what has been done in Europe in 100 years), 8 times bigger (23 cities with more than 5 million people in China while only 3 cities in Europe) and this covers a population twice as big (731,000,000 in Europe 1,342,000,000 and in China). It’s intuitive as these data lead to a way to tackle the project completely extraneous to a Western architect.

Currently, the urban population exceeding the rural population rose up to 51%. It is estimated that this will reach 83% in 2035 when the process stabilizes. The urban population requires services and infrastructure. The design approach is thus based on the big numbers. One need only consider that the projects that are advertised in Europe as the CCTV Tower by Koolhass and opera house by Zaha Hadid are dozens or even hundreds of times much smaller than other projects in construction: infrastructure, construction of new cities, industrial areas, ports etc.. The number and size of projects strongly influence the way of making architecture.

In China, the face of the city is characterized by the demolition. The view is a huge construction site hidden behind the walls and billboards with renderings of what you will see in a few months. To quote Wang Shu, Pritzker Prize, only 10% of the historical buildings in China has survived to this day. Basically the reasons that can be found are two. The first is based on past history: the traditional architecture used wood as the main material for building. The result is then the practice to reconstruct the image of architecture with new materials. The second is based on the recent history: the Cultural Revolution used the cancellation of the past in order to build the new culture. The lack of historical urban tissue creates dynamics completely different from those found in Western cities. With the almost total demolition of historic parts of the cities the Asian society must constantly face with the concept of tabula rasa. This leads to the possibility of free development with a complete world to rebuild. The number of architects is extremely significant. The proportion of residents and architects is 40,000 to one, incredible if we think that Italy is raised to 400 people for an architect. The number is 100 times greater.

If you look at the data of Chinese architecture, we see the peculiarity of the Asian condition. The Chinese architects must be much more efficient than their Western counterparts to work.The volume of the use of reinforced concrete in China is 33% of the world total amount, the number of Chinese architects in the world is one hundredth of the total. The turnover instead stays to a tenth of the world average.In other words, one percent of architects to design the buildings and 33% of this must be done for one-tenth of the profit.

This creates the theoretical condition of Chinese architects and architecture of China. A Chinese unique phenomenon is the process of City-making. The state, the only landowner, rent the land to individuals allowing them to build. In this way the state receives funding from the private sector. This is what we call “planned capitalism”. The state government has absolute control, not only through the possession of the land, but also through the imposition of masterplan tightly regulated. The government cannot do anything else but planning, it doesn’t have an absolute power on architecture. The government defines a masterplan in which investors and architects formally define the buildings and then the shape of the city. The logic of profit creates cities where there are only homes, what the real estate market asks. Homes are sold as investments, and these remain empty for years. The Chinese real estate bubble grows, but for how long?

Today, the condition of Chinese architects imposes the reduction of both the design and construction time. The project is with limitless possibilities, it becomes mechanical instead as industrial production and not time is left to think about it. The design of a building in Shanghai can be taken, modified, shortened to 10 floors and reused in Hong Kong without radically changes. The speed of execution and the will to characterize the site generate examples such as One City Nine Towns in Shanghai, satellite towns in European style. After 1980, the Economic liberalization and the new freedoms gained stimulated people to seek what was lost in the Maoist period. Everything that comes from abroad is seen as innovation and freedom, a goal to aim. China wants to experience life in Western way and never mind if it is a copy of a far Europe style. Investors get the message and build copies of idealized European cities.

The fact to import Western styles and impaste to churn out buildings, creates a hybrid halfway between the one and the other culture. The architecture in China is Business. Real Estate is built, used, and when the investment has given all it can give more is being demolished to make way for a new investment. “Tou Fu Buildings” are buildings in which materials and technologies are sacrificed to lower production costs and speed up the execution time. No one escaped from this trap even the Archistar as Zaha Hadid Opera House Guangzhou experienced the consequences of such philosophy. The cultural upheaval of recent generations has resulted in a hybrid architecture, where profit directs the project. Large numbers of Chinese architectural theorem, the Olympics and Expo, the economic boom create opportunity and need to build.

CONTEMPORARY TRENDS

The architectural trends of recent years can be grouped by different types: International Architects (iconic architecture that aims at large-scale projects), Local Architects, the new Chinese generation (small-scale architecture and vernacular), background Architects (Architecture of a such extensive proliferation to constitute a phenomenon influential on the national architectural scene).

The Archistar entered in the Chinese architectural scene, supported and desired by the government. As it was Manhattan in New York nearly a century ago, China turns into a new stage in world architecture. This architecture is pointing up. Skyscrapers have a strong iconic impact: this is given by higher image and then economic returns. The city remains a “shopping window” for the modernization of the country, as Deng Xiaoping wanted Pudong in Shanghai. The “Manhattan of China.” China wants respect and visibility; the tendency of the government is toward recognizable, massive and iconic architectures seeking a world-wide recognition.

“Nostalgic Architects” pursuit the “Chineseness” in architecture trough the idea of rebuilding portions of the city in a traditional style. The old motto of Mao was “the new against the old”. Now is the old against the new, because the new has become old too fast.

The Cultural Revolution sought to eliminate the past. Now they rebuild as it could be without Cultural Revolution.

“Traditional Iconic Architects” use the way of the magnification in scale of images of the cultural tradition. They explicit architecture symbol putting an immediate icon on the city. Architects use traditional symbols like lanterns, fans, dragons, coins to instill in their buildings, the icon of “Chineseness.”

