A New Vanguard. Notes on the Current Condition of Architecture
Author: Franco Purini
Affiliation: Sapienza - University of Rome
The architecture of the age of globalization, the age characterized by a geopolitical system that seems to be heading towards its decline, is dominant today. Almost all architecture magazines, including some of the most prestigious ones, which in recent years have played an important role in carefully reading and presenting works in their pages without propagandistic intentions; many architects and many historians and critics; a large number of simple architecture observers and even a large group of its users consider the season of building as an exciting, advanced period capable of making the future present. Everything that is not classifiable as globalization architecture is considered traditional, backward, unable to express contemporary values and achieve important objectives. For many years, I have realized that this opinion on global architecture does not correspond to what is considered an innovative, prophetic reality with extraordinary meanings. What has been realized in cities and metropolises in the last thirty years is very similar to the architecture of Eclecticism, which in the last years of the 19th century and until the early years of the next century transformed all the cities of the West and some in the East, giving them a hybrid identity like in an Esperanto, an incoherent mosaic of different linguistic fragments. From here, hybrid, casual, gratuitous works, devoid of their own necessity expressed by the Albertian idea, which in true architecture should not add or remove any element. Therefore, I believe that the true current avant-garde is not that of global architecture but a completely alternative conception of building. This conviction has been suggested to me by an observation that I believe cannot be considered inaccurate or just the result of a subjective view. This conviction consists of believing that architecture, in its first principles, which I will explain shortly, and in the authentic values that they produce, are invariant. [...]
