Abstract:

Architecture has always provided an opportunity for change. It is difficult to establish how and when it adheres to the logic of trend or else makes up an element of change interpreted as a strategic phenomenon.
The phases which have characterized the present lay-out of cities and the morphology of their constitutive elements are recognizable moments of the architectural, technological and cultural approach to building. They provide in fact the comprehensive picture of the cultural attitude of the figures involved in the processes of modification of reality, the context on which we are called to act being difficult to interpret and subject to constant and rapid change.
The contemporary city appears to be fragmented into systems, fabrics and nodes, and several partial cities can be identified within.
In the network society, there is the emergence of original forms and relationships of space which make it necessary to reformulate the planning, building and management of the land and its architectural expressions. The traditional city model divided into parts and functions is today replaced by the “multiple city”, a not only multifunctional but also complex node where local and global networks intertwine. There are, in fact, some places in the city which can provide variable and dynamic responses to the ever changing demands and expectations of users, which are precisely interpreted as city users.
In this arena, the relationship between architecture, town planning, design, new technologies and materials borrowed for architectural purposes, takes shape as one of the great issues of our contemporary era. We are witnessing the coexistence of opposed, even extreme, design approaches. On the one hand, they are aimed at reaffirming the historical and traditional building paradigms by re-proposing opaque, heavy, ancient, pre-existing and eternal features which the establishment architecture has always promoted. On the other hand, they tend to interpret the increasingly intangible connotations of development that our society is adopting as elements of daily life, by absorbing the principles of transparency, innovation, lightness, modernity, speed, security, temporariness as instruments conveying an increasingly ethereal and dynamic thought.
Ephemeral, changeable and recyclable materials are the best interpreters of the present reversal in trend. In the past, it was the great services which were the well-established symbols implemented through materials and technologies aimed to last, whereas ordinary and residential building was expressed with sobriety and technological simplicity, i.e. qualities achieved through non durable building systems, but aimed to focus their existence on their social and functional role. Today the opposite phenomenon is true: residential housing is now the very icon of eternity and the “contemporary monument” is designed to represent a moment, an historical fragment of short duration.
Hence, observations relating to some new “moments” of contemporary building have emerged and raised real issues with which the present architectural culture should be put to the test. To formulate observations, we shall proceed by the opposition of dualities. Supporting one or the other position does not only involve making a simple nominal choice but, first, it moves the conditioning created by the individual practice and, then translates into the definition of a representative style of its time.

Keywords:

Architecture tecnology, project, image, form, function.