I had a strange sensation as I was observing a certain building in Milan. What struck me was perhaps just a feeling, a distorted perception that conjured up the spectre of another construction. I certainly could not pretend nothing had happened and ignore these ghosts. I realise how hard it is to convey what I saw in this “second vision”, but the persistent repetition of this intrusion of images from other places was beginning to make me doubt my perception of reality. This strange situation in which places were superimposed on others also prompted me to ponder certain prejudices about the nature of places, about the mechanisms that allow us to recognise something singular, and whether geographic isolation really is necessary to produce identity. 

At the very least, I would happen to see Valtellina in a building by Luigi Caccia Dominioni or even Asplund’s Stockholm in the elegance of one of his buildings in Piazza Sant’Ambrogio. Not to mention the clinkers adopted – imported as they say – by Giovanni Muzio to clad certain severe buildings that give you the impression you are in Hamburg. The Planetarium in Corso Venezia and Pietro Portaluppi’s arch and barrel-vaulted ceiling in Via Salvini dragged me into Swedish classicism. The gentle expressionism of the Amsterdam School in Vico Magistretti’s house in Via Leopardi took me to Holland. Even the Torre Velasca, an untouchable feature of Milanese identity echoing the spires of the Duomo, seemed to belong to Perret’s Le Havre, something I find slightly unsettling. Not to mention the explicit and programmatic Roman feel of the Arengario. I could somehow ignore the more subtle reference to Aalto’s Viipuri library in the Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea (PAC) designed by Ignazio Gardella. But then the Höfe of Red Vienna appeared in Griffini and Manfredi’s “Alla Fontana” social-housing. And so on.

I am giving examples chosen randomly from architectural works recent and non-, without mentioning the vast number of presences from elsewhere in all that architecture produced in the eclectic Milan of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as too the equally considerable possibility of making similar slips with the works of previous centuries. How can I explain the intrusion of these imaginary associations? Many contemporary cultural anthropologists have rejected the initial models of ethnography, which treated local cultures as confined and isolated. These anthropologists still focus on the many ways people who live in different places act and perceive their lives. However, they often believe that it is impossible to comprehend these lifestyles by concentrating on the local context alone. The same applies to plant species. Gilles Clément says that biological diversity “owes its existence to the geographical isolation of the species. The wind, animals and mankind and its machinery, in particular, disturb isolation and bring previously separated species into contact. This creates a new planetary landscape that puts a strain on diversity and, at the same time, gives rise to associations, unions and new hybrids.” Is that enough?

This statement only partially resolves the problem of the ghosts and double perception that ended up causing one place to interfere with another. Perhaps the explanation of this phenomenon is that we see a real place, such as the city of Milan, as a collection of many places. This oneiric world becomes real if we concede that identity is none other than the sense of a mix produced by numerous migrations.