FA(little)Magazine and the “little magazines” of twentieth century architecture
Lamberto Amistadi, Enrico Prandi
A few days ago arrived
Nicola Di Battista’s reflection on the role and function of printed
architecture magazines in the context of the change in direction of Domus, to which retorted a Michele de
Lucchi who lent himself, along with Carlo Cracco and Lapo Elkann, to pose for
the cover of «AD - Architectural
Digest» (December 2017) in a new joint project
designed by the same scion of the Agnelli family – Garage Italia – which transformed a post-war AGIP service station
designed by Mario Bacciocchi in Milan’s Piazzale Accursio into an Italian-style
hub: with food, cars, and design.
Battista argued
that «a magazine must certainly be able to see
and know the projects, products, and thoughts that our time produces but, above
all, to tell the stories that make them possible, the stories that underlie
them.»[1]
That is what we have tried to do in this inaugural issue of «FAMagazine», which is not
inaugurating the magazine – already born back in the distant 2010 – but its new
graphics and Open Journal Systems platform, together with a new web address www.famagazine.it.
The story we wished
to tell in this Issue 43, is that of certain Italian and US architecture
magazines that determined the architectural debate in the final quarter of the
last century, and the story of the transition from the world of magazines on
paper to the digital ones, «FAMagazine» included.
The decision to
open this new season of «FAMagazine»
with an issue on architecture magazines is in itself an
explicitly self-analytical reference. Among these are many “little magazines”
so that, if initially the epithet was attributable mainly to the format and to
a limited circuit of influence, which were often the outcome of independent,
niche, or non-commercial publishing, with the passing of time it has ended up
denoting some characteristics that make these magazines particularly
interesting for architectural research as an impulse to experiment, the leaning
(or better, the bias) of the editorial board in directing the thinking, and in
the desire to plough new research roads, give voice to new, less common, and
avant-garde disciplinary languages. A sort of experimental laboratory of ideas.
The Little Magazine
phenomenon, born in the 1920s in the context of the American literary current
and much explored in the United States, especially after the Second World War,
ended up intruding in a disciplinary sense – as often happens among the
different arts – and affecting architecture, so that, as we were reminded by
Claudio D'Amato, at the Little Magazines
Conference: After Modern Architecture, 3-5 February 1977 organized by the
IAUS New York, it was joined by many of the protagonists of the architectural
debate who at that moment were proposing to relaunch deliberation on
architecture, theory and criticism through the tool of the magazine: «Architese» (Bruno Reichlin,
Stanislaus Von Moos), «Arquitectura Bis» (Oriol Bohigas, Federico Correa, Rafael Moneo), «AMC-Architecture Mouvement Continuité» (Jacques Lucan, Patrice Noviant), «Controspazio» (Alessandro
Anselmi, Claudio D’Amato), «Lotus» (Pierluigi Nicolin, Joseph Rykwert) and many other interested
parties starting from the organizer himself, Peter Eisenman, and friends of New
York’s Institute of Architecture and Urban Studies such as Edith Girard, Mario
Gandelsonas, Anthony Vidler, Stanford Anderson, Livio Dimitriu, Alessandra
Latour, Lluis Domenech, Peter Blake, Kenneth Frampton, Robert Gutman, Colin
Rowe, George Baird, Peter Marangoni, Diana Agrest, and Suzanne Frank.
Authentic “Little
Magazines” in architecture were the avant-garde ones of the 1920s which
attracted ideological currents and their groups of promulgators, when not born
specifically as a tool to disseminate their values: «G» (1923-26) and «Bauhaus» (1928-1933) in
Germany, «Sovremennaia
Arkhitektura» (1926-30), «Lef» (1923-25) and «Veshch» (1922) in Russia, Wendingen» (1918-1931) and «De Stijl» (1917-31) in the Netherlands, «L’Esprit Nouveau» (1920-25) in
France, and all the Futurist magazines in Italy such as «Valori plastici» (1918-21), «Lacerba» (1913-15), and «Noi» (1917-20 and
1923-25).
