HOW WILL WE LIVE TOGETHER?

In the last period we have been called to reinvent our way of life, our daily life, our social behaviors and, also, the places of living. The theme of the issue Number07 of AGORÀ magazine, taken from that of the seventeenth Venice Architecture Biennale curated by Hashim Sarkis, today more than ever has taken on new values and meanings. “How will we live together?” it is a question that we all asked ourselves during the lockdown that marked the epidemiological emergency we are still fighting today. This question, between June and September 2020, has changed. From “how will we live together?” it turned into “how are we living together?”. In a way, the question we asked ourselves during the lockdown was answered in the months of summer freedom, but at the same time it changed into a new question saturated with anguish and fear. Today, all of Italy is under restrictions due to an enemy that is severely hurting the whole world. An enemy that attacks on every front (political, economic, social, etc…) and that makes us ask, once again: “how will we live together?”

The virus is proof that we are all united and connected. We learned that we are ready to upset our lives, to accept very heavy restrictions in favor of the common good, we learned that physical distance and social distance are complementary but not the same thing, that the jobs indispensable to society are often those jobs without any protections (shop assistants, porters, riders, etc …), that we need to reformulate the urban contract stipulated between women-men and the environment, that living together also includes nature, that one is worth one is a lie, that we need others to survive, that reality can overcome dystopia, we also learned many other concepts that you will read in this publication.

Probably, until autumn 2021, we will continue to live in a semi-quarantine situation, it will be a psychologically devastating experience, so profound that the city as we know it will change drastically. However, like any traumatic experience, the possibility is offered to understand what the problems of the previous condition were, in order to change them. This event places the end of the twentieth century, of a certain type of city, economy and society in favor of something totally new, of which we do not yet know the name. Or everything returns as before, with even more desire to produce, to have fun, to attack the planet, or nothing will be the same as before, including the way we will live together!

Editorial: Duccio Prassoli, Marco Grattarola
Cover: Samuele Pellecchia, How will we live together?, Milan, 2021