FILOFERRO ARCHITETTI

© photo by filoferro architetti

Quattro Santi Coronati (Nanni di Banco, Orsanmichele, Firenze)
Casorio, Claudio, Sempronio and Nicostrato. Protectors of the category of sculptors and architects.
In the relief at the base of the tabernacle, the Four Saints are depicted struggling with works of construction, architectural calculation and sculpture.

Multidisciplinarity is one of the most used word by every major communication of the recent decades. Also in Architecture, this abstract and good sounding concept has been used during conferences, spoken at meetings, written and read in magazine articles. Administrations, for example, go crazy when this word is scanned and repeated during the presentation of architectural projects.

It’s not by chance that we’re talking about it.
In this short text we ask ourselves if the multidisciplinary approach is needed in our profession. What are the professional and intellectual advantages, what are the risks?
It’s a given that the Architect uses this catchphrase, meaning everything and almost nothing at the same time.
If we believe in the architect as a social figure and that architecture is a social construct as well as a material one, then we believe in multidisciplinarity. Believing it means being willing to be taken over; questioning one’s field of action or our comfort zone; be willing to get contaminated. This is paramount for Architecture and for everything that is willing to represent a social construct. Nonetheless, it also means seeking a vector able to cross over and occupy other territories. An architectural project is necessarily constructed through an uncanny tension between giving and receiving; it’s a process that spaces around personal and collective memories, between technique, necessity and emotion.
History teaches us that architecture has always come a moment later than other disciplines among the arts. Figurative arts, music, literature have always described the current state of things, they have always altered it, before construction. In any case, the human vestiges acclaimed by Aristippus in the preface of Book VI have always guided and reassured the human being. In every representation or narration.
On the other hand architecture needs more time to be absorbed. Moreover, time is an indispensable element. What we believe in, and even defines us, is that architecture must find its time. It is necessary to reach back to the time of knowing how to create, how to learn, how to speak the right language that justifies every spatial and design choice; the time of making mistakes, of knowing how to rise back up and go. As long as man needs to express himself with respect to other animal species, architecture will exist. We must find the time that architecture requires.
In the time during which an idea is generated, it is necessary to widen the visual field, to then trace and define a space that belongs to everyone. It is a fickle and dangerous border. This affects our Responsibility and Credibility.
Any type of contamination is welcome during one’s research, one’s intellectual growth. A project represents the synthesis of this long process in which the architect confronts himself, puts himself at stake with other professional figures. But the project concerns especially our complex discipline.
We believe that it is a social duty to be able to set up projects that cannot be compromised by those who don’t abide by previously established laws. The architect must take responsibility for giving answers throughout the project, without delegating or altering his performance because of questions not concerning the genesis of a space. Taking pride in this responsibility allows us to be bold and demanding, yet needs us to disclose, share, explain everyone the way of things.
In recent years, this new way of communicating our line of work has emerged and is now taking hold. Through this method, which moves on the surface - like everything today - new realities have emerged. Moreover, if one is willing to investigate these dynamics, he will also notice that they shift, triggering a mechanism of observation, contamination and real and constant comparison; miles away, yet with new and contagious energy. More and more often we discover new scenarios, each working best through a different approach, language and context. We believe that this openness isn’t yet another self-celebratory act; it is rather an act of courage.
Where construction doesn’t go, the heart comes to talk about it. The need to build a critical line around these new realities and pulsations seems to have sprung almost spontaneously. The large distribution channels can safely collapse on themselves or pathetically cling to the uncontrollable enthusiasm arising around their realities. For example, independent publishing houses not subject to editorial dynamics (more often than not compromising the contents and the will of the curators), architecture studios that work with lost tools and
techniques (such as drawings, collages, scale models), manifestations, publications etc. are just some realities within which we can get to know and confront each other. New constellations are being created all over Europe and our visions are no longer constricted by the usual channels, swallowed up by languages and ideals. They live around the corner, in our city, a few hours away by train or low-cost flight.

All of this not feeling alone gives us courage and makes us feel for the first time that Europe, as much as our small city, is real.