An analogous
phenomenon was seen in the second half of the twentieth century when the
historical conditions enabled a return not so much of the historical
avant-garde, as an attitude of breakage, the neo-avant-garde, of course, which,
between the Sixties and Seventies, produced the phenomenon of the second season
of Little Magazines, with an exhibition organized at the Canadian Center of
Architecture by Beatriz Colomina and Craig Buckley entitled Clip/Stamp/Fold 2: The Radical Architecture
of Little Magazines 196X-197X.[2]
It is
interesting to note that the characteristic of the second season of the Little
Magazines in architecture was that they emerged from inside the Schools of
Architecture, where it was the students, rather than the teachers of the first
season (suffice to think of Le Corbusier and «L'Esprit Nouveau») who
represented the voice of cultural change. It is no coincidence therefore that «Perspecta» was a student
magazine and that «Casabella» published, in that same period, the Florentine radicals who, still
at their school desks, launched their offensive on conservatism, rather than
the youngsters of the AA School, Rem Koolhaas, Zenghelis, Hadid, or Archigram.[3]
This phenomenon
did not pass unnoticed by the intelligentsia of architecture of the period, who
between 1966 and 1972 came out with articles on the topic by historians and
critics, noting that also magazines which could not properly be defined as “little”
had at that time gone through a “little” spell (as in the case of «Casabella» and «Architectural Design»)[4].
Among these, Denise Scott Brown in the «Journal of the American Institute of Planners» in 1968[5],
Peter Eisenman in «Architectural Forum» in 1969 and in «Casabella» in 1970[6],
Chris Holmes in «Architectural Design» in 1972[7],
while Reyner Banham in «AAQ-Architectural
Association Quarterly», commended the
student zines, and Robin Middleton towards the end of his direction inaugurated
the “little magazine” period of «Architectural
Design».[8]
The reason for
the interest in little magazines was to be found in the climate of great
cultural vivacity that was establishing itself in the worlds of art and
architecture: Denise Scott Brown, in her Little
Magazines in Architecture and Urbanism, wrote that «little magazines [...] provide good guidance with regard to new
trends in the profession and are an indicator of what we can expect in
subsequent years.»[9] While Banham highlights that in those years rather than constructed
buildings it was the projects published in some [little] magazines that marked
architectural theory. In his opinion, these magazines, through the projects,
were able to report a thinking about architecture that was constantly updated,
unlike the buildings which rose already obsolete.[10]
That this was a period of great cultural change is indisputable as is the fact
that the cultural climate and fervour managed to seduce even notoriously
orthodox historians and critics.
The Little
Magazines were the protagonists of a little revolution.
Starting off from this point of view, the best magazines could not
help playing a polemical role, tried to keep their guard up and block the
lethal blows that the world of profit and quantitative logic craved to throw,
not so much against them – of no interest to them – but against architecture;
which was able to respond with a few well-aimed salvoes of its own made up of
good ideas that sometimes even succeeded in exerting a beneficial influence on
that same world.
Not without some forcing, we have gathered some of these magazines –
«Zodiac», «Perspecta», «Controspazio», «Lotus», «Casabella», «Phalaris», «Oppositions» – under the common
label of “little magazines” not just because they are directly attributable to
the concept of the avant-garde or were all born within student movements – but
for the courage, freshness and even unscrupulousness with which they advanced a
speech on architecture that to them was coherent, more or less complacently
franked by the logic of profit, while gathering around themselves affectionate
communities of young architects, scholars, and readers.
Even if the relations of these magazines with the avant-garde and
history, continuity and discontinuity, was quite different, especially between
Italy and overseas, their degree of kinship, their entanglements and borrowings
were so unexpectedly numerous that instead of foundations, we should speak of
re-foundations and continuous re-emergences of points of view, themes, and
architecture magazines. To the point that, in some moments, it seems to us that
all of them belonged to a single great collective cultural adventure, one that
encompassed authors, editors and – for Bataille, at least – the only possible
community, that of readers.
Guido Zuliani tells us of Peter Eisenman’s passion for the “little
magazines” of the European avant-garde – «De Stijl», «Mecano», «L'Esprit Nouveau», the «Casabella» of Pagano, Moretti’s
«Spazio» – or his debt to British magazines of the ’60s such as «Architectural Design» and «Architectural Review» or the
double number 359-360 of «Casabella», whose publication of the work of the Institute of Architecture and
Urban Studies under the title of “The City as Artifact” anticipated the birth
of «Oppositions». And of how the origin of the birth of «Oppositions» harboured a certain
intolerance of a world of journalism that was rather intractable to ideas and somewhat
subservient to commercial practice.
