Note from the Director
- This article is a translation of:
- Nota del direttore [it]
Index terms
Top of pageEditor's notes
DOI: 10.17454/ARDETH02.02
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1The first issue of “Ardeth” was presented in various venues, trying to promote a discussion that proved interesting and involved interested actors, but which sometimes appeared slightly eccentric with regard to the usual ways in which the project of architecture is discussed.
2This second issue collects answers to the call for papers written by Albena Yaneva – nine articles selected through a double-blind peer review procedure – and a small number of contributions invited by the guest editor and by the editorial board in order to construct a conversation between different standpoints, but also between cultural forms that inhabit the material and immaterial dimension of the project. It would be advisable – and this is an invitation to our own readers – that there be a third section hosting contributions that reference the themes that were developed in previous issues: such themes, in fact, are intended to open a discussion rather than reach a conclusion. Risky forms of exploration, rather than hasty points of arrival.
3The theme of bottega appears particularly appropriate, and the angle proposed by the guest-editor allows to avoid falling into the rhetoric of labor organization. The term bottega is perhaps used and abused by architects, but when intended as the “ecological” dimension within which the practice unfolds, it can be revealed in all its ambiguity. In any case, bottega is a term that identifies an operative dimension by relying on ancient and stratified meanings.
4In some instances, the reference to bottega is almost a form of resilience, in these times of uncertainty and incessant change, as if to reiterate that the place or experimental elaboration – in fact, a project is always an experiment – needs a steady place within which to develop. A steady place, but which can be described in a number of different ways. Bottega suggests an artisanal dimension and a condition of proximity: it evokes the figure of the author as necessary, but immediately dismisses it through the idea of apprenticeship and of the passing of knowledge. Certainly, the dimension of bottega makes a difference in the relationships between “bottega” and “ufficio”, just as the dimensions of the project make a difference in dictating specific conditions to the design practice. The same can be said about the physical, cultural, juridical, productive contexts: these are all contexts that should be investigated in order to understand when and where a certain form of innovation is produced. Finally, the multiplicity of actions should be analyzed, especially so as to find the center of the experiment, located between the object and the system of relationships that it describes. All this, by acknowledging the latourian triad mentioned in the editorial notes – bottega, office and academia – that the project of architecture necessarily spans, further oscillating between technical representations, juridical procedures and narratives that often take the form of promises placed between space and language.
References
Bibliographical reference
Carlo Magnani, “Note from the Director”, Ardeth, 2 | 2018, 13-14.
Electronic reference
Carlo Magnani, “Note from the Director”, Ardeth [Online], 2 | 2018, Online since 01 June 2020, connection on 22 September 2023. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/ardeth/736
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