Dear friends and readers of my blog,
Since I have already received several requests to comment on Trump regarding his new executive order to “make federal architecture beautiful again,” I would like to share with you what I clarified to a CNN reporter (Samantha Waldenberg) this morning.
This morning indeed, as an expert in the field, I received a request from a CNN journalist who is working on a piece dedicated to this topic and, since I believe this is a double-edged sword, I invite everyone to avoid unnecessary and dangerous political arguments.
at the journalist I wrote the following.
Dear Samantha Waldenberg,
Regarding your question, I would like to point out that, unfortunately, since World War II, in the interests of property speculators, a great deal of confusion has been deliberately created between “classical” architecture—associated with right-wing parties—and ‘modernist’ architecture—associated with the Soviet Union and, strangely enough, with a more “liberal” idea.
All this has been a despicable way of condemning architecture with a capital ‘A’ in favor of vulgar ‘construction’ with a lowercase ‘c’.
The interest of figures such as Trump in a return to true Architecture, while on the one hand should be welcomed with jubilation, on the other is deleterious because it only serves to renew the false equation “classical architecture = fascism.”
In my research and publications, I have extensively documented how false this equation is, considering that, again in the interests of speculators, in 1938 fascism in Italy condemned classical and traditional architecture by law in order to prevent the falsification of history (the Instructions for the Restoration of Monuments, in Chapter 8, stated: “For obvious reasons of historical dignity and for the necessary clarity of current artistic consciousness, the construction of buildings in ancient ‘styles’ is absolutely prohibited, even in areas of no monumental or landscape interest, as they represent a double falsification of both ancient and recent art history.”
The reality is that in the mid-1920s, Le Corbusier, sponsored by French car manufacturer Voisin, designed the devastation of Paris (the Plan Voisin), which fortunately was never realized. From that moment on, thanks to the economic and media power that supported him, he succeeded in imposing his ideas (Zoning, the Ville Radieuse, the Unitè d’habitation, etc.) as a shared way of thinking, while I was able to document in depth how that sharing of thought had never existed.
The need for post-war reconstruction led to a huge acceleration in the ignorant and depersonalizing approach imposed by the construction industry, which was totally uninterested in local craftsmanship and culture (foreign investors have no interest in defending local roots). To make matters worse, the “thinkers” of the time, especially in Italy, where guilt over 20 years of dictatorship weighed heavily, went so far as to define the new urbanism of zoning and brutalist architecture as the “New Jerusalem.” the place ‘the ultimate goal was to materialize the idea that the historic city, an expression of the social classes that had dominated and oppressed human society, should be abandoned to its founders, while the rising popular social classes would be destined for the new neighborhoods built in the suburbs which, by coming together, would end up generating the New Jerusalem: the city of a classless, free, just, and fraternal society.“
… in 2007, Vittorio Gregotti, architect of Palermo’s squalid, depressing, and crime-ridden Z.E.N. neighborhood and theorist of the “New Jerusalem,” was interviewed on a television program and asked, “Would you live in Z.E.N.?” He replied, “The conditions aren’t right. I’m an architect, not a proletarian!”
This speaks volumes about the amount of lies that have been told about architecture and urban planning, so I believe it is necessary to make a clear distinction between politics and architecture, because I shun anyone who uses this argument for their own ends, rather than thinking about how much damage has been done to countries, cities, the environment, and people because of a filthy way of building and rebuilding, erasing the sense of belonging and identity of places.
You can find extensive documentation on these topics in my numerous books and articles.
You can also find a wealth of information on my blog (http://www.picweb.it/emm/blog/).
Although the blog is in Italian, it has an internal translation system (click on the orange rectangle at the bottom left) that allows you to read everything in English.
I hope this has been helpful.
Best regards,