Not very different were the motivations from which arose «Perspecta», nor was its debt to Italy any less. «The first reason», wrote
Norman Carver, one of the editors of the first number, «was our frustration due to the lack of exciting projects and the
fatal absence of content that characterized the commercial architecture
magazines of that time.» While «Perspecta» owed a debt to Italy
for its historical-critical tradition while, more directly, its most famous
issue – the no. 9-10, characterized by the well-known White/Gray debate – was
inspired by Issue 281 of Rogers’ «Casabella
Continuità» entitled “Architettura
USA”.
This ratio of continuous exchange, of quid pro quo between
America and Europe, is also the theme as well as the title of Issue 13 of «Phalaris», “the architecture newspaper” – as it styled itself – directed by
Luciano Semerani between 1988 and 1992. Semerani wrote in his editorial: «They come and go across and over the Atlantic from Europe to America
and from America to Europe, flocks of migratory ideas, perhaps always the same
ideas, but each time they return from a trip they have changed because they are
not eternal ideas, or perhaps they are tracks, routes, and points of departure
and arrival that are always identical, but the journey and the travel time, by
themselves, will change them; in appearance at least.» And he published projects by Frank Gehry, John Hejduk, Steven Holl,
plus an extraordinary article on the Elvis Presley myth.
Even Claudio D'Amato re-evoked the “little magazine” image to define
the form of these journals of research, theory, and criticism, “produced
outside the great editorial circuits” and advanced almost exclusively by
university lecturers. «Controspazio» too, like «Perspecta», was born within the political passion of a student movement, and
like «Perspecta», was the vivid reaction to a feeling of powerlessness in the face
of the massacre that professional practice and urban speculation were
inflicting on the suburbs of Italian cities. The polemical vein of «Controspazio» – directed
by Paolo Portoghesi from 1961 to 1981 – was however already included in that “contra”
accompanying the Italian term for “space”, which recalls another affiliation
(or counter-affiliation), the one with the magazine «Spazio» directed by Luigi
Moretti.
A blood relation of «Phalaris» and «Controspazio» – as Enrico Bordogna defined it – «Zodiac» also ranks among the
research journals. In this case, the bond with America and New York is
inscribed in the graphics of Massimo Vignelli. «Zodiac» too was a “re-emergent”
magazine, or the fruit of a re-foundation, whose roots lay deep inside the
Italian cultural tradition, starting from the Comunità publishing house of
Adriano Olivetti and their first series of «Zodiac». This link with
Olivetti was stated explicitly in the 1988 colophon which reads as follows: “New
series. International architecture magazine founded in 1957 by Adriano Olivetti.”.
The Steering Committee too was the expression of a “trend” and a “continuity”,
boasting figures like Carlo Aymonino, Ignazio Gardella, Aldo Rossi, Gianugo
Polesello, Manfredo Tafuri and Francesco Dal Co and foreigners of the calibre
of Richard Meier, Rafael Moneo, James Stirling, and Kurt W. Forster.
Some phases of «Casabella» can also be ascribed to this tradition of research journals, or at
least to some of those preceding the rather bombastic dimension of the time.
The «Casabella» that Gregotti directed between 1982 and 1996, for example, insisted
on a radical programme, according to which the transformation of the city and
territory should involve architects, planners, and engineers in a complex,
integrated, multidisciplinary process. The magazine also sought to open a
debate involving the world of professionals and lead them hand in hand towards
a good practice of architecture. The important thematic section dedicated to
building innovation and sponsors is indicative in this sense, just as there is a
significant difference between the concepts of “city as artifact” of Alessandro
Mendini's «Casabella», and that of the “architecture of modification” of Vittorio
Gregotti’s «Casabella».
Lastly, «Lotus» was of another kind
still, designed as it was in 1963 by a car racing fan – Bruno Alfieri – as a
yearbook of architecture. Starting from Issue 3 it too became an international
magazine of critical investigation and its Issue 7 on “Architecture in the formation
of the modern city” went down in history.
