trans 20 relevanz

THE UP-AND-COMING NEO-ROMANTIC ARCHITECTURE It is evident that in architecture things are changing. With the complicity of the crisis and a growing dissatisfaction with the products now due from some archistars, we are seeing a gradual change in the taste so plush but inexorably driving us towards a new architecture. The difficulty consists in the perception of this new climate. In fact for a Modernist legacy we are led to believe that changes must be directed by some personalities emerge, at best and increasingly rare by some teachers. The situation is different: the changes now, not only in architecture but also in economics and politics are no longer directed, but occurs from below, as the relentless, landslides, powerful but subtle, of which we can understand the sense only in retrospect. For example, we compare to each other some projects in recent years: the Museum of Cantabria of Mansilla and Tunon (the oldest: 2006), the Museum of Perm of Valerio Olgiati (2008), the Museum of the Medina in Saudi Arabia of Vasquez Consuegra (2008) and finally the projects of two of the most interesting contemporaries authors: the competition for the Alhambra of Aires Mateus and the one of Big, winner of the new national gallery in Greenland, both of 2010. There are some obvious characters that tie together these works. First, a dream sense, if not magical, of shape, works as if they belonged to a world in which the purpose of architecture is to strike the imagination, make us dream with open eyes. They flaunt a dreamy air of epic, as if they were scenes ready for a representation of a not well explained drama or simply aspire to become a comic strip for a fine science fiction. Among other things they seem to aspire to an archaic time, made of fabulous ruins. To achieve this effect these works rely on an extremely synthetic shape, with a minimized composition, where the intermediate steps are skipped and where any complexity is banned, as demonstrated by effective project patterns of Big which practically coincide with the final project. Now, to bring up further on these architectures, we compare them with those of Gehry (first among all the Guggenheim), Eisenman and Libeskind or any other name than a decade ago. The distance is enormous, but despite this apparent distance the new course, based on dream simplicity, has not imposed significant breaks, as it has appeared after the over composing of deconstructionism and mannerism, ever more arbitrary of architecture shells, which is imploded in his own success. We are therefore facing the emergence of an architecture not of ideas, not of composition (as could be the deconstructionism, but also the minimalism), but of sensations, which aims to inspire an emotional involvement, or rather what in other times was called empathy. Ultimately we are faced with the emergence of an architecture that could be called neo-romantic, which expresses its strength, if not his courage, through strong and immediate sensations produced by synthetic forms so that you can understand them at a glance, without any particular attention. This new course is interesting for several reasons. The first one is that it demonstrates the need to communicate strong feelings, but at the same time accessible, the latter because enhancing the formal simplicity, or rather the synthesis, talks about a yearning for a more simple and straightforward world and this as an antidote to an increasingly complex and misunderstood reality. So if more than ten years ago, Gehry's Guggenheim has been a monument to the exaltation of the complexity, today the Rolex Centre designed by SANAA (the forerunner of the architectures that we presented) can be considered a monument to a feeling that in ten years is radically changed and it is necessary give an answer to the changes of taste