THE REASONS WHY WE PUBLISH A&C INTERNATIONAL
Ivo Tagliaventi

The reasons which push someone to undertake such a risky and hazardous task like the publication or the transformation of an architectural and urbanistic magazine might be very conventional. This was remarked in the first issue (1985) of the first series of Archi & Colonne and now we are even more persuaded of the rightness of that statement. Nevertheless, we believe that we must remind our readers who we are and what we are trying to promote.

This is an architectural magazine which can become the voice of truly free-thinking people, one deeply involved in the democratic promotion of ideas, programs and works related to that oldest of human activities, namely the art of building and planning. It is a magazine which aims to be an instrument of documentation and promotion of debate, one which seeks to analyze both facts and the relation between theoretical statements and real actions.

Our aims can be summarized as follows:

1. we want to re-discover, re-evaluate, defend the reasons which made both historical cities and peripheral settlements "beautiful" and loveable, while remaining highly conscious that nothing can be truly repeated but that everything of value need be derived, through improvement, from roots which form the basis of our authentic culture;

2. we want to demonstrate, humbly but firmly, the quantity and relevance of the unchallenged mistakes made during last fifty years in Italy and elsewhere by certain architectural schools, tendencies and professional groups, both at the urban and regional planning scale;

3. we want in fact to contribute without any dogmatism - and dogma is a fallacy we have until recently had a good opportunity to experience - to the Renaissance of the city conceived both as urban environment and as indispensable fabric of society;

4. we want to document new works, possibly unpublished, from people who are not always the same "personalities" who have been occupying for so long all the architectural magazines - magazines which believe that they cannot be successful if not continually publishing the same well-known professionals -, while those "personalities" would better not publish all they produce.

We will, on the contrary, give place and attention also to those who do not have the benefit of fame, the unknown architects, the young ones particularly, to all those whose architectural activity we appreciate;

5. we want to oppose the high-minded monopoly of the technicians' lobbies that have been dominating the architectural scene - for reasons which have no relation to legitimate professional talent - and made mistakes and produced those monsters described in point 2.;

6. we want to bring back the debate on technique and technology to its effective, precious, fundamental operative and practical role within the theoretical and productive process of built works on the field, while setting it free from all the pretentious claims and the pseudo-creative attempts of too many so-called gurus.

We do not pretend to want everything, to be able to accomplish everything, to do it better than others. No! But we are firmly persuaded that it is time to actively participate in the critical and operational definition of great architectural and urbanistic problems within our millennial tradition, to debate openly together in order to succeed in modifying what is wrong: in methods, programs and built works.

If in the whole old Europe something has really changed recently in the habits and the attitudes of the majority of the people, and if people are capable of regaining the control of their destiny, thus refusing ideological and power-related constraints, which for too long have been influencing the policy of public administrations and the selection of authoritative persons; if the rising Nations of Europe are aiming at achieving legitimate status, efficient administrations and high cultural expression; if all this is true, then we all must involve ourselves with the highest sense of responsibility.

We must rest our profession with a new attitude and with a clean context, that is far from the dangerous swamp of squalid conformism, out of which shameful works have been built and professional fortunes consolidated.

We will be close to all those who, sharing our intentions, will collaborate not to dream but to transform dreams into reality.

There is already form an impressive number of friends, coming from different countries, who have decided to participate in this worthwhile struggle.

We are not, and do not want to be conditioned by anybody, but we will be instead always at the service of society and culture; we will stand close to all those who will join us in the defense of what we are manifestly defending.