“The Architects of the New Generation” are composed by who have studied in leading universities of the United States. These architects are open to experimentation contaminated by Western notions. They reject the current architectural situation, creating a choice based on the purity of the tectonics, radical shapes, vernacular materials and simplified building technologies. If we compare the timelines of the Chinese and Western architecture, we see the existing time gap. Analyzing the current ways of doing architecture of the new generation of architects, you will notice many features in common with the architectural period of post-war Europe and the West. From New Empirism in Sweden, Neoexpressionismus German, but also i English Brutalism, Italian Neorealism to Brazilian Brutalism.After 50 years the themes of “After the Modern Movement” European come up for discussion in China today.

THE CONDITION OF THE CHINESE ARCHITECTURE

The rate of instantaneous composition implies an architecture in which the current image is just a tiny moment of his life. We understand that architecture can not be finalized but it is actually evolving. Megacities, as small towns, regenerate continuously. The system is dictated by the economic gain that does not earn or do not earn enough, which has changed to be put in a position to produce. In the cities you do not see buildings older than 10, years in some areas even 5. In this condition, the architecture generation is quick and it creates chaotic urban landscapes. The result is a city with not clear composition, but with a complex structure interesting to explore.

The architecture is related to a continuously changing environment that in facts generates the negation of the Western context. The project, in these conditions, is abstracting from any substance and it brings a picture evanescent, fragile and volatile. The current situation has created a condition in which anything can happen, as on a stage without scenery, naked and full of potential. This challenges the old method by which you assign functions to the space strictly defined.

The Chinese society is complex because it varies. The ethnic groups are different, with different cultures and customs and the languages (China has 292 living languages). The density is uneven: megalopolises, densified areas and large uninhabited territories. The climate changes the way of living for people, space and architecture. In China the territory is divided into 5 different climate zones from the Arctic to the tropical zone. Thus we see how the Chinese society is complex and diverse a cocktail that creates unpredictable situations.

Under these conditions, to work, the architecture has features that meet the needs of such a diverse society.

China is enormous in everything, but if we check, we realize that this bigness is special. Take two representative buildings of East and West as the Forbidden City and the Palace of Versailles. We immediately notice the difference. The Forbidden City consists of 980 buildings, autonomous, and a scheme that make the size of this building, with gaps of up to 90% of the area. The Palace of Versailles instead consists of 4 buildings, with 15% of voids. But even if we do not look at so famous and ancient examples, we realize that this feature is constantly repeated. Karaoke, gigantic palace, a universe composed of small “cells” which together forms the size of this place. Another place of modern use is the Internet Cafe, widespread phenomenon that illustrates the peculiarities of the Chinese new space, surrounded by invisible barriers such as headsets and screen. These represent the spatial bubbles that indicate small virtual realities that create the bigness of real space. The union of many small situations gives the bigness. This is translated into the simulation as sensitivity in the creation of human-scale spaces but connected to create a general sense of unity.

GRUPPO A12 / BAUKUH

Opening Saturday 2 February, 2013, 6.30 pm

Palazzo Ducale, Piazza Matteotti 28r, Genova

pinksummer - Dramatic and frightening is the image you have chosen for the invitation card of your exhibition at pinksummer. The same angel on the Ribaudo family’s tomb at the cemetery of Staglieno, that was chosen by the Joy Division for the cover design of their single” Love we will tear us apart”. Let’s start from what Baukuh and Gruppo A12 have in common: Genoa and Stefano Boeri first, not to mention architecture itself. Did the common imprinting from the city, its genius loci, only taught you how to get away as fast as you can? What about Boeri’s social (political?) approach?

baukuh - Beyond the - obvious - association with the “terminal” condition of Genoa, city of older people and most of all of no interest for whichever future, we chose the angel of Joy Division a little by chance. In a sense, it is also significant that this image of Genoa was produced outside the city, which is by now our condition. Moreover in our case, we (five on six) are not even from Genoa. At a certain point we have chosen to work there, then we have preferred to move the studio and now we would like (at least partially) to reopen our studio in Genoa. It is maybe because we are architects, we do have a very little sentimental relationship with the city.  Cities can be used for some time, then you may change idea, then maybe you changes idea once again. About Genoa’s genius loci, speaking from our position of people who come from outside, we do not dislike it. Sure, it is clearly suicidal, but it has its own greatness.

As far as Stefano Boeri, that was an Hobson choice, as there were not a lot of other options. I do not know if you have an idea of the situation of the architecture in Italy at the end of the Nineties. Therefore even those, whose interests were rather distant from Stefano’s, ended up to work with him almost unavoidably. Also Stefano is an extremely intelligent and generous person, able to gather together very diverse people. And he has the virtue of not considering himself a loser, which, while working with him, gave you the impression - completely exceptional in that context - that it could even happen that you may not be a loser, you either.

Gruppo A12 - We are two groups of architects, we share the same dimension of collective work too, even though carried out with different modalities and stories, and probably we are different even in our relationship with the city and Stefano Boeri. Joy Division’s song it is about a tormented love and Genoa is not an easy city. Learning to see it a little like the eyes of someone from outside do is a useful exercise that would be healthy for all Genoese people. Concering Stefano, we have met him in the beginning of the Nineties, when we were a little more than twenty years old. A little older than thirty five, he was at his first teaching assignment as associate professor. For sure that was a breath of fresh air in a rather creacky academic system, with the ability of involving you and let you feel you at par as a plus one. A12 was being born just in that period and from there a series of collaborations is been born, even though they did not continued then therefore over a long time span.

pinksummer – Somewhere we read that after the end of the classicism and the sunset of modernism, for architecture we are in the time of post-critic, of post-theory, probably just post and that’s all (also for visual arts we are in the imperative hit-and-run of the curator, somehow close to the sell-earn-and-regret of the finance, agnostic or boor as it might be). In that sense, architecture is meant to be a trade sunk into the mere pragmatism and, in the same sense, the exhibition at pinksummer could always be considered an aporia, an impossibility, an absurdity, or just a loss of time?

