MODERNITY IN TRANSITION
10
May
2017
The theme of the relationship between natural and artificial elements within complex urban contexts such as the ones we inhabit, and more generally of the relationship and opposition between nature and culture, has long been present in the
debate and somewhat in architectural practice. It is in the last years that, however, this question has taken on interests and meanings that go beyond the simple disciplinary theme, and the opportunistic one linked to the presence and
needs of nature in the city, and involve a wider spectrum of fields.
Thus, over time, along the relationship between architecture and society, a sort of new idea of landscape is defined, a hybrid landscape no longer only to be observed through the texture and support of the architecture, but autonomous and
free to take possession of the architecture itself, and to make architecture landscape. From green courtyards to garden roofs via vertical green facades, the elements of nature become more and more present in one
hybrid dimension in which architecture, city and landscape mix in the construction, so to speak, of a new and hybrid subject, which certainly undermines the identity and disciplinary integrity of architecture. Such
integrity is also attacked by other factors typical of the instability and fluidity that distinguish the condition of our time.
This difficult task of giving shape to the new relationship between built space and natural dimension, after the roof gardens, certainly belongs to the facade, which with its symbolic power represents the true frontier of
experimentation where to give meaning to the ephemeral and experiential contemporary condition.
GIANANDREA BARRECA - 10/05/ 2017