Architect
I believe that the great topic for the next 30 years is the restoration of the suburbs or, more precisely, the urbanization of the suburbs.
The suburbs are the city that will be or will not be, and then this will be a great dilemma.
The restoration or the recovery of suburbs will be in our coming future like the recovery of the old town centres in the seventies.
Certainly suburbs are not so “photogenic” like the old town centres: beautiful, full of history and charm, but they represent the great challenge of the city.
In the fifties, sixties, seventies and eighties there has been a very rapid growth, an explosive one.
Today cities are complete. They implode and substitute the model of uncontrollable growth with one of sustainable growth (precisely a growth of completion).
It is for transformation. There is much talk about demolition: except for some extreme cases, I don’t believe in it.
I believe instead that it is not a demonstration of strength but one of weakness, an act of boasting and not of courage.
When our cities are beautiful it is because they have always been the product of a continuous transformation and stratification of newness over the old.
The suburbs are the city that will be or will not be, and then this will be a great dilemma.
The restoration or the recovery of suburbs will be in our coming future like the recovery of the old town centres in the seventies.
Certainly suburbs are not so “photogenic” like the old town centres: beautiful, full of history and charm, but they represent the great challenge of the city.
In the fifties, sixties, seventies and eighties there has been a very rapid growth, an explosive one.
Today cities are complete. They implode and substitute the model of uncontrollable growth with one of sustainable growth (precisely a growth of completion).
It is for transformation. There is much talk about demolition: except for some extreme cases, I don’t believe in it.
I believe instead that it is not a demonstration of strength but one of weakness, an act of boasting and not of courage.
When our cities are beautiful it is because they have always been the product of a continuous transformation and stratification of newness over the old.
Renzo Piano
