It was an occasion to speak about the cities of tomorrow, of skyscrapers and skylines, of city outskirts and town planning. Many internationally renowned architects, sociologists and professors were present. An unexpected crowd showed up, although who showed up might have been more interested in the archistars rather than in the approached themes: Richard Burdett, Santiago Calatrava, Massimiliano Fuksas, Richard Meier, Paolo Portoghesi, Peter Calthorpe, Renzo Piano. Léon Krier was also present. The architect and city planner who is known as the Prince’s City Planner for having planned the town of Poundbury from 1988 to present and who is also famous for his traditional theories and for being the expression of new urbanism spoke about fossil energy, about skyscrapers, metropolis and megalopolis, of cities which are not people-friendly. He is criticized by the archistars who were present during the event because he considers them more focused on images rather than on architecture itself. Most people do not appreciate his work because he is not a modernist and he is openly attracted to traditions. But Krier specifies: Tradition does not mean Middle Ages.
Krier presents new urbanism to House Living and Business and explains why buildings should not have more than three storeys. He is not against energy saving and innovations, but he thinks about a future in which we won’t necessarily have infinite electrical current: the ideal city is a neighborhood that is capable of responding to all needs and daily services. This neighborhood is built around a main square as opposed to metropolis which run up verticaly and horizontally.

New urbanism is a response to the lack of theories which could face the problems of modern cities. The first studies and the first articulated critiques go back to the Sixties and Seventies…I criticized zoning which is the main instrument of modern town planning because it breaks up the city instead of composing it. Zoning physically breaks up the city and then rereads it by means of electronic and mechanic devices. This separation of functions has now become a general critique and is no longer an individual critique.
We cannot say that traditional urbanism, physical social relations and geographical relations have been surpassed…the historical city has not been surpassed because it is anthropological, it is a part of the human race: its housing structures, its forms of work and of social relations are permanent among mankind and are not connected to a single period in time. They are connected to the physical condition of mankind and to its forms of life. Zoning is the instrument of town planning which allows us to divide the territory of each city in homogenous areas according to certain characteristics. This allows the Public Administration to a certain function and certain limits to each area. The first country which adopted the zoning technique was Germany at the beginning of the XX century.

Of course, but the historical city has been seen as a return to the past. Modernism didn’t only criticize the historical city because it considered it surpassed: it criticized it mostly because of the way in which it was built, because of its way of conceiving buildings, streets and squares. It criticized all these structural elements of neighborhoods…there are many different names for these elements in China or in pre-Colombian America, but they are nonetheless permanent ideas in every civilization.

Yes! But I don’t consider them from the past because it would be like saying that you come from the past because you use the Italian language. It would be like saying that we go back to the past because we use a language that was used in the past. By saying this we understand that modernism is absurd because we cannot separate the past from the present because we live partly in the past and partly in the future. It is a continuum where there are no final interruptions.
There are changes, but these are tied to the way in which we deal with the Energy we use or that we can dispose of, but there are typically permanent manners to do so if we respect the human nature. Those who do not respect the human nature say that it is a surpassed thing, but I think it’s a philosophical and semantic mistake. Going beyond a human scale is overpaid…historical structures, the network, the country’s texture, the rural and urban textures… they are structures which transcend the historical moment and so going back to a traditional form of town planning is not a historicist fact: it is a return to a useful kind of technology.

It is a technology based on building with natural materials, on creating structures which are dictated by human physical conditions… by geography, by the climate, the altitude, the materials, mineral or plants which are present in that specific territory. We must respect the local conditions, but not for a sentimental idea.

We need to be connected to a scale that we could call a human scale, but not for a romantic reason. Respecting a human scale means respecting the muscular and skeletal possibilities of the human body. This is my principle and my way of diffusing these ideas: even if we could dispose of infinite amounts of fossil energy, we should respect human measures which are a permanent characteristic of mankind. Nowadays we do not build in a people-friendly way. Today we have lost these parameters and the large scale and the overpopulation give the real expression of that.

Not smaller, but more adequate. Nowadays the urban and suburban built-up areas are unnatural, out of alla sustainable proportions.

The city, as tha human body, has specific and insuperable dimensions. On the other hand, metropolis and big cities are not an enlargement of small cities: they are a multiplication of these small neighborhoods and districts. The truth is that the traditional neighborhood isn’t small: it is right and adequate for the size and needs of mankind. They are adequate for what man can do during a day, a week, a month or a year.