Gruppo A12 - Actually in architecture, in front of the economic crisis that has hit in the heaviest way the real estate industry and in front of the discipline that has been lain down on the stylistic marks of some professionals of fame, we see an uprising interest for drawing, speculative projects (in terms of theory of knowledge, not real estate speculation) and for all what can pretty much represent the purest research to architecture. One can say that the majority of our activity as a group has been based on that kind of research, even though, because of our much more pragmatic than theoretical attitude, everything has been ending up in temporary installation instead of texts, diagrams or big that has been translate in ephemeral installations instead that witnesses, diagrams or large drawing plates.

Regarding the abuse of “post”, that is probably due to a defect of the critics, that is not capable to define anything if not in connection with what it happened before.

baukuh - To be honest, there is very little pragmatism/profiteering at the moment. As real estate market seems to be dead and never resurrect (and probably it will not resurrect, at least as we have been knowing it so far), within a 35% juvenile unemployment scenario, it seems difficult to imagine that one can be so busy in making good money that he is not able to have an exhibition.

For what concerns all that list of post-something that you have mentioned, we believe that it is a perspective, which does not help very much. Perhaps it is just the fundamental assumption of the whole modernism and postmodernism that should be discussed. We cannot think in terms of an univocal historical development, to which we just should clutch, as if the Zeitgeist was riding a motorcycle and were attached like a sidecar. I would say that Latour has made clear enough that this type of modernity is just superstition.

pinksummer - A silly question for baukuh. Concerning your Two Essays On Architecture (Due saggi sull’architettura, Genova, Sagep editori, 2012), we have been thinking at a much arbitrary comparison to the movie “Amadeus” by Milos Forman. Giorgio Grassi is Salieri, poor thing, and Aldo Rossi is the Mozart of the history of architecture, poor thing?

baukuh - “Amadeus” by Forman is one of the more stupid movies of all the time and Mozart simply looks like a dumb guy possessed by a superior spirit, which is exactly what we do NOT think about intellectual work. Working is a hard work for everybody, and for sure Mozart was not such a lucky lunatic as he is pictured by the movie (that we consider totally fascist for giving such an idea of the art)

Therefore the answer is that Grassi is Salieri and also Rossi is Salieri, but above all also Mozart is Salieri, even because otherwise it would be just a jerk.

pinksummer - A question for Gruppo A12. Something on your participations to the Kröller-Müller Museum and to the Venice Biennale of 2003: does it persist any substantial difference between architectonic “system” or even “architectonic device” (these being the definitions of your work, that we heard on those occasions) and actual architecture? And in case that difference exists, is it just a matter of temporality or even of responsibility?

Gruppo A12 - Those terms have a specific meaning and they have been used to describe our interventions probably because our answer to a particular typology of architecture (the temporary exhibition pavillon) was much wider than a mere solution of the architectonic theme in terms of form and function and opened a reflection on nature of collective space and the urban condition. Both of those participations can be considered some sort of manifesto for a rather precise idea of architecture, generally valid. Their ephemeral nature, on which many people focused, has been completely accidental to us and is related to the fact that, for several reasons, contemporary art exhibition are almost the only context, where we manage to express such ideas.

pinksummer - Do you have any relationship with vernacular architecture?

Gruppo A12 - For some reasons, it is impossible not to have it (believe it or not, even the “cultivated” architecture or “auteur architecture” origins from there). We cannot say that we have a specific interest for the topic or a particular “taste” for vernacular aesthetics, traditional construction techniques or spontaneous architecture, even if the appearance of some our jobs could recall self-made constructions, which is one of the possible interpretations of the term that you used. Our approach to the construction of the project, also in about its formal aspects, is much more conceptual.

baukuh - We don’t.

If “vernacular” refers to the achievement of some minority to sympathize with, of some poor thing to whom you give something to charity to set your mind at rest, then it is ethically disgusting. We do not believe at all to the “architecture without architects”, that it is always and solely architecture made by “architects” (because such are they, even if they do not have the stamp of the order) overwhelmed, forgotten, exploited. If this “architecture without architects” has reached some formal achievement - as most of the time did - it was always just because there the awareness of a project and therefore an architect was there, even though his track got lost.

If instead by “vernacular” you mean simply a picturesque appeal, where everything is a little blurred, a little adjusted, a little more gentle, a little more innocuous, that is just crap.

pinksummer - Rem Koolhaas the Superdutch is going to be the curator next Venice Biennale of architecture. What do you think about it?

A12 Group – That follows last year trend of entrusting the direction of the Biennale to important international architects rather than architecture critics or theorists. Of course, Koolhaas is an architect whose activity is equally shared between research and building practice, one of the most influential personalities who have radically changed the way of making architecture during last 30 years. Therefore we are curious to see how he will carry out that assignment.

baukuh - Koolhaas has nothing to do with the “Superdutch”, the title of a book by Bart Lootsma, that used to piss off people about ten years ago, but that now is just touching. Moreover Koolhaas has always disliked that book and of course you cannot blame him for “Superdutch”. On the contrary, you can blame him for having raged at that Bart Lootsma, poor devil who ended up emigrating to Austria, but maybe the issue is not very interesting…

Koolhaas will be an excellent curator. I would say that he has the right to do whatever he likes to and we trust him. Overall, we trust in Koolhaas, Gerhard Richter, Derek Walcott and Steve Albini. They all can do whatever they want.

pinksummer - Cities get ill and sometimes they die too. Sometimes that happens for natural causes, like the sanding up of harbors, other times is an infected politics that slow them down to death. Genoa is dying a little bit, it is not basted by good connections, it is bleed white by the consistent emigration. Genoa is more and more beautiful though. Could the Architecture, the true one, the one of the city and for the city, not the overbearing and the individualist one of archistars, be a medicine? Isn’t it a dog chasing its own tail? Can the architecture of the city, of the community, prescind from a healthy politics?

