Boano, C., Astolfo, G., (2015) Speculations on the Italian rhetoric of mending peripheries. Quaderns. The journal of the Association of Architects of Catalonia (original) (raw)

The commentary is about the Italian debate over 'peripheries' that recently gained renewed centrality in the political discourse, due to an initiative of the architect Renzo Piano, the eruption of protest and disorders in Rome between residents and migrants, and the Prime Minister Matteo Renzi's populism. One year ago the star architect Renzo Piano funded an initiative to stimulate urban regeneration and employment of young Italian designers. Although neither the projects, nor the approach are a novelty, the initiative gained great visibility and culminated last 6th December with the Italian government decision to allocate 200 million euro for the regeneration of peripheries. Beyond the many self-evident qualities, the successful initiative deserves some further speculations, especially in relation to the rhetoric of 'mending the peripheries' - a motto that suddenly became an architectural manifesto, stimulating a broader reflection on the role, the potential and the discourse of architecture and design, both in academia and outside. From our perspective, the idea to reconnect the periphery with the urban exceeds in architectural determinism and complies with a certain vision of design as thaumaturgic practice, that well fits the superhuman ego of the Italian prime Minister and its discursive practice. Rather than claim the political project of the city, the initiative, despite its good intentions, results as another attempt to reduce political instance to a mere spatial one, because it is easy to find spatial solutions. The commentary therefore seeks to look into this debate, ultimately willing to exonerate architecture from too many alleged 'failures'.