It should offer all the services man could need. One must see that all needs can be satisfied in a different way in the old town. For example, how many times do we use the tax service? Once a year? So this service shouldn’t necessarily be a 5 minute walk away, it can be farther away. Even churches and cemeteries don’t necessarily need to be right next door. Nowadays, in modernist cities, everything is exceptionally far away and underprivileged people suffer these distances. A sociologist spoke in Rome…what was his name?

Colleoni, that’s right. It was the first time that i had heard a sociologist speak so clearly about things one could comprehend immediately. He spoke about practical things which are in synch with what I have been saying for forty years.

In modern metropolis we have every kind of service but that is not so in the outskirts of these cities. Who lives in the outskirts is far from these services. So my idea of the city is as follows: a neighborhood is a complete city and the multiplication of many people-friendly districts created a metropolis. This way there should not be fundamental difference between the outskirts and the town centre. There is probably a difference in character or in climate or in population, but there shouldn’t be a lack in services like there is in the outskirts of cities today.

Recent terms such as bio-architecture or environmental sustainability are modern terms which are used in order not to use the word tradition because it is considered tied to the past. But, for example, we continue to eat according to tradition, because this kind of tradition is great. We should have the same attitude in architecture: we need to study what works well, what has been built solidly, what is pleasing and works…the contrapposition between tradition and modernity makes no sense. The important thing in architecture is the capability of using natural materials such as wood, stone or dirt and local materials.

Yes, even if we had infinite fossil energy and electricity we should build with natural materials. Even division into lots is important, but we need to define the size of the urban lots. I always say this: traditional urbanism is the capability of creating multiple lots which are dimensionally and functionally variable. This means that those who have a small lot might have neighbors with medium sized or big lots. This dimensional variety allows a rich person to live next to a poor person. This creates an extremely variable real estate value instead.

Exactly. There is a mixture between social functions, symbolic functions, public and private functions…everything is present in the same neighborhood and is developed around the main square instead of having the rich on the western side of the city, the poor on the east side and the industrial plants in the southern side.

Social mixes work because the create an immediate daily rivalry which is extremely diverse. For example, in Italy, near Piacenza, there is the small town of Castel San Giovanni. The Mayor of this town has proposed a policy of separation into lots like the one I described. There are smaller lots inside the town which are developed next to bigger lots. In each neighborhood, there should always be the phenomenon of the center and of the outskirts and in every neighborhood there should be individual cases instead of block of 6 story identical buildings.
This way, we create an interdependency between social classes. The rich and the poor need each other. We always depend on other people because we are not independent as individuals nor as families or societies: therefore, there are complex daily relations and modernist cities break up these connections. In America, and now even in Italy, there are closed communities which are completely isolated from the rest of the society and this becomes a real nightmare. For example, in Brazil, the rich live in a sort of extremely isolated fortress.

Yes it would, because this isolation of the rich from the poor creates terrible resentment and this separation also creates arrogance. In, on the other hand, the rich and the poor live on the same street, near the same main square, bonds are created between the rich, the poor and the medium classes and these are extremely precious and useful in managing rivalries. We need to urbanize these rivalries. In French, urbain is not only a way to live the city. It also means knowing having good manners, a good behavior and knowing how to speak the language correctly… al these social behaviors that we consider normal actually aren’t normal at all. These behaviors need to be maintained and nourished otherwise they degrade and terrible episodes of violence out of control.

My idea is not opposed to innovation. Innovations emerge inevitably, in a natural way and not from the will to create something new. Airports were not invented in the Middles Ages because nobody needed them. Today, architects and designers have this attitude that induces them to call themselves creators: they think they are creating things that have never been seen before…but a chair is always a chair…Everyone talks about innovation, but innovation is not possible like this. Innovations are inevitable and necessary ideas that come from intelligent people. These talented people see a new way of sitting down or of using a car. The idea that one must innovate in order to feel alive in confusing. Living well has little to do with innovation.

It is not a real debate because archistars are victims of their own attitude. Archistars are involved in this debate because they have no idea how to increase the value of city outskirts. It is not an easy thing to and thinking of possible ways to do this is a job itself. Being a city planner is not easy and nowadays no one can teach this job. In fact, that is why is new urbanism is called “new”: it is because it has never been taught in universities. The architecture which is publicized nowadays, the architecture of archistars, has no solutions for the city outskirts or for the city itself: everyone is in love with skyscrapers, everyone is in love with things which aren’t people-friendly.