Gruppo A12 - No, architecture cannot be a medicine for the society. Aldo Rossi, between a symphony and a quartet, on the relationships between politics and cities, says that ” the city actualize itself through its own idea of city”. City, architecture, artwork are products of the society that they express. The quality of the architecture depends at least equally on both the patronage and the architects. Therefore, a good public architecture is possible only when the public patronage (politics) is aware of the importance of the quality of the space where citizens live, it is convinced of the necessity of a consistent planning to obtain it and it is determined to face all the difficulties of making that happen. But there is no link between quality of the architecture and “health” of politics, as we mean it today. If we look back at the past, we realize that often also corrupted regimes and ferocious tyrant have produced wonderful architectures.

baukuh - For Genoa’s specific disease, architecture cannot be a medicine. Only politics could it be.

pinksummer - Regarding the reflection that you are going to elaborate in form of exhibition at our gallery, you move from different approaches leading to different outcomes. baukuh refer to a pragmatism, that we like to improperly define “butterfly effect”. You act very little, but you are everything but modest. A barely perceivable quiver of a wing provokes a cyclone (even though contained and tendentially quantifiable in terms of power) of effects that improve space and, consequently, life in that space. You have a solution and the solution grows and develops inside the belly of the architect.

Keeping on with this unexpectedly astrological style, good for the year just begun, we would say that Gruppo A12  has grown bigger on genuine food and, most of all, on radical architecture. Your language claims the ethical linearity of modernism, utopia is your beacon, but the cynical quadrature of postmodernism was not in vain, therefore the light you follow, still shining, incorruptible and enchanted, tends to shine on a wrong way round world, where progress clashes with the positive and positivistic myth of eternal youth. You let it crash louder, by simply amplifying the noise of the crash. You tend not to get out the speculative dimension. Sometimes architecture seems like a pretext, but then one notices that it is the condition, the foundation stone. You do not have solutions, but we suspect that, even if you had some in your pocket, it would look like ingenuous to you offering it, because that could be nothing but partial, compared to the problems you pose or, better, that history poses and that you round-off upwords.

12/11/1972, the beautiful exhibition that you presented at pinksummer in the 2002, developed from the present to the past and vice versa, in order to show and to demonstrate how a city can be read as a sort of diary, written with the rather objective alphabet of architecture, where all the changes of the society are consciously or not recorded. Focault entered into the language and he inhabited it as one could inhabit a city of bricks and mortar in spite of the systematic rules by Giorgio Grassi, analyzed and interpreted by baukuh in their essay Due saggi sull’architettura. In your new project you start from the present and you deduce the future (we would rather use the verb to evoke).

Anyway, seeing butterflies in Genoa is as improbable as coming across Tredicino that runs after the seven-league boot.

What will you present at pinksummer?

baukuh - We present something very easy: a project called “Demolishing Genoa” that proposes the demolition of 1% of the built-up area of a city, that has lost a quarter of its population in the last twenty-five years and that, at the same time, is in a disastrous hydrogeological situation. The work is part of a broader research, titled “Genova meno uno percento” (www.genovamenounopercento.it) that involves other Genoese architecture workshops (Gosplan, OBR, Sp10, Una2) to point out a problem and a possible opportunity, that the city risks to ignore. The project is described through two large drawings that represent the current situation and proposed transformations by using as sample the Bisagno valley. In spite of the intentionally terrifying title, “Demolishing Genoa” suggests a program of very tiny demolitions, small, very cautious “surgical” interventions. This cautious strategy would concur to increase the amount of poriferous grounds, greens areas and public spaces available to the city. The intervention we present are purposely not very showy; the difference between the current situation and the proposed scenario visualized by the two drawings is almost imperceptible. Nevertheless we think that such minor transformations could reactivate some parts of the city and hence promote wider transformations.

In the end, we do not get tired of repeating it: we are realist. If there is something we are not interested in, that is utopia. It is always possible to make happen what we propose, even though perhaps to do that a small change of perspective is needed.

Gruppo A12 - Let’s get back to Genoa and focus a general phenomenon that here is particularly sensible: the progressive aging of the population in western society. That is a trend that is going to reach a critical point and we are interested in the possible consequences on the organization of the cities and their spaces. If we look back to the past, in front of such kind changes only avant-garde movements and utopistic thinking have been able to provide enough large-scale visions.  However, in their leap towards the future, all the utopic or radical visions have been always based on an healthy man, full of energies and potentiality, mature and effectively productive, endowed with reproductive abilities. What happens instead, if we try to put in the center of our utopia a typical old man? A man, or a woman, older than 65 years, who needs to face a condition of weakness if not illness? And most of all, what does it mean to design a city devoted and purposely built for that kind of people? What we are going to display in our exhibition is a collection of notes for planning a new urbanistic utopia, entirely dedicated to old people.

Pinksummer - A question for A12, inspired by a very recent article appeared today on Sunday issue of the newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore. The project you are going to present at pinksummer moves from statistics and mathematical probability to read a not-so-bright future. In his article, Carlo Rovelli affirms that “probability is the careful and rational management of our ignorance” and that “the theorem of Bayes supplies a formula for calculating the probability for an event to occur, when I end up knowing something more about it”. Concerning Genoa inhabitants inclination to get older and older, did you by chance find, at least on local scale, any possible alternative to decay, different from seaquake, scarcity, war or epidemy?

