08.2006
Anglo Files / UK architecture’s rising generation
Anglo Files “named in playful homage to the cause of wide-ranging cultural espionage for benign purposes”, è il titolo di un testo curato da Lucy Bullivant e pubblicato da Thames & Hudson nel 2005. Una piccola guida ad alcuni dei nuovi protagonisti della scena londinese, accompagnata da due saggi introduttivi (The emergin ethos, Multi-scalar practice).
Mi sembra interessante riportare qui alcuni passaggi dei due saggi, che cercano di tracciare un quadro sintetico dei modi e dei mutamenti della professione nel Regno Unito, e in particolare a Londra, negli ultimi decenni.
“Architecture is not what it was. Instead of carrying the heavy utopian baggage of the 20th century, younger architectural practices, and not just in the UK but globally, are progressively reinventing the identity of the profession, reinvigorating it with new processes.
[…] Lateral thinking is architecture’s lifeblood, and architecture and urban design, building and masterplanning, for too long perceived as indipendent fields of activity, are evolving through new approaches by young architects into mutually enhancing layers of action.”
“The days of placing emphasis on standardized design solutions rather than on modular system are over. Instead there is a range of strategies to cover process, programme, techinque and so on. That is why the issue of ‘non style’ is so important to many of the featured architects and their peers: a style implies repetition, not a fresh, bespoke response to a situation or cultural context. In formal terms, the Anglo Files architects reject universal recipes in favour of ingenious custom-designed solutions that are not bombastic or self-referenital. For them, a building need to work holistically as an urban space, contributing to the construction of the city and its sense of civitas, by offering a generosity of character. By exploiting construction techniques, younger architects use the means of production to reinvent the programme.”
Sono quattordici gli studi di architettura su cui Bullivant si sofferma: Adjaye Associates, Alison Brooks Architects, Allford Hall Monaghan Morris (AHMM), Caruso St John, De Rijke Marsh Morgan (drMM), Deborah Saunt David Hills Architects (DSDHA), FAT, Kathryn Findlay, Foreign Office Architects (FOA), Gollifer Langston, Klein Dytham architecture (KDa), muf, Sergison Bates, S333.
Nei prossimi giorni, in timeodanaos.it, un approfondimento sull’attività di alcuni di questi studi.
Lucy Bullivant, Anglo Files, UK architecture’s rising generation, Thames & Hudson, London, 2005 (amazon.com).