THE CULTURE OF OUR TIME

Style, past and present

The last century and the beginning of what we are experiencing has seen the rotation of a myriad of architectural styles and position papers within the discipline. In Italy, starting from the end of the 19th century, various themes have followed that have produced styles ranging from the 20th century style to rationalism, up to postmodernism and the rich mosaic of avant-garde and experimentalism of the second half of the 20th century.

Today, 2019, we are now leaving the digital age behind, which in Italy has had an almost zero effect on our architectural culture. Today, we are heirs to a great past with which we cannot keep up. The great ideological battles of the last century between modernists and postmodernists (Gregotti Vs Rossi), where the two factions shed blood to make their ideas prevail, now seem a distant memory of when taking a stand was normal.
Today we are limp.
We no longer ask ourselves the big questions on the architectural theme, fundamental for culturally advancing contemporary civilization. We find ourselves in a stalemate where the figure of the architect is no longer identified within society, this is because architectural culture is being lost.

Where are we today? Which is/are the style/s that characterize this historical moment? There are? What is the culture of our time? What is the discriminating factor that imposes a difference between architecture and construction?

Having said that, I do not want to impose a theme based on the study of contemporary style. No, it would be limiting. I would like to try to do research on the contemporary culture, to understand how we are behaving within history, but above all where we are going. We are not interested in the mediocre, we have already seen the beauty, now we think of the sublime. Let’s reach this sublime.

Editorial: Duccio Prassoli
Cover: Deborah Catalano, Who cares?, 2019