Three or four storeys is not a casual limit: if you use the stairs every day and you don’t use the elevator, three flights of stairs is the maximum you want to go. If you have an elevator, there is no limit. Therefore, this limit is a natural limit which has historically evolved in ancient cities where the rich lived on the ground floor which was considered the noble floor. The poor were above or below this floor. Nowadays the exact opposite is true: the best places are higher up and the poor occupy the lower floors.

An architect must keep his eyes open because in Italy there are many examples of quality: an architect must study what must be done and what must be absolutely avoided. Language is so very important, but the modern planning is a practically incomprehensible language, it is abstract. Town plans are totally boring and one can never understand what they mean. Cities have no limits and everything is constantly changing. Have you ever seen a definitive town plan in Italy? They just don’t exist. Every town plan is a constant work in progress. Because there are so many rules, everything is possible because everything can be subject to discussions. I remember the town plan of the city of Parma: in the beginning it already had 800 pages of limitations…it’s ridiculous.

This is a figure of speech. Going backwards doesn’t mean regressing or having less. It means going back to past experiences which are secure, nice and that surely work for most people.

Less is more…Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe – Aachen, 1886 – 1969. Van der Rohe was a German architect and designer – said that. The point is that the form of a city, its morphology and the way it is built are not personal things. A person cannot invent these things. I have diffused this idea, but I am not the inventor of traditional cities. I have composed a theory that finds its origin in different experiences which have occurred in history. I thought about a metropolis that doesn’t exist: there was no reference metropolis on which we could organize a modern metropolis. New York, Athens and Tokyo are not modern metropolises: they have grown in time without a coherent expansion plan and now are in a constant state of crisis because this over-expansion was not foreseen. We now have a new concept of metropolises and for example, Rome which was a wild plant and didn’t have a structured metropolitan shape.

I’d like to understand what would work if we were to end up without fossil energy in the future. I am not against fossil energies. I use automobiles and airplanes more than other people. Mine is not a moralist attitude. I don’t want to teach people how to live.

In my opinion, metropolises are the expression and the result of imperial civilizations which depended on materials which came from far away countries. These structures do not survive in time.

These are childish attitudes which demonstrate the fact that today we can make grand gestures, but these gestures are extremely trivial and a city cannot be saved by a skyscraper. Vertical skylines bring nothing and they are not a solution for large cities. In my opinion, these are unjustified developments because they create unsolvable congestion knots. A city made up of skyscrapers could be conceived but we cannot build these skyscrapers in structures which are conceived for pedestrians and animals.

They are people who know how to do their job, but they are not architectural thinkers. We cannot ask Norman Foster or Zaha Hadid to design a city because that is not their job, it’s not a “brand” business. If you asked me to build a nuclear bomb, I wouldn’t know how to do it, that’s not my job. They know how to design buildings, but not cities.

They are architect who know how to build with synthetic materials and they are also not really architects because they don’t know how to build with natural materials. I asked Richard Meier – an American architect – “If you were to design a square in Italy with natural materials and without using synthetic materials, would you do it?” and he said “No, because you cannot design modernist architectural structures with natural materials”.

He couldn’t design a traditional building without synthetic materials. It would be impossible.

I asked him and he said he has no theories. He designs buildings that can be realized with synthetic materials. I have nothing against these people; on the contrary, I appreciate them because they are very talented and work with great care. I don’t criticize them personally, but I personally find that the Parco della Musica – Parco della Musica Auditorium, the site of the Roman event created by Renzo Piano, 1994-2002 – is horrible and I said that right in front of Piano.

It is so sad to listen to music or to roam around such huge buildings for two days. There was no reason for him to create these mazes to listen to music. These structures haven’t been thought through and they are the result of a crescendo in programming which has no sense from a typological and psychological point of view. It is a maze. Have you ever seen the inside of the Parco della Musica? It is impossible to find who you are looking for. It has nothing to do with Rome. Politics in our democratic countries are in love with large scale productions. Politicians are obsessed with immense and heroic gestures which do not fear the future. Instead, they are terribly scared of being old fashioned and this fear of being old fashioned makes them make terrible mistakes. My city in Luxembourg was disfigured because of the fear of being old fashioned and provincial.