Gruppo A12 - After quickly surveying on the Internet, we have learnt that the theorem of Bayes find its application in anti-Spam filters and e-mail programs, which means that it is thanks to that theorem that we lose messages of vital importance, without any success in avoiding daily proposals for improbable business from self-styled Central Africa ministers… therefore we do not really trust in that. However in 1999 Nitin Desai, Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations, on occasion of the launch of the International Year of Older Persons, asserted: “Longevity is a success. It is something that human beings desired since year zero! The fact that we are achieving it would not be considered a problem. It should be considered conquest.” We add that, since year zero on, open to change and project-oriented, visionary attitude always turned out to be effective strategies in difficult situations.

di Marco Biraghi

Il XX secolo si “apre”, dal punto di vista dell’architettura, con alcune importanti opere infrastrutturali: le stazioni della metropolitana (1894-1901) e la regolazione del corso del Donaukanal (1894-1908) a Vienna, entrambe di Otto Wagner, gli ingressi del métro di Parigi (1898-1904) di Hector Guimard, la stazione ferroviaria di Helsinki (1904-14) di Eliel Saarinen. Come nel caso degli edifici industriali realizzati intorno al primo decennio del Novecento (la Turbinenfabrik di Berlino di Peter Behrens, la Fabbrica chimica di Luban di Hans Poelzig, le Officine Fagus ad Alfeld an der Leine di Walter Gropius e Adolf Meyer, per ricordarne solo qualcuno), tali opere segnano, oltreché dei significativi “episodi” della storia dell’architettura, la tendenza all’allargamento di quest’ultima a una sfera di “compiti” sino a quel momento ritenuti estranei ad essa e svolti prima di allora prevalentemente dall’ingegneria.

Dal punto di vista dell’architettura, il problema delle infrastrutture ruota intorno alla questione della dotazione di qualità a “oggetti” dal carattere prettamente utilitaristico, che pur essendo singolari, “puntuali”, fanno parte di sovente di una rete più vasta (non necessariamente visibile); “oggetti” che - come nei casi sopra citati - s’inseriscono all’interno di contesti urbani storicizzati, dove sono costretti a confrontarsi con i monumenti e con gli altri edifici civili più rappresentativi della città. Ciò vale con piena evidenza per le stazioni ferroviarie, che penetrano fin dentro il cuore dei centri storici, così come pure per quelle della metropolitana, che emergono qua e là dal sottosuolo nei punti nodali del tessuto urbano. E vale perfino per quegli straordinari “pezzi” di architettura - apparentemente isolati ma in realtà profondamente interconnessi con il restante “sistema” e compiutamente metropolitani - come la chiusa di Nußdorf, all’estrema periferia di Vienna, concepita da Wagner come un “ingresso ufficiale” alla capitale del Regno austro-ungarico.

Otto Wagner, Chiusa di Nussdorf, Vienna, 1894-98

Lavorare sulle infrastrutture, per gli architetti, comporta non soltanto di dover tenere conto delle specifiche esigenze presentate dagli edifici che vi sono destinati (ivi compreso l’inserimento in essi dell’ingente carico di apparecchiature tecniche di cui questi sono spesso dotati), ma anche di adottare differenti strategie progettuali rispetto a edifici di altra natura. Nel caso delle stazioni della metropolitana, ad esempio, è evidente come la loro progettazione richieda - almeno per quanto concerne Vienna e Otto Wagner - una logica “seriale”, ovvero la fissazione di alcune soluzioni standard da ripetere per intero o in parte in circostanze diverse. Ciò implica - almeno in una certa misura - il superamento della procedura “creativa” basata sul compimento di un “gesto unico e irripetibile” che caratterizza molta architettura pur distante da esasperate “volontà d’arte”. È proprio al fine di raggiungere questa serializzazione e standardizzazione, del resto, che Wagner organizza il proprio studio professionale (in stretta connessione con la sua “scuola”) secondo un modello che non ha paragoni in quel momento in Europa; uno studio attraverso il quale passano - tra i molti altri - giovani architetti come Joseph Maria Olbrich, Josef Hoffmann, Joze Plecnik, Max Fabiani, alcuni dei quali direttamente impegnati nella grande opera della metropolitana.

Ma come può fornire l’occasione per allestire dentro il corpo della città - e fin nelle sue viscere - un ramificato sistema di “regole” punteggiato da poche, significative eccezioni (nel caso viennese le stazioni di Karlsplatz e di Hietzing), in modo altrettanto efficace la metropolitana può divenire lo spunto per innumerevoli variazioni sul tema della stazione (sotterranea o interrata), dando così spazio alla libertà espressiva dei suoi diversi interpreti. Emblematico, sotto questo profilo, il caso di Mosca, la cui rete metropolitana viene elevata al rango di vetrina del progresso tecnico e delle capacità estetiche della Russia sovietica. La sua prima tranche, costruita tra il 1931 e il 1935 (altre ne seguiranno nei decenni successivi), è costituita da una parata di padiglioni di accesso, saloni e banchine, la sontuosità dei cui spazi e la ricchezza dei cui materiali contrastano in modo quasi paradossale con l’immagine della società del proletariato alla quale sono destinati. Nella progettazione delle stazioni sono impegnati i migliori architetti russi di tutte le tendenze: dai “tradizionalisti” Aleksej Scusev e Ivan Fomin a costruttivisti come Nikolaj Kolli e sperimentatori come Nikolaj Ladovskij, tra i molti altri. In tutti comunque, sotto l’abile guida del direttore dei lavori Lazar’ Mojseevic Kaganovic, prevale la tendenza alla monumentalizzazione del tema, che genera - soprattutto negli spazi di distribuzione dei passeggeri ai binari - ambienti in tutto paragonabili a sfarzosi saloni da ballo adorni di lampadari e di marmi, o a saloni da banchetti affrescati. Con tutto ciò, al termine dei lavori la «vittoria della metropolitana» verrà salutata come una «vittoria del socialismo».

