This is a Political Gathering
Introduction to the Conference and Exhibition: The Other Modern
Bologna, March 9, 2000
Michael Lykoudis

This is a political gathering. It is not about whether we are Republicans or Democrats, Left or Right, Liberal or Conservative, or even who has the best form of government. But it is about having a say about how we will build and live together in the twenty first century.

Around the world for the last several millennia, people were born into families that were supported by neighborhoods that were in turn supported villages towns and cities. Children grew up with a political awareness about their existence and were able to contribute and participate in the social life of their homes, streets, neighborhoods and towns. In the city, they learned about balancing their private and public lives. They relied on their elders, shopkeepers, friends and relatives in a continuous unbroken web. The physical fabric of the city facilitated this existence. In this world, the dialectic of rights and duties was understood. In this place, a commitment to its future came easily

Increasingly in our communities around the globe there is no place for children to play, teenagers to meet, adults or older people to gather and watch over the young. The technological society has destroyed the proximities between the functions of daily life that allowed a pedestrian accessibility and allowed participation of citizens in the public realm. Real political choices have been taken away as only one model of how we conduct our lives becomes more and more pervasive. The only real choice that we are being left with in this new brave new privatized world is that of the consumer. The balance of rights and duties, of a life public and private is replaced by a single linear relationship between consumer and market in a quest for a global monoculture. The profound sense of loss of community and stewardship over our destiny from the local to the global scale is at the root for the reasons that bring us together here.

This conference is a political gathering. Our presence here is a statement that asserts our claim that we can have a world with a global understanding of the fragility of the environment we share, yet still maintain the local and regional identities that allows us to maintain a sense of control over our daily lives. The potential environmental catastrophe that is now in the making is a reminder that all humanity has shared interests and that our planet has limits in terms of the amount of abuse that we can deliver to it. Through its pedestrian proximities, optimum density, scale, and durable physical fabric, the traditional city and its architecture maintain the balance of the complex forces that act on the environment, as we inhabit our planet. The traditional city and its architecture are the physical embodiment of the environmental slogan: Think globally, act locally.

Our presence here is a statement that asserts our claim that meaning is found within the complex political relationships in balance between the private and public realms and not in the private world of the hunter-gatherer of techno-consumer goods. Our presence here is a statement that we believe technology to be a means to virtuous ends not a replacement of virtuous ends by means.

The work that we have around us this afternoon is proof that a better solution to the one that is being promoted by the modernist techno-consumer establishment is possible. The idea that the classical and traditional are indeed forms that can innately facilitate just political ends and environmental responsibility, has at the end of this century and beginning of the next, resurfaced. To quote Demetri Porphyrios: Classicism is not a doctrine; it is philosophy of life. It is the philosophy of free will nurtured by tradition.

Ten years ago this work was dismissed by the architectural establishment. Now it is designed and built by an increasing number of architects buildings and developers who understand that democracy, free commerce and civil culture are not only compatible but interdependent. In the late twentieth century tradition and the classical have made a triumphant return. It is up to us and our increasing numbers to ensure its democratic future.

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