Editoriale 36

Riflessioni (empatiche) sulle opere di ARX e H21

Abstract

Some time ago, I was commissioned to carry out research work and an educational program whose title in Italian sounded almost like this “Comparative Buildings”. I beg readers to indulge myself in this autobiographical reference which, I imagine, may not be very elegant: however, it is useful to define the critical and theoretical field within which I will move. Also because that experience redefined my way of seeing architecture and understanding, star- ting from solid foundations, what the term lineage or, again, the term genealogy applied to architec- ture could mean. In particular, it seems to me that the word lineage has a particular charm because on the one hand it refers to the lineage, to the de- scent from a common feeling and doing - a theme to which I will return at the end of my reflections - on the other hand I like to think, almost perhaps in- venting a non-existent etymology in Varrone’s way, that this word shares his deepest soul with the word wood and with it refers to the lifeblood flowing in it. Retracing in parallel the design processes of two architectural firms, such as ARX by Paolo Di Nardo and Simone Chietti and Heliopolis 21 by Alessandro Melis, Gianluigi Melis and Nicola Panizzi through some of their works, contributes, in my opinion, to define, even if from a distance, a sort of heraldry that these architects express in their architecture.