Time and Architecture

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Título:
Time and Architecture
Autor: Massimo Lauria ; Riccardo Pollo
É parte de: Techne (Florence, Italy : 2011), 2020-12 (20)
Descrição: In the Italian language, the term “tempo” (literally time) is a word of daily use to which we attribute many meanings. It can signify a chronological dimension between past, present and future, an epoch or a period, a phase of an action, as well as the weather and its change. In philosophical and scientific thought, it was the becoming, the before and after of each moment, the unchanging and uniform time of Galilean and Newton’s physics, the variability of existential states or the memory of a primeval condition. As the physicist and essayist Carlo Rovelli states, time «is perhaps the greatest mystery» (Rovelli, 2017). The journalist Federico Rampini recalls an ancient Afghan proverb «you have the clocks, we have the time», reflects on its value dimension, different from the attitude of western culture to measure this dimension, to attribute meanings according to its precise accounting (Rampini, 2013). The contemporary age thus stimulates reflections on the comparison between different visions of time, from the linear ones, typical of modernity and the industrial age, to the “timeless” phenomena of quantum physics, where only relationships count, up to measures of different types like the succession of the cycles of nature and human generations. In its various meanings, time is a fundamental factor of forecasting, of the future and, therefore, of every project, in the meaning of its Latin etymon projectus, which is the action of becoming and projecting forward. In the relationship with the project, artistic practices therefore imply a very close link with the temporal dimension. Among these, the architecture that «claims that share of aspiration to eternity that lies in the very foundation of the idea of humanity» (Gregotti, 1997). Time and architecture are therefore terms of a powerful dichotomy that considers architecture works and their duration together; their permanence and changes in form and image; their conservation according to the social, productive and urban transformations of the city and landscape. Time in the city is, and has always been, relative. The monuments and old towns have a centuries-old history, the political discussions and dynamics that govern the projects are asynchronous, empty and inconsistent anticipatory announcements of promised architectural works, perennial delays in implementation. Celebrations and festivities live ephemeral seasons, the installations are, by definition, temporary. The speed of transportation and instant communication tools coexists with the slow time of the man who walks and with the real-time processes of the smart city. The time of unfinished works is interrupted. In recent days, humanity has experienced a new dimension of time, that of the pandemic. A time that we perceived suspended and widened. Inversely proportional to the contraction of space that has suddenly become insufficient due to the confinement at home and to sharing living and working in a single environment. An unmeasurable event – the pandemic – invisible, of which we do not know and cannot imagine its boundaries, another “hyper object”, as Timothy Morton could define it, like Global Warming and Nuclear Holocaust (Morton, 2013). The new scenario cannot fail to be a topic of reflection, as well as a dramatic break in the biography of the living. Many of the changes taking place were already present, or at least they were in Western culture: smart working, telemedicine, distance education, sociality no longer experienced in physical contact but through social media. All different phenomena investigated by many and often referred to as the ability of technology to make them possible in accordance with man’s boundless confidence in governing his relationship with the environment. The eruption of this planetary phenomenon also linked and favoured – but probably not determined – by technology, therefore pushes us to observe reality in a different way. And although the authors of the Dossier have not been allowed to explicitly address an issue, the pandemic that is not yet manifest but perhaps already immanent to the environmental theme, it is certain that these latter events seem to strengthen the relationship of connection space-time, and of these two entities, with architecture and more generally with nature. In the past, these relationships were fulfilled and evolved through the succeeding alternation of generations. The ancient city centuries-old construction sites were built with the contribution of the entire community, which then proudly displayed its ancestry, memberships and social goals. The architecture was the synthesis of a complex process that allowed its construction by workers, custodians of knowledge of local techniques and materials, their processing and conservation. The collective enjoyment of historic buildings was a prerequisite for their durability and compatibility between urban transformations, needs of civil society and representative functions of architecture. On the other hand, the buildings’ construction has always required long times. Incomparably longer, however, has always been the time necessary for them to give rise to a place, become part of the city, be accepted by the inhabitants. Time, when referring to architecture, evokes and therefore naturally combines with the idea of transformation and the action of construction. But also, with regard to this aspect, there are differences between the present and the past, when designers often did not see their most ambitious works completed. Palladio never saw one of his buildings completed. The Sagrada Familia, symbol of the city of Barcelona and whose construction began in 1882, is still being completed today after having accompanied the life of its designer, Antoni Gaudi. The case of the Spanish basilica demonstrates how the history of the time-architecture relationship does not follow linear patterns and successions between design, construction and use, showing the paradox of a building that is a symbol of a city, enjoyed by millions of visitors but not yet completed; a unique architectural work that is still in construction and under restoration, studied by the disciplines of engineering and architecture. The natural course of time appears so upset: past, present, future coexist and chase each other in a circular succession of events that confirm the intuition, present in the expression widespread among architectural technology scholars, of Valerio Di Battista at the end of the last century, of «project of the existing» (Di Battista, 1992). Principle according to which a linear and unidirectional temporal succession can no longer be associated with the “life” of an architecture. At the same time as the metabolization of these theories, other terminologies brought to the general attention further questions on the time concept: that of techniques (Nardi, 1990), their appropriateness (Gangemi, 1988), recovery (Caterina, 1989), building maintenance (Molinari, 1989). An evolutionary process that took place, first through the conscious definition of the characters of the new complexity connected to the theme of the intervention on the existing building stock, prefiguring as a priority the search for knowledge tools and suitable intervention methods. In the following decades the meanings of terms such as conservation, reuse and requalification have been declined according to the significance that the technical-scientific lexicon still adopts in the present. In this perspective, time faded in its boundaries and is no longer uniform but a generator of sequences and cyclic modification processes. In one of his last writings, Vittorio Gregotti, quoted here because of a heartfelt tribute to a protagonist of 20th century architecture, says that past, present and future take on meaning as «material of the architectural project», like space, context and function (Gregotti, 2020). His interpretation of time is therefore that of one of the “structural materials” that the project shapes. Time, place and space represent an opportunity for the present to confront a poetic, disciplinary and civil past. What many researchers and intellectuals – Ruskin, Riegl, Yourcenar – have referred to as true “beauty”. In the contemporary urban environment, on the contrary, time seems to have lost these dimensions and values, just as the civic sense that supported the most important works seems to be lacking. Buildings completed with the rapidity of industrial processes are placed with indifference in the city, contradicting the dialogue between “conservation” and “transformation” typical of the historic town. Such historic contexts, where well preserved, seem to show organicity, compatibility with the environment, evoking in definitive the abused but powerful concept of sustainability as well as the most current one of resilience. The extension of the construction time phases has changed compared to a more static and slower past, becoming pressing and close, functional to programmed lifetimes, linked to the solution of contingent problems and short-term financial goals. According to Salvatore Settis, contemporary urban transformations are to a large extent subject to negotiation between public authorities on the one hand, and area owners, investors and property developers on the other. So, the uncontrolled expansions of the city or even certain regenerations of dismissed and abandoned places are the result of economic or financial calculations, rather than architectural works (Settis, 2017). Logics are therefore too often dictated by short-term economic visions, inconsistent with the times of the social and cultural construction of the city. The short durations and the frenetic constructions in fact often escape the control of the project and are “suffered” by the city. Construction sites are subject to slowdowns, accelerations and abrupt interruptions creating new urban landscapes dotted with contemporary ruins, new simulacra dedicated to ambition
Editor: Firenze University Press
Idioma: Inglês

Time and Architecture

Massimo Lauria ; Riccardo Pollo

Firenze University Press

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