Mi/Arch interview Andrea Branzi

Animal City 2015

Q. Nowadays it’s difficult to image a desiderable future, due to the uncontrollability and the complexity of the society’s mechanisms, but it’s important try to understand something of this complexity of the contemporary city. It’s obvious that our society has transformed from an “urban society” to “merchant society”, the rules of the market are controlling our lives and cities. In a reality like this, in a city which has lost its borders and functions, how can the humans make a relationship with the space around them and with the biodiversity in it?

A. There is not a unique solution, ideologies which explained the big political and ethical values are now over, and so everyone follows his own way. There isn’t one solution, every person should commit to find his way. It’s a bit like in the Japanese Shintoism, it’s a religion where there are no gods -and the same is for other Asian religion- but the moral commitment of the humans is to build a good world and do things well; they take this as a religious duty, this means that each one must commit to find his status in relationship with the others.

Q. In your last works, in theory and practice, such as the Dolmen exhibition at the Antonia Jannone Gallery, you tried to investigate the relationship between contemporary cities and ancient technologies , following the idea of a reversibility of the Darwin theory and the return of the men to an “animal” condition. In this world where the man became an animal, what can be his relationship with the other natural elements and with the biodiversity?

A. First of all, I think that animals are good, sacred and positive presences. For example I love the indian culture, where the quick and the dead, the animals and the humans live togheter, and the sacred cows are considered appearances with a huge spiritual value. I’ve extremely passionate about this topic, but it’s a process created by a long tradition. Biodiversity is tolerance, but usually biodiversity doesn’t contemplate humans; and the other animals don’t think at the man as an animal with a damaging behavoir. Humans are animals who act in a bad way and why should this not be considered? Humans do wars and damage the planet but that shuld be accepted due to the geneal rule of coexistence among natural species. He is a presennce. It’s like an alligator that eats another animal. A lot of poets said that, for example T. S. Eliot in his verses into the book “ The Wasteland” speaks about the failure of the human race. But it’s a real failure? Seven billions of people wich will probably become nine billions, before the world war II they were less than the half, now they increase esponentially pushed by Eros. In my opinion there are problems that is impossible to solve; in the classical modernity of the last century, was common to think that every problem could have a solution, in this century we know that there are problems without a solution, or just with temporary solutions; solutions that are just a way to handle a bit of this chaos, but there are no sure or shared solutions for the future.

Q. During your research work you treated different themes at urban scale, from “no-stop city” with the Archizoom group, through “Italy the new domestic landscape” and “urbanistic intern” to the more recent “agriculture-architecture” and “planet of architecture”. The topic which really interested us is the concept of “weak urbanization”. Could you explain this idea? Is it still possible to apply it in our cities?

A. The idea of “weak urbanization” is the one expressed in “Agronica”, where the two main territorial categories that are Architecture –the designed world- and the world of Agriculture, which have always been interpreted as not compatible (Where one is present the other should be absent and vice versa), coexist, also due to the social and political fluidification of today. Creating, not the solution of the future, but just a new border of connection made of a mixture of architecture and agriculture, which probably born together: architecture from agriculture and agriculture from architecture, and it is interesting their cohabitation also with the animals and the biodiversity. In the end, the difference between an humanized territory as a city and an agricultural landscape, consists just on the techniques used to exploit the Territory, both of them follow the market rules, one using a technology and the other a different one, but there is a general law that is the logic of profit. So there is an homogeneity and not a real struggle, people do these activities because the market law is the same, that id earning money. To conclude, the difference is only in the techniques used, such as a person who produces bikes and another computers, both of them looking for profits.

Q. You represent a symbol of the radical movement and of the avant-gardes more in general. Today our reality has lost every coherence and it’s becoming more and more undefined, so there is not a clear and universal culture from which take distance. In your opinion, is it still possible talking about avant-gardes today?

A. All the society nowadays is an avant-garde society, that works on the unthought and on the continuous innovation, industries can remain alive just through daily innovation. In the past, there was the big middle-class society, which was immovable and conservative and a minoritarian part of avant-gardes. Today the exception is constituted from commonness, common people are very few; the society is all made of exceptions, by people that want to express their creativity that is useful to the entire economic system. Fashion, design and art have became a mass job, in a good sense, in the world there is a significant increase of the number of schools that promote artistic activities. It’s a really productive moment, thousands of new universities have been founded in the past ten years, so, in my opinion it’s a really interesting world; also the huge migrations will produce a deep change in Europe and that is good for our society.

Andrea Branzi. 2015. Mi/Arch. Politecnico di Milano

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