Why research exhibitions?
Why the need to undertake some in-depth research rather than offer a simple up-to-date portrayal of architects’ work? This is a need already felt in the field of art, and now in architecture too. Last year, la Biennale Arte was founded more than usual on a commitment to direct research by the curator. We said that this was useful for la Biennale so it could measure up with developments under way in the field of contemporary art. Contemporary art, which from avant-garde has become habitual, steered by the market and drowned in the unstoppable and pervasive distribution of images all around us, runs the risk of drifting towards conformity, with a dilution and trivialization of the relationship between the works and the observer, to the point of generating lack of interest. And in this context, the Art Exhibition, the Biennale of Massimiliano Gioni, reaffirmed and documented the need for man to create images free of practical intent, impelled by the urgency of his obsessions and utopias. And in architecture? For years, we have stressed the gap between architecture and civil society (individuals and institutions), which should instead express a demand for architecture; we note the dualism between excess and indifference in recent developments and here too, we see a danger of conformity, favored by economy and technology. For architecture, as for art, any developments should instead be guided by the conscious ability to express needs and desires. Here, with great courage and ambition, Koolhaas has reviewed the history of modernity in the past hundred years, and offers a new perspective of those “elements” that should constitute the points of reference for a regenerated and topical relationship between ourselves, our civilization, and architecture (Elements of Architecture).