Al pari dei monumenti e degli edifici pubblici più rappresentativi di una civiltà, anche le infrastrutture sono diretta espressione dell’ideologia dominante in una certa epoca, e come quelli anche queste sono state utilizzate di sovente, nel corso della storia, con finalità retorico-celebrative, oltreché per lo svolgimento del fine al quale sono destinate. Non è raro tuttavia che per regimi di orientamento e natura pur differenti l’utilità delle infrastrutture passi in secondo piano rispetto all’obiettivo di sfruttarle per ragioni strategiche e propagantistiche. E non è raro neppure che a questo scopo vengano impiegati architetti di riconosciuta bravura. Si pensi ad esempio alla campagna di costruzione delle stazioni ferroviarie italiane intrapresa dall’Italia fascista negli anni trenta, che porta Angiolo Mazzoni a progettare, tra le altre, quelle di Bolzano, Trento, Reggio Emilia, Reggio Calabria, Messina e Roma Tiburtina. Oppure alla realizzazione dell’Autobahn tedesca voluta da Hitler a partire dal 1933, e condotta dall’ingegner Fritz Todt con la collaborazione, per quanto riguarda la progettazione di ponti e viadotti, dell’architetto Paul Bonatz.

Angiolo Mazzoni, Stazione ferroviaria di Messina, 1939-40

Lo stesso Bonatz è autore, nella Germania della Repubblica di Weimar, delle opere di regolarizzazione del corso del fiume Neckar (1926-33), per la quale realizza un’ingente quantità di chiuse, dighe, centrali elettriche e ponti, oltreché della stazione di Stoccarda (1911-28). Tanto in quest’ultima quanto nelle chiuse per il Neckar Bonatz adotta un duplice linguaggio, corrispondente alla duplicità delle funzioni che vi hanno luogo: un linguaggio fermo, stabile, monumentale, quasi “egizio”, per i fronti esterni, i saloni, le biglietterie, le scale della stazione e per i piloni delle chiuse, e un linguaggio essenziale, tecnico, per i binari e le pensiline della prima e per i ponti-passerelle delle seconde. Si tratta di una duplicità intrinseca a molte opere infrastrutturali della “prima età della macchina”, per dirla con l’espressione cara a Reyner Banham, che fa in particolar modo delle stazioni ferroviarie degli inevitabili “Giani bifronti” (si pensi soltanto alla stazione centrale di Milano, progettata nel 1912 da Ulisse Stacchini in stile “assiro-ambrosiano”, e portata a termine del 1931 con l’inserimento della grande tettoia in ferro ad arconi per la copertura dei binari, opera dell’ingegner Alberto Fava e della Società Nazionale Officine di Savigliano).

Tra le tipologie di infrastrutture che entrano nell’ambito d’interesse degli architetti, oltre ai più “tradizionali” ponti - che tuttavia nel Novecento, accanto alle innovazioni tecnologiche di competenza più prettamente ingegneristica (valgano per tutti i ponti di Robert Maillart) conoscono una radicale trasformazione espressiva (dai progetti di ponti urbani di Otto Wagner, Hendrikus Theodorus Wijdeveld, Pieter Kramer, a quelli “territoriali” e arditissimi di Paolo Soleri, Myron Goldsmith, Norman Foster) -, vi sono anche le dighe, le centrali elettriche, le torri dell’acqua. Anche qui il “valore aggiunto” espressivo è di fondamentale importanza: un valore che può tradursi in termini di massa (sinistra e “primigenia”, nella diga di Klingenberg, Sassonia, 1908-14, di Hans Poelzig) o di potenza (ritmico-geometrica, nella Grand Coulee Dam, WA, 1972-78, di Marcel Breuer); un valore ritenuto a tal punto indispensabile da far richiedere, nel caso della diga di Bhakra (la più grande diga a gravità del mondo, che rifornisce di energia elettrica Chandigarh, situata a 116 km di distanza), l’intervento estetico di Le Corbusier da parte degli ingegneri idraulici.

Altrettanto fondamentale è il contributo della cultura architettonica alla realizzazione di centrali elettriche. Basti pensare a un vero e proprio landmark urbano qual è la Battersea Power Station (1929-34) di Londra, frutto del decisivo intervento di Giles Gilbert Scott sull’amorfa struttura parzialmente realizzata su progetto di Theo Halliday; ma anche alla più tarda Bankside Power Station, dello stesso Scott, affacciata sul Tamigi, e trasformata negli anni novanta nell’attuale Tate Modern. O ancora, alle numerose centrali idroelettriche progettate da Piero Portaluppi in Val d’Ossola, Valle Antigorio e Val Formazza, grazie ai numerosi incarichi ricevuti dal senatore Ettore Conti, suo suocero e proprietario (tra le molte altre) dell’omonima società elettrica. Verampio, Crego, Baceno, Valdo, Sottofrua, Crevoladossola, Cadarese sono i luoghi notevoli di questa specialissima “città elettrica diffusa” che Portaluppi edifica tra il 1913 e il 1925 (cui va aggiunta la centrale termoelettrica di Piacenza, realizzata tra il ‘25 e il ‘29): una “città” dal volto mutevole, ecletticamente oscillante tra il romanico, il gotico flamboyant e il cinese, ma resa unitaria dalla maniera lieve e dall’ironica “sprezzatura” che accomuna tutti i progetti.

