ARCHITECTURE ARTICLES

Gabriele Tagliaventi

When Vasari writes about the time Brunelleschi used to go to Rome to study and measure the ruins of ancient republican and imperial buildings he says that architects and engineers used to build the main public buildings according to models and proportions which were completely different from the Classical rules.

In the whole of Europe, the most prominent style in the construction of the most representative buildings - cathedrals, town-hall, state-hall - was an autonomous style, in many ways different and distant from the cultural patrimony of the Classical tradition. To build a centrally-shaped building such as a church, a Cathedral or a "villa", was almost impossible even to imagine, after different building systems and cultures had slowly but firmly cancelled the heritage of the past and replaced the traditional construction code, during the centuries which followed the fall of the Roman Empire. Only the ruins were left to testify to a link, a sort of continuity with the millennial civilization which had influenced the whole Mediterranean area, since the time of Greek state-cities to the age when the great Roman conquests brought it up to the entire continental Europe: from the Spanish Atlantic border to Hadrian's wall. Only the ruins were left, while a few architects, writers, philosophers and, possibly, "politicians" began to reflect on the sense of continuity in History, on the relevance of the Classical culture's heritage, and on its perennial value. All around them, out of the "enlightened" circles of the time, the cathedral builders that were so fascinatingly described by Viollet-le-Duc were working at their construction-sites. At that time, the spires of Gothic art's masterpieces flourished everywhere, significantly marking the skyline of the European cities, the Gothic arch seemed to definitely substitute the round-shaped arch of the Roman tradition, and the Classical order gave the way to a different constructive and symbolic system.

Only a few could imagine that from such a cultural and economical framework - the new mercantile society, which was growing up within the Catholic unified urban civilization, claimed with pride its own status - a new, important Classical age was to arrive.

To build a square which is inspired by the Roman forum model and a dome which symbolizes centrality and perfection instead of the spires that transferred the aspiration for the infinite and the supernatural, which was typical of the medieval mysticism, to the cathedrals' materials, meant to question not only a highly consolidated construction system and the strict laws of the masons' corporation, but, particularly, the entire social and religious order of that time.

To put forward the proposal of a "self-contained" and "finished" building - which resulted firmly rooted in the earth, surely static and almost "a-temporal" - sounded close to blasphemy to the ears of bishops who were always anxious to build never-finished and skyscraper-like cathedrals.

This kind of proposal threatened to completely reverse the order that was so painfully established during the millennium which separates Brunelleschi and Alberti from the architects of the Roman Empire. An order that was based upon a strong aspiration to the sky and a trans-natural world, and which materialized in constructions that testified to the consistency of such an aspiration by reducing their "weight", their link with the sinners' earth, in order to pure and "light", raise themselves towards the sky.

Nevertheless, we know how History proceeded. It was right from those ruins - often almost disdained for being technologically backward - and from those reflections of people anxiously searching for cultural continuity rather than a definitive breakdown with a Past which they felt extremely close and present despite its temporal distance. It was right from this rather uncertain framework that this particular Classical age which is today called Renaissance was born.

Now, at the very eve of the third millennium, a new group of people, architects, historians, philosophers, is again beginning to reflect on the idea of continuity and the relevance of tradition. Can we say that today the conditions are similar to the ones under which the new urbanistic and architectural culture of the XIV century flourished, establishing its own distinctive feature on the desire to link with that remote Past? In other words, are we once again at the eve of a new Urban Renaissance or, possibly, already experiencing it?

It is certainly paradoxical to answer these questions without showing legitimate doubts. It is particularly paradoxical for someone who is firmly persuaded that History must be written taking distance from the facts, after a deep analysis of the sources, and only after considering the situation from all the viewpoints even the inconvenient and the heretical ones.

It is equally difficult to state if, in this late XX century, the framework of the architectural world is similar to the one at the time when Brunelleschi dreamed of the birth of a new forum - a new "square like those of the ancients" - appearing as a completely arcaded and geometrically regular square which could testify to the perennial link between the western culture and antiquity, and the rightness of both the Classical theories and rules. Even in the case of an affirmative answer, we could not forget the fact that it was necessary to wait almost a century before the plans for the construction of the new urban civilization were translated from the theoretical books of Alberti and Serlio. In addition, when it happens and the first squares are laid out and the churches built, the setting is in isolated places, far from the main economic and politic centers of that time. It happens in Pienza, a rather small town in the Tuscan countryside, on the initiative of a Pope which is definitely in a subordinate position in relation to the powerful National Countries which were fighting for the continental supremacy: France, Spain, England. It happens in Pienza, not in Paris. Moreover, it is necessary to wait almost another century before a fully conceived model of "Classical" square is realized and a church built as prominent as the magnificent cathedrals on the Ile-de-France and Rhine valley regions.

This means that in order to be reborn after "death", when possible, time, patience and perseverance are needed.

What we today know is that a fundamental condition for this to happen is to have a project, a precise idea of what and how to build in order to achieve both better cities and worlds.

It is necessary to have what in the Anglo-Saxon language we call a Vision. A "Vision of Europe", but even more.

What we have learnt during this very tumultuous XX century is that the continuity of the architectural tradition that has been capable of building the Western city encompasses a larger area than that of Greek and Roman antiquity.

We have learnt how to love and respect all the different styles which, by moving from different theoretical hypothesis, find a common identity in their capacity and desire to build the city as it is intended in the tradition of Western culture, by using traditional materials and the specific values of each different place.

