ABOUT “TALKS”

Architecture is also made of words. Coordinated by Valerio Paolo Mosco, the series Talks acts precisely as an open forum for the words of architects, without any preset themes or limitations. We are condemned to adapt to a state of affairs: to fill the gaps that are inevitably created with words. This is what it means to be modern: being postmodern means even more. After all, without a convention, at the mercy of (real or imagined) freedom, we find ourselves having to operate in terms of a constant investigation of our operating, which is inevitably translated into words. It is as if architects themselves (but even more so, artists) were forced to shore up the elements and themes of their work with theoretical props. Upon closer inspection – and this should be particularly thought-provoking – these props as a whole simply set limits for operation. No poetics can exist without limits, without an enclosure in which it can be restrained. One might object to this by saying that almost 100 years ago, in the period of splendor of the avant-gardes, the dominant ideology was precisely that of having no limits. But many years have passed, and the lack of limits has translated not only into repetitive confusion (Leo Longanesi said: “nothing is more repetitive than the avant-gardes”), but also into formal posturing at the service of the most indulgent sort of consumption. Therefore writing, or the setting of reasoned limits on one’s own endeavor, has become an increasingly necessary action, almost a form of resistance to that formal entropy that for years now has run the risk of sucking architecture into the realm of forgettable things. We have decided to package the words of the architects invited to take part in Talks in slipcases, each containing five contributions, providing an opportunity for comparison among the various authors. We like to think that this confrontation can resemble a symposium in which – as in the work by Plato – each speaker can present his own interpretation: for Plato, the theme was love, while for Divisare – somewhat more subduedly – it is architecture.