«FAMagazine» is not really a trendy magazine (perhaps we are not snobbish
enough!). Without a doubt – as described even more clearly in the new blue
masthead designed by Carlo Gandolfi – it is a magazine of research, on
architecture and the city.
In terms of approach, its editorial staff is very much akin to those
strange communities of gold miners narrated in National Geographic
documentaries: whole communities who, with the help of ingenious and sometimes
unlikely machinery, dredged tons upon tons of water and sand in those endless
rivers of the Yukon in search of a few grams of gold. What comes out are issues
and themes that are unexpectedly but unquestionably interesting, some more à la page, others extraordinarily demodé. In the period 2010-2013, «FAMagazine» published articles
on/by figures of international architecture such as Asplund, Lewerentz, Mart
Stam, Mendes da Rocha, Artigas, and Bogdanovic, and Italians such as Rogers,
Samonà, Muratori, Quaroni, Aymonino, Semerani, Isola and Polesello. Schools of
Architecture in Italy and Europe, the Brazilian “Paulista School” and some of
its members, the relationship between architecture and crises, accounts of
events like the 2010 Venice Biennale and the 2012 Biennial of Public Space in
Rome, problems relating to the condition of the contemporary city, from the
experiences of the INA-Casa neighbourhoods to today's regeneration processes
for historical cities (from densification to the valorizing of empty urban spaces)
and the suburbs (the case of Tor Bella Monaca). In addition, more specific
issues such as the restoration of the Modern, and the role of ruins in an
architectural project. It has addressed topical theoretical issues in the
disciplinary debate such as the role of morphology or infrastructures in the
processes of transforming the land, and the theme of Designing the Built,
applied to Italian and German cases (Bauen
im Bestand).
Starting from 2014, the issues became strictly thematic and the
output quarterly. The titles are self-explanatory: The Spectacularization of Dismission no. 42, Report on the State of the Former Psychiatric Hospitals in Italy
no. 41, Amnesty for the Existing no.
40, Law and Heart. Analogy and
Composition in the Construction of Architectural Language no. 39, 2017; Architectural Pedagogies. Worldviews no. 38, Building and/is Building Ourselves. The complex relationship between
architecture and education no. 37, Character
and Identity of the Work no. 36, Madrid
Reconsidered no. 35, for 2016; University
Campus and City no. 34, Smart Design
for a Smart City no. 33, The Orderly
City. Dispositio and Forma Urbis no. 32 Epiphenomena, no. 31, 2015; Six Italian PhD Research Works on
Architectural and Urban Design no. 30, 2004-2014
Ten Years of the Festival of Architecture no. 29, Impossible Research. Imagination in the Architectural Project.
no. 27-28, Intensive Teaching for the
Project No 8. 26, Oscar Niemeyer: Architecture,
City no. 25, for 2014.
But even in the
digital field, not all that glitters is gold.
Since
undertaking an online magazine today – certainly less burdensome and costly
than a printed one – is fairly simple (just a web address, a director enrolled
in the order of journalists, and an ISSN), we are seeing a certain quantity of
active magazines that is not less than those dormant or decommissioned ones
within much shorter time-spans than in the past. Without speaking of the
confusion generated by hybrid forms including simple websites, blogs, e-zines,
and everything else in between, as demonstration of an attitude, that of
architecture magazines, which is extremely variable though undermined on the
one hand by a persistent and chronic lack of investment in scientific
publishing (and more in general in research and in its instruments of
dissemination) and on the other by the clumsy attempt of the ministerial bodies
to regulate everything. Hence the basic misunderstanding of transferring the
value of the container (magazine) to the content (single item) in qualitative
evaluations.