We have learnt to love the Gothic and the Baroque styles for their extraordinary contribution to the construction of that marvelous work of art represented by the mature Western city. That city we are used to seeing pictured in early XX century engravings and, fortunately, inhabiting and daily exploiting. Those are the cities which today we usually drive through and cross by car or using cables and other similar advanced technological devices, while they give us the chance to take advantage of them and continue to develop them thanks to their "beauty", the harmony of their forms and the rationality of their urban structure. Those are the cities, finally, that have been seldom improved, embellished, or even completed, during the latter part of this century characterized indeed by an unusual cultural barbarity. Take Washington D. C. of the MacMillan Commission, and architects such as John Russell Pope and Cass Gilbert as examples.

Most of those cities, indeed, have sadly been destroyed during the last hundred years whilst the cultural continuity of Western tradition almost definitely interrupted. With respect to this, one could easily find several similarities with the age of European Renaissance of the XIV and XV centuries. Today like yesterday the ancient town is mostly destroyed and largely ruined or even completely obliterated. Today like yesterday, a different construction system looks like dominating the architectural scene. Nevertheless, today like yesterday, from the "death" of traditional culture and the traditional city, signs of a Renaissance of classical culture and the traditional city are visible. Signs which are initially weak and uncertain, but later become more and more numerous and important. A Renaissance that is essentially urban direct in opposition - like in the historical case - to the barbarity which has ravaged - this time in a single but terribly intense century - our cities and, consequently, our countryside. A rampage which has left us - like after the barbaric invasions - the heritage of the terrible plague of that suburban world which has its dramatic peak in the phenomenon of the modern peripheries.

It is to such Urban Renaissance that this book and the accompanying international exhibition of architecture and town planning are dedicated. The twelve chapters that it composes illustrate the different cases of this particular reality. From the unique experience of the reconstruction of the capital city of the European Union - that Bruxelles which has been destroyed and ravaged by the stupidity of architectural Modernism ideology during the 60s and 70s- up to the great hope which comes from the new town that the Prince of Wales has started to build up in Dorchester with the aim of demonstrating that today it is possible both to solve the problem of urban growth and expansion in contemporary cities and to produce as a result a perfectly livable city instead of the usual suburban ghettos which are typical of functionalist peripheries.

From the new cities that Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk began to plan and build at the beginning of the 80s together with a group of extraordinary urban developers and investors who showed a consistent attitude towards the need to go back to the urban principles of Western Humanism, up to the recent experiences of the re-urbanization of the suburban areas of Paris, London and Berlin.

Then the construction of "the largest public library of the United States" - the Harold Washington Library which establishes a spiritual and physical link with the Adler, Richardson and Sulivan legacy - , the new public buildings and, like in every true Renaissance, the reconquest of the sacred space which produces everywhere an enormous growth of both design and realizations of new churches and spaces for the spiritual needs of our contemporary society. A new hope seems to materialize in the Western world, after the sad abandonment of the Classical tradition, which has led the churches of Christianity becoming the place for the worst experiments of architectural brutalism and vandalism, and the loss of the sense of the sacred in one of the most crucial spaces for the civic life of a civilized community.

The Azoia Church in Portugal, the Sainte Anne de Kergonan Abbey in France, Brentwood Cathedral in England, the Church of the Immaculate Conception in New Jersey are all evidence of this new impulse towards the realization of a close relation between a community and its own culture and religion.

It is absolutely evident that if this New Renaissance considers the city as the main focus of its thought, at the same time the architecture is considered as an essential tool for the construction of a good city. It is therefore impossible to distinguish the boundaries between the two. In fact, a fundamental feature of the New Renaissance is the return to the consideration of the building process as a comprehensive social, cultural and politic one. In opposition to the too long dominating attitude towards separation, fragmentation and destruction which characterized the 20th century, the New Urban Renaissance aims to reassemble the cultural unity of traditional Western Humanism.

Another entirely modern feature of this new movement is the international character of its members and works. From the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, to St. Petersburg, Russia, from the new architecture on the Portuguese Atlantic coast to the new cities which are currently under construction in a country firmly claiming its European identity such as Turkey; from northern Classicism in Oslo, Stockholm and Copenhagen to the typical Mediterranean architecture of Demetri Porphyrios' new villages in the Aegean islands. Young architects from the widest range of nationalities are more and more experiencing the eternal challenge of building cities, while the Grand Tour to Rome or the pilgrimage to Athens are again taking their fundamental role in the educational process of the modern classical architect.

Finally, we cannot forget that this New Renaissance could not have been possible if an extraordinary series of architects, urbanizes and thinkers had not proudly and bravely testified to the everlasting values of continuity, rationality and tradition. On this special occasion of renewed enthusiasm we feel obliged to address to them our grateful thanks for their teaching and works. Giants compared with the clown-like people who have attempted to establish a nihilist system in the last fifty years, people such as Karl Gruber, Heinrich Tessenow, Saverio Muratori, Raymond Erith, John Russell Pope, affirm through their work the vitality of the traditional culture in architecture and urbanism, even in the most obscure period of its millennial history.

As Leon Krier says: "fifty centuries of Traditional architecture and fifty years of Modernism are ready to be judged". If we consider the terrible situation of our contemporary suburban areas, then the perspective of a new Urban Renaissance becomes a political priority.

Contemporary administrators, politicians, developers, decision-makers and all the citizens today are aware that it is possible to choose. It is possible to build better cities and, in the process, contribute to the construction of a better world to live in.

A Vision of Europe
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