L'Arca International N° 114

September / October 2013

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Let's reclaim our future

 

The economic crisis we have now been experiencing for several years involves the whole of Europe and, despite small signs of improvement, it seems we are still to predict a quick solution.

 

This situation has spread a cloak of pessimism and insistent despair over the construction industry and related projects in particular and, lacking investment and the will to tackle the future with enthusiasm, it is gradually paralysing any new initiatives.

 

A dangerous and pernicious disease that, as well as removing thousands of businesses from the market, is also dragging young designers into a spiral of desperation, due to a lack of customers, from which there is seemingly no way out. As has always happened in the past during the well-known world wars, a parallel system needs to be established: surviving the present and planning for the future.

 

Having the right conviction that the storm will pass, while we try our best in the present, we must take this opportunity to reflect on the situation. With courage and the right amount of optimism, young architects in particular must recover the enthusiasm for trying to interpret the future and to not perpetuate the errors of the past that have led us to the current juncture. It is not by chance that our cities are surrounded by uninhabitable suburbs; that our homes do not correspond to the needs of modern life; that the education of young people remains elitist and in need of reform; that the public transport system is mostly inadequate and polluting; that we are continuing to build using expensive and traditional techniques; that we are wasting energy, that....

 

I am convinced that now, just as in the 1920s and 1950s, architects and designers should be called upon to design the post-crisis "new world" that will need to be characterised by finding answers and innovative solutions to all the issues mentioned above. It is architects and designers who need to overcome pessimism and commit today to inventing and planning the future of the built world, or rebuilt world, so that it can house our grandchildren.

 

We can think about a new Europe with a society finally in keeping with the great, unstoppable scientific progress that, by improving health and education, will undoubtedly have to commit to radically restructuring cities and infrastructures, creating work and prosperity as a consequence. I believe that young designers really will have to be the ones to commit right now to this brave transformation. They must put forward plans and ideas that see the increasing involvement of the industrial and scientific system in order to "invent" new building processes.

 

While respecting the qualitative values of our culture, they must be capable of reshaping and recovering the vast inhabitable areas of the current suburbs to transform them into places that respond to, and are suitable for, the needs of future generations. We, who have been committed to this undertaking for some time, are waiting to document and analyse your suggestions and will continue to fight any regressive thought.

 

Cesare Maria Casati