We, who have
always believed in this form of communication in architecture and its critical
thinking, are preparing for a substantial revamp. In the Manifesto founding the
magazine (which we invite you to read) we compared the magazine to a “free (and
welcoming) space” for the comparison of different stances. Well this area,
today, has a new guise. Since “you can’t judge a book by its cover”, the
adoption of an international platform specifically designed for scientific
journals allows many advantages: from workflow management (the steps that
accompany an article from when it reaches the editors to the time of its
publication are many and complex) to the final look, and the safeguarding of
the archive with the relentless tracking of addresses and a guarantee of
perennial consultation. If libraries were once the guarantee of preserving
their valuable content of disciplinary knowledge over time (the famous public
granaries to amass reserves against the winter of the spirit within Yourcenar’s
meaning), today much of that “grain” travels in an immaterial inconsistency
through the ether, in that World Wide Web which represents our greatest
opportunity. If the task of «FAMagazine», referring once again to the Manifesto, is also that of a “mnemonic
device to remember”, it is necessary that the memory is kept alive constantly,
without any risk of “memory loss”.
If Victor Hugo
saw a great danger for architecture in Gutenberg's revolution – the invention
of the printing press and books as the killer of architecture, what might he
write today in the face of this further revolution that sees on one side
printed paper giving way to that far more volatile digital paper, and on the
other those contemporary stone monuments (far less often in stone, and fewer
and fewer monuments in Rossi’s sense of the term) witnesses of phenomena that
are no longer secular but as short and transient as they are precarious? “In
the form of printing, thought is more imperishable than ever; it is volatile,
elusive, indestructible. It blends with the air. In the time of architecture,
it became a mountain and took forceful possession of an age and a space. Now it
becomes a flock of birds, scatters to the four winds and simultaneously
occupies every point of air and space.'[11]
Hugo’s metaphor of printed thought is now paying the price of a further
revolution, the digital, one of whose greatest merits is the widespread
dissemination of information, but among whose greatest defects is the
multiplication of this so that it does not always readily make the information
sought available, with the result that we rely on the most popularized,
superficial information (waiting for the Big Data managers to invent agile
information management systems).
Let us now turn
to what lies behind the renewed guise of «FAMagazine». As always, a moment
of transition is the occasion for a stocktake, in our case limited to the
period 2014-2017: 4 years, 17 issues, 116 articles, (to be added to the previous
3 and a half years and a further 122 articles). If it is true that the numbers
are not important (in an era in which even quality is reduced to a number, as
demonstrated by the logic of the National Agency for the Evaluation of
University and Research – ANVUR) it is the contents that offer the scientific
community a valid tool to critically evaluate the work of our magazine.
Perhaps it is
useful to summarize our story. The “Magazine of the Festival of Architecture”
was born in September 2010: at that time ANVUR carried out its first VQR (in
which FAMagazine did not appear among
the list of scientific journals). In 2012, in the first suitable timeslot to apply
for recognition, we explained our reasons, and in 2013 we received scientific
recognition. In the same judgement,
excusatio non petita, accusatio manifesta, ANVUR responded that initially «FAMagazine» was not deemed to be
scientific but merely an informative newsletter. Glossing over this, by
2014-15, with ANVUR regulations in hand, we discovered that we possessed a
score well beyond the threshold required to be in Class A.[12]
We awaited a
suitable timeslot to present our second petition for recognition (this time for
Class A) and just shortly before, thanks also to the debate on anomalies in the
lists of scientific journals for those non-bibliometric areas, a new regulation
was issued (Regulation for the classification of magazines in the
non-bibliometric areas – Criteria to classify magazines for the purposes of
national scientific accreditation) which tightened the screw to such a point
that it cast doubt on the legitimacy of most of the journals already contained
in the lists. As the saying goes, “closing the stable door after the horse has
bolted”.
Following the
lively debate from those who had not seen the access door to Class A
considerably restricted (especially when inside there were magazines that did
not meet the criteria, or were no longer published, and so forth), ANVUR
decided to caution the directors of scientific journals with the announcement
of periodic checks on the requirements, and if unjustified, the revocation of
the description “scientific” or of the magazine's Class A status. Thus, indications
on the frequency when a particular magazine was considered “scientific” began
to appear in the final version of the list of scientific journals currently
available.
We look forward
to the next timeslot to make a formal application for Class A recognition, and
in the meantime, we are continuing to “dredge” and accumulate numbers and
themes thanks chiefly to a vast community of enthusiastic scholars, mostly
young and extremely knowledgeable, and a no less extensive international
community of readers. Whom we thank.