Last 12 June, Rem Koolhaas gave a lecture entitled "Old and New" at the IUAV University of Venice. Invited to comment on the presentation by the Dutch Pritzker-prize winner were architects Franco Purini and Bernardo Secchi. The issue is of great interest, wholly topical because it can easily relate to just about every corner of the Italian peninsula. However, the debate focused only on positions for or against a single Italian issue: the plan for the conversion of Venice's Fondaco dei Tedeschi in Venice, currently owned by Edizione Srl, holding company of the Benetton Group. A complicated story — an Italian story — that would be unnecessary to delve into. However, the Fondaco issue becomes a pretext for a more general reflection on the necessity or otherwise for debate, on modes of discussion and procedures currently operating both inside and outside the confines of Italy.
During the Venetian afternoon session, Antonio Foscari spoke sarcastically and well, emphasising the need for discussion around a unique and singular building. However, he pointed out that for decades decisions have been made, leading to the disappearance of dozens of square miles of sandbanks inside the Venetian lagoon. In fact, even now the future of Porto Marghera is uncertain. Italian-style contradiction? Unlikely so. Following the event from Berlin via live streaming enabled me to reflect on the issue with a certain emotional distance, and a number of considerations should be made from the right critical distance. I repeat, I don't think one can or should enter into the merits of the Fondaco question in specific terms. The issue, for once, seems to be clear: there is a property and there are procedures that set down the rules, whether they be right or wrong, that one can discuss in the appropriate places. It is not then a case of putting on trial what Rem Koolhaas himself — moreover justifying himself — has defined as a modest design. Instead, what should be the subject of discussion, and what we should take sides for, should concern the nature of a dialogue — or the absence of one —, around programmatic themes of an overall structure that concerns the articulation and putting into action of various forces: institutional, economic and cultural; both public and private. Today in Italy, all this seems to be absent or all too often assumes very opaque tones.
Some years have passed since Berlin discussed the reconstruction of its ancient castle, which is now the future headquarters of the Humboltd-Forum. The project will be completed in 2019, at a cost of around 590 million euro. Even today the German media continues to encourage a lively debate, but what is discussed and what seems to be more topical are the questions linked, for example, to the creative economy that has been, for half a decade, one of the political objectives for increasing GDP in the German capital. These decisions are changing the physical face of the city in a substantial way, simultaneously marking a profound evolution in social aspects on a vast urbanised territory.
However cutting, a lame appeal could be made to Benetton Group, who've invested a great deal overhauling their image in recent times. Instead of choosing "easy money" and placing a large department store inside the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, why not take up the challenge that other brands and other big cities are transforming into their own corporate and/or cultural project? Why not install at the Fondaco dei Tedeschi a new FABRICA? New alliances with the whole city and the surrounding area could be born. Learning from one's origins can be useful sometimes. Matteo d'Ambros