Per quanto concerne le torri dell’acqua, se nell’Ottocento il loro trattamento “estetico” equivaleva nella maggior parte dei casi a un rivestimento-travestimento con “maschere storiciste” (di cui ancora i progetti di concorso del 1907 per una Wasserturm ad Amburgo, cui partecipa tra gli altri Joseph Maria Olbrich, forniscono una significativa testimonianza), nel Novecento esse raramente si distaccano dalla ripetizione della forma “funzionale”, derivante dalla mera addizione di un traliccio e di un serbatoio (si veda al proposito la straordinaria raccolta tassonomica dei fotografi Bernd e Hilla Becher). Quando ciò accade - come nei progetti per Amburgo del 1910 di Hans Poelzig, e in quella da lui stesso realizzata a Posen, 1910-11 - la torre dell’acqua si rivela capace, meglio di molte altre infrastrutture, di farsi specchio dell’”informe” che invade l’universo metropolitano: ma un “informe” che è ben lungi dal risultare svuotato, disanimato, defunto. Al contrario, è proprio nel ritorno alla condizione originaria della materia - amorfa, caotica - che si esprime nella sua pienezza la vita moderna.

Hans Poelzig, Torre dell'acqua, Amburgo, 1910

L’essenza stessa della modernità - di cui le infrastrutture si fanno portatrici nel XX secolo -  è del resto pressoché priva di forma, intesa nel senso della configurazione finita, definita. Sua strutturazione caratteristica è piuttosto la connessione, sue azioni peculiari sono il fluire, il trascorrere. E se di tali attributi, la strada, con il suo corredo di svincoli, viadotti, tunnel, trafori, rappresenta la versione più semplice ed elementare (e in realtà anche quella cronologicamente anteriore), ad essa vanno affiancate le altre modalità di collegamento e di scorrimento che il progresso tecnologico ha via via messo a disposizione: le innumerevoli condutture (dall’acqua al gas, dal petrolio al metano) e cablature (dall’elettricità a tutti gli impulsi elettromagnetici che permettono a telefoni, televisioni, internet e altro ancora di funzionare) che attraversano lo spazio aereo, penetrano nel terreno e sono posate sul fondo del mare. Se Banham aveva avuto modo di parlare di una “un-house” (come a dire, il “negativo” di una casa), a proposito dell’enorme complesso di tubature, cavi e canne fumarie che s’intrecciano nei muri e sotto i pavimenti di una dimora qualsiasi, arrivando a rendere virtualmente “inutile” (o superflua) quest’ultima, oggi si potrebbe altrettanto fondatamente parlare di “un-city” - se non addirittura di “un-world” - in riferimento a tutto quanto nelle città e nel mondo costituisce il tessuto connettivo, il sistema circolatorio, a scala locale e globale, sull’esistenza del quale città e mondo si reggono.

Nonostante le loro dimensioni smisurate e onniavvolgenti, la maggior parte di queste reti risulta invisibile o manca di un aspetto percettivamente rilevante. Se si prescinde dai tralicci iperboloidi dell’alta tensione progettati nel primi decenni del secolo dal geniale ingegnere russo Vladimir G. Shukhov, e da qualche elegante traliccio “di design”, come quello progettato in tempi recenti da Norman Foster per Terna, quasi mai le reti infrastrutturali moderne riescono a tradursi in qualcosa che possa definirsi “architettura”. In compenso esse costituiscono una precondizione imprescindibile per l’esistenza non soltanto di una vita associata, ma della stessa architettura al suo interno. E ciò tanto più quanto più tali reti sono integrate tra loro.

In questo senso è significativo che i principî sui quali la Broadacre City di Frank Lloyd Wright avrebbe dovuto fondarsi, negli anni trenta, fossero quelli dell’elettrificazione del territorio e della mobilitazione meccanica (automobilistica e aerea) per attuare gli spostamenti al suo interno: intreccio di infrastrutture diverse ma logicamente congiunte al fine di attuare il grande “sogno” wrightiano, l’urbanizzazione del suolo americano, ovvero l’”organicizzazione” della nazione usoniana.

Piero Portaluppi, Centrale elettrica di Crevoladossola, 1923-25

Con tutto ciò, soltanto a uno sguardo superficiale l’impetuoso sviluppo delle infrastrutture, nel corso dell’ultimo secolo, può essere fatto corrispondere a una perfetta “razionalizzazione” del mondo; e se certo, a un primo livello, tale sviluppo ha rispecchiato una volontà pianificatoria mossa da un’idea di ragione, tesa a organizzare e a ottimizzare le risorse planetarie secondo uno schema di scopo, non soltanto palesemente il tentativo non ha conseguito il suo intento, ma anche quando - e dove - lo ha raggiunto, ha dimostrato semmai l’esatto contrario rispetto al presupposto dal quale era partito: il delirio di ogni logica, il trionfo dell’irrazionale. Non a caso, nell’ottica dell’architettura, le infrastrutture hanno finito per prendere il posto delle tradizionali utopie di cui essa si è spesso nutrita. Così le grandi modificazioni del territorio, realizzate o soltanto immaginate (dall’abbassamento del livello del Mediterraneo ipotizzato dal progetto Atlantropa di Herman Sörgel al vasto programma di dighe e bacini predisposto dalla Tennessee Valley Authority; dalle bonifiche dell’Agro Pontino nell’Italia fascista al sistema di dighe e dune artificiali costruite in Olanda per proteggere la terra dal mare; dal “grande piano di trasformazione della natura” di Stalin mediante una rete di canali da distendere sull’intero territorio russo ai tentativi di rendere coltivabili e abitabili i deserti, in diverse parti del mondo), sono comparabili per “visionarietà” e apparente irrealizzabilità all’Alpine Architektur di Bruno Taut o New Babylon di Constant. D’altro canto, è sufficiente osservare una carta stradale d’Europa o la mappa degli impianti di risalita presenti sulla catena delle Alpi per rendersi conto che la realtà odierna coincide per molti versi con i sogni di ieri, soltanto riveduti e corretti alla più cruda luce del giorno.

Al di là comunque di aspirazioni di ordine superiore, ciò che accade con sempre maggiore frequenza all’architettura è di integrarsi - ovvero di “parassitarsi” - alle infrastrutture. In questa prospettiva, i binari ferroviari “generano” non soltanto stazioni ma anche (in ormai trascorsi cicli economici) impianti e capannoni industriali, che ne sfruttano la derivazione; e allo stesso modo, le strade “generano” non soltanto pompe di benzina e stazioni di servizio, ma anche parcheggi, autogrill, motel e perfino “stazioni di rifornimento” spirituale. È forse quasi inutile ricordare a questo proposito come ciascuna di queste funzioni si traduca in opere di qualità, progettate o realizzate da altrettanti architetti: i distributori Esso di Vittorio De Feo e Erg di Ettore Sottsass, il garage Ina a Venezia di Eugenio Miozzi, gli autogrill Motta di Melchiorre Bega e Pavesi di Angelo Bianchetti, i motel Agip di Mario Ridolfi, la Chiesa sull’autostrada a Campi Bisenzio di Giovanni Michelucci (per limitarsi alla sola Italia). Anche quest’ultimo caso, per quanto singolare, non costituisce poi un’eccezione, se si considera che già nel 1895 Otto Wagner aveva realizzato a Vienna la Cappella di San Giovanni, a fianco della linea della metropolitana sopraelevata del Gürtel, e in stretto rapporto con questa.

In molti altri casi le infrastrutture, per gli architetti, si rivelano una risorsa progettuale, qualcosa di cui servirsi, da inglobare. Lo è con tutta evidenza per Le Corbusier la strada che corre al di sopra del lungo edificio continuo che come una curvilinea corniche segue la linea costiera, nel Plan Obus per Algeri (1930-31). Così come lo è l’aeroporto collocato sulla copertura piana della stazione della ferrovia sotterranea, al centro della Ville contemporaine (1922), dello stesso Le Corbusier, o alla sommità dei grandi blocchi residenziali, nel progetto di Città superiore (1924) di Virgilio Marchi.

Virgilio Marchi, Città superiore, 1924

Non è forse un caso che la matrice comune a entrambi sia il progetto di Antonio Sant’Elia per una “stazione d’aeroplani e treni ferroviari” (1914). È infatti in un’”economia” futurista che si muovono queste “visioni”, che presuppongono un’accelerazione del mondo in quel momento ancora di là da venire (e in certi casi, futura ancor’oggi). Ed è da una mentalità futurista (da intendersi attitudinalmente, non per forza storicamente) che scaturisce la commistione e l’interferenza tra infrastrutture diverse. Non stupisce, allora, d’incontrare a fine anni ottanta un progetto come quello per il Sea Terminal di Zeebrugge, in Belgio, di Rem Koolhaas/OMA, che fa convergere in un unico edificio destinato a ospitare hotel, casinò, ristoranti, centro congressi e parcheggi un complesso nodo d’interscambio tra automobili, autobus, tir, treni e traghetti. La stessa “congestione” di linee e di mezzi che si verifica, a una scala di gran lunga maggiore, nel quartiere di Euralille, a Lille, a seguito del masterplan degli stessi Koolhaas e OMA, e dopo che la città del nord della Francia è stata raggiunta dal TGV.

Commentando - nel dicembre del 1945, su «Magazine of Art» - un proprio progetto per un aeroporto metropolitano di due anni precedenti, Erich Medelsohn, ormai stabilitosi negli Stati Uniti, tratteggia un quadro che può forse aspirare a rappresentare l’immagine della multiformità delle infrastrutture nel XX secolo, ovvero la loro condizione d’interazione ideale: «Gli aeroporti metropolitani del dopoguerra saranno ciò che dell’America vedranno per prima cosa i viaggiatori che giungono dall’Atlantico e dal Pacifico, saranno cioè i suoi più importanti saloni di rappresentanza. Perché l’America possa dare testimonianza concreta di essere la salvaguardia del mondo, le sue solenni porte d’ingresso dovrebbero evitare la scala banale della pura utilità, la volgarità di un negozio di strumenti meccanici, come pure le esagerazioni materiali della pompa imperialistica, incompatibili con i principî tecnici e democratici sui quali il mondo dovrà essere ricostruito. Né i nostri aeroporti dovranno essere costruiti come giganti isolati, isole senza collegamento diretto al traffico urbano, suburbano, continentale e intercontinentale. Nell’era dell’aeroplano, gli aeroporti debbono rappresentare fin dall’inizio ciò che nell’epoca della ferrovia significarono le stazioni centrali e di scambio: la calamita del traffico per tutta l’area metropolitana, dominante specifica del nostro tempo.

Possiamo con un po’ di fantasia farci un quadro di questo centro di attrazione. Tutto il traffico ferroviario arriva alla stazione di testa attraverso vari livelli sotterranei. Grazie all’edificio dell’amministrazione centrale e a un albergo, la stazione di testa è accessibile da piste d’elicotteri adibiti al servizio suburbano; i garage per elicotteri si trovano a livello del seminterrato, in diretto collegamento con i garage per le automobili, al livello stradale. Dalla stazione di testa, passaggi sotterranei conducono all’aeroporto; per aeroplani per servizio continentale e idrovolanti per servizio transoceanico il traffico di merci e passeggeri è separato. L’aeroporto è l’organo centrale che alimenta la principale arteria della città, fiancheggiata da costruzioni per uffici; a opportuna distanza sorgono nuclei residenziali cinti da giardini e parchi pubblici: la scala umana».

Erich Mendelsohn, Aeroporto metropolitano, 1943

Da L’architettura del Mondo. Infrastrutture, mobilità, nuovi paesaggi, Catalogo della mostra, a cura di A. Ferlenga, M. Biraghi, B. Albrecht, Triennale di Milano - Editrice Compositori Bologna 2012

30 settembre 2012