Filippo Puglia
DECADENTISM BETWEEN TECHNOLOGY AND KNOWLEDGE
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In ancient times, our ancestors studied nature and landscapes to better relate their buildings and transform them into habitable places. They were always looking for building systems and housing types that respected the landscape and that could transform it into a place with an identity and a character that could distinguish it. They loved nature and transformed the territory in order to make it habitable on a human scale. Their way or system of building had a sense, combined with taste, they were always looking for beauty. As Plato said in his theory of ideas: "beauty is beautiful if it participates in the idea of beauty".
Later, and we are already talking about the nineteenth century, the architects studied the ancient sites, especially the Greek and Roman ones, in order to form in themselves a living culture and build in respect of nature.
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Machines and technology were meant to be means at the service of man and nature, but they represent means of destruction and complication of daily life.
Christian Norberg Schulz, wrote an essay with the aim of overcoming a gap until then present, but also today, that is, to create a phenomenology of architecture. He studies architecture and, above all, how to enter the territory and how to transform it into a place. The place is the center of his reflection, he sees it as a site with a precise identity, always recognizable, with characters that can be external or changing. Fundamental is also the distinction between natural and artificial places, distinguished in romantic, cosmic and classical categories.
Romantic is what strikes and frightens, expresses the chthonic forces of nature and for this reason touches the deepest aspects of the human psyche.
The cosmic landscape is vast, the gaze is lost in the infinite and indistinct horizon like that of the desert.
Architecturemust respect the place, integrate with it, listen to its genius loci. Schulz,however, does not want a natural determinism, he does not argue that in a givenplace there is only one possible architecture, however, architecture mustinterpret and be compatible with the place.
MakingArchitecture means visualizing the genius loci, in fact the architect’s task isto create significant places to help man to live.
Genius lociis a term with which to identify the set of sociocultural, architectural,language, habits that characterize a place, an environment, a city. A term thatconcerns the characteristics of an environment interconnected with man and thehabits with which this environment lives.
Man feels at home when he orients and identifies with theenvironment. Living is more than just feeling protected. It implies that thespaces where one lives are places in the true sense of the word. A place is aspace with a character, with signs that identify it.
The ancient peoples had very clear the various concepts ofplace, building, inhabiting, in fact, today we can still admire the signs oftheir passage and identify the various places with the people who built andlived it.
The end of the twentieth century and the beginning of thethird millennium leads us to be a people without identity, an almost anonymouspeople, which will surely be remembered for chaos, speculation and thedesperate search for money. A people in full identity crisis as well associo-economic and political.
Today, at the dawn of the third millennium, it is urgent tobecome aware of the situation, it is urgent to resume relations with nature,with the landscape, with places and above all with ourselves.
We don’t have to look at costs, but we have to think aboutourselves, about our habits. We must reflect on the landscape, on nature, knowhow to listen to them. We must seek and rediscover taste, beauty. Finally, wehave to assemble it all in one concept called Architecture. Not only must thegreat architect do architecture but also and above all the little architect,the unknown one who designs and builds the small houses, the small structures,because this is also architecture and is fundamental for our identity, that ofa people that leaves the sign of its passage.