Alemanno is an interesting person because he was there for two days…

The truth is that usually politicians give the opening speech and then leave the event without listening. He was there. He’s intelligent and gave a clear and articulated speech. He clearly has social interests, and not only for his political aspirations: he is interested in the city. I don’t know him, but he gave me the impression of really wanting to do something. Politicians sometimes ignore the city outskirts and they do not realize what the outskirts really are because they are well connected to the city centers. They are foreign lands for most people.

No, mine is a general argument. Nowadays, even large banking, cultural, industrial and promotional organizations do not think outside these scales. They are global, internationals production scales. Now, this large scale wants to create demonstrations of large scale architectural structures, of skyscrapers, of grand gestures like the Guggenheim Museum – the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao was designed by Frank Gehry and was inaugurated in 1997; it was built on a lot which was once an old industrial lot and is part of a urban revaluation plan for the city which started in 1989 that includes a congress hall, an international airport, a new subway system and a plan for a better positioning and layout of the Nervion river banks. The museum is designed on 24.000 square meters – but it rarely comes up with high quality objects.

Yes, I like and I find it interesting, ma we cannot think of saving an entire city with one building. In fact, understanding the success of the Guggenheim is interesting: the city of Bilbao was in a terrible state for a century, it was restored and restructured with great caution, twenty years before it could afford the Guggenheim. It is a city that has added on this jewel, but the main crown already existed. If we had designed the Guggenheim in a corrupted and ill city, it would have been useless. More often than not, these buildings are positioned in places where they cannot have much success.

I do not want to give examples, but not all of Frank Gehry’s works had so much success. The Guggenheim is the only one that had this kind of success. Not all buildings can have the Guggenheim effect! In order to obtain the Guggenheim effect, you need a restored Bilbao which has been rebuilt and taken care of by a Mayor for twenty years before.

I haven’t seen it, but in my opinion these buildings are hyper-baroque and cannot be designed in a city like this. These are not the buildings which could save a city when it is in ruins.

They are extremely expensive buildings. Marcello Piacentini – an architect from Rome focused his attention on the design of his architectural structures and on the projects itself, more than on the surrounding context – said that modernism is a way to render difficult things easier by means of the futile. I know that in Rome, for example, these buildings were imposed by the political system without respecting the desires and the popular referendums.

Those are another problem: they are controlled by a mafia. The Ara Pacis – Richard Meier, 2006 – was imposed by the administration in opposition to the referendum. A referendum expressed a negative vote on this building, but it was built anyway.

Yes, politics are dominated by the idea of superlative. They feel the need to give the impression that we are avant-garde and not old fashioned, they feel the need to be better the the other ones.

No, it’s exactly the opposite. Skyscrapers are even sensless in outskirts because of a flow energy concentrated in one place, they are vertical blind alleys, as I call them. Blind alleys always create a problem, they don’t connect with urban fabric. It makes no sense, there are parking, lighting – light and shadow – and wind troubles. Skyscrapers are traditionally underused because they create hard climatic disturbs. Historically steeples are only staircases with a bell on the top, not a functional building. I haven’t a bias against high buildings as a symbol, but against too high utilitarian structures.

Of course they can be bent. They can do what they want, but this doesn’t bring any benefit to the skyscraper or to the city. The number of floors could be built differently. In my opinion, skyscrapers are indecent, they are fake monuments. They don’t enrich cities and do not make them better in any way.

Yes, it is, because with less lights, cities would be better. At night so many lights trivialize the urban texture and all those lamps are a very mess. London is going back to traditional streetlights with white lights which are beautiful at night. Lights need to be few and elegant. Nowadays, city illumination is dominated by private interest: many lights in the city produce lots of revenues. Instead, we could save lots of money by turning off the lights after midnight, like they did in Florence. In Rome, the city illumination was perfect until the mid Seventies.

No. No orange lights. Today’s idea is that more lights are equal to an increase in safety, but that is not the case. Criminals don’t care if it is dark or not so illumination does not influence the level of safety. It’s just a psychological issue. I would put not lights at all on streets.

No…there are no lights in the countryside! I would only illuminate monuments. There are illumination specialists in France that make it look like the monuments are illuminated on their own. You can’t see the source of the light. That’s how you create magic. The Cour Carrée of